You couldn’t see Francisca Oropeza’s knees shaking, yet she swore they were.
“I am very nervous,” Oropeza told me just moments before she took the microphone Wednesday at a union-led rally at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. “I’m not very good in public settings. I don’t want to do this! I do not want to do this, but I have to do this, because I feel passionately about older adult care.”
Oropeza is a therapist who has worked for 25 years at the South East Mission Geriatrics clinic in the Mission, the only free facility left in the city serving poor people 60 and older. Oropeza is also a voice of opposition to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s plan to lay off as many as 500 city workers and eliminate programs as part of $400 million in proposed budget cuts.
Service Employees International Union 1021 has identified South East Mission Geriatrics as one of several clinics the Lurie administration has targeted for closure.
A heated anti-Lurie sentiment whipped up by union speakers before her, especially registered nurse Jennifer Esteen, hung in the air as Oropeza walked to the podium.
Oropeza started by telling the crowd that in the next five to ten years, a third of San Franciscans will be over the age of 60.
She paused for a moment as she choked up. Soon, she was unscripted and unleashed.
“The mayor is choosing to take services from the most fragile members, and mentally ill patients,” Oropeza told the crowd. “If we are the society we believe ourselves to be — good, decent, loving — then we will look at our grandmothers and grandfathers, great grandfathers and our great grandmothers, and fight for our elders,” she said, her voice steadily rising.
“Let’s fight for our elders! Fight for their mental health! Don’t let this happen! ¡Viva la raza!”
The crowd roared in agreement.
Immediately afterwards, Oropeza was a magnet for TV reporters. In between on-camera appearances, she explained to Gazetteer how this is her third fight to preserve the clinic, the last time being in 2009, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom tried to close it before folding to a pressure campaign and letting it stand.
With staff members who speak Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin, the South East Mission Geriatrics Clinic helps its low-income clients deal with anxiety, depression, medication, Social Security appointments, and connections to dementia care. On April 7, Oropeza said, two of her managers told the clinic’s staff of 10 workers that they will be reassigned to different facilities, and the clinic closed by Aug. 28.
The description echoed that of a therapist at the Larkin Clinic in the Tenderloin, who told Gazetteer SF that her managers announced similar reassignments. Staff members were left with the understanding that the Lurie administration is closing the youth clinic. Asked about the closure, District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said a final decision hasn’t been made about the Larkin Clinic. Requests for clarification from the city were directed to the Department of Public Health, which has repeatedly refused to confirm whether the clinics will remain open or be closed.
Mahmood’s reaction has proved to be both hopeful and confusing, as it contradicts what workers have heard from their higher-ups.
Some workers at the clinics said that even before the recent layoff notices, the Lurie administration began a process of quietly reducing their hours and the clinic’s days of operation. The mayor’s office referred requests for comment about these cuts to DPH, which didn’t respond by press time.
Clients of South East Mission Geriatrics are vulnerable, Oropeza said. Many are immigrants, some of whom, even though they are naturalized citizens, are afraid to leave their homes. Oropeza’s oldest client is 97 years old. She said her managers can’t answer questions about whether her clients will continue to be visited at their homes, or if they’ll be steered to wherever she ends up working.
The most difficult part is repeating news about the closure to her clients, which she described as “a steady trickle of exhaustion” diminishing her ability to bring them hope.
She wiped tears away as she considered the possibilities. “I have to hold it back, because this isn’t the place to cry,” she said. “I can cry at home.”
One of her clients, Joanie Marquardt, 78, was also at the rally and made a sign reading “Open Clinics Help Us, Closed Clinics Harm Us.” Marquardt said she counts Oropeza as her therapist and her friend. A veteran protestor, Marquardt said that, starting in the 1960s, she fought in the women’s movement, for civil rights, and gay rights. “I know activism works,” she said.
SEIU is hoping to apply enough pressure to supervisors and to force the mayor to change his mind about the clinic closures. Lurie previously told Gazetteer SF that the heads of city departments, including DPH Director Daniel Tsai, are responsible for figuring out which positions and programs are eliminated and who will be laid off.
Oropeza holds Lurie accountable.
“He knows what he's doing,” she said. “He knows that he’s laying off people and closing clinics. He knows that this is going to devastate people in need.”
By targeting the city’s elderly residents, the mayor may be counting on little resistance, she added. “He thinks that we’re not going to fight back, but Joanie is a testament that even our most vulnerable can protest.”
