Help Lucy Heal

Hello friends. If you’re reading this, we’re already grateful. We’re putting out this campaign to support our beloved comrade, partner, and friend Lucy Wulf, a nonbinary trans woman who has faced an incredible amount of trauma in the last few months, but especially in the last week with an involuntary hospitalization in NYC. Here’s the story in brief, with more details at the end.

On July 8th, 2018, at Occupy ICE San Francisco, Lucy was beaten and detained by police. This left her with ongoing stress and trauma. Upon returning to New York this fall, Lucy sought help in processing and going on with her life.

On the afternoon of October 29, 2018, Lucy saw a therapist for the first time since this encounter, at Apicha Community Health Care. She told the therapist about her traumatic experience with SF police, as well as other difficulties she faces as a trans woman. After a short meeting with her primary care physician, she was told she was being sent to the hospital. She used the restroom, and when she opened the door, the hallway was full of police.

She was taken via ambulance to an emergency room to get a CT scan for head trauma, where she was under direct observation by a hospital security guard. After the scan, she was taken to CPEP (a locked observation unit), where she was kept in a room with other patients and police officers (two of whom were loudly making fun of a patient’s body odor) for several hours. Twelve hours after this ordeal started, she was placed in a high-risk psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Hospital, against her will.

In the ward, she was harassed and threatened by other patients. For a day or so, her deadname (legal/given name) was on the door for everyone to see. She was given her daily regimen of progesterone and Truvada, but she was denied estrogen, although repeatedly asking nurses to administer it. She did not feel safe, and feared being sexually assaulted. She did not sleep. She told every staff member she met about this situation and none of them helped. Please note that Lucy was not given time to share what was going on with any of her personal support network. None of us knew any of this until we figured out which branch of Mount Sinai she was being held in, and visited her on the evening of October 30th.

On Friday, Nov 2, after contacting the patient advocate, Lucy was discharged. She was hospitalized against her will for roughly 96 hours. This ordeal has left Lucy even more traumatized than she was prior to her involuntary hospitalization. Lucy needs our support as a community to recover from this situation and to get her life in order.

Further complicating this, Lucy does not have legal identification of any kind. (She is a U.S. citizen, but is estranged from family and cannot access certain documents she needs.) Because of this, she does not have regular work, a phone, a bank account, or any way to gain financial stability.

Funds raised will cover:

Lost wages

Possible loss of her current ongoing gigs

Food, clothes, and mental health support

Medical bills

If you know Lucy, you know that she is kind and selfless, a bright spot in a terrifying world. If you have stable income, please consider supporting her, and other marginalized folks who are asking for help.

If you would prefer not to donate through YouCaring, you can venmo @ArthurSingleton or paypal arthurkaysingleton@gmail.com with the subject “Lucy”. Please comment if you are in the NY area and would prefer to donate cash.

We have Lucy’s full permission to fundraise and share her story publicly. Please spread this page far and wide, especially to cis friends and media connections. If you wish to speak to Lucy, please email arthurkaysingleton@gmail.com.

More information:

The therapist Lucy saw, Hillary Perlman, works at Apicha Community Health Center. We are shocked and appalled that Ms. Perlman thought it most appropriate, after seeing a client only once, to advocate an involuntary hospitalization, and utterly abhorrent that she and and Lucy’s primary care physician called EMS.

Why? It is common knowledge that the NYPD will accompany any ambulance call in New York city, and the staff knew police would arrive. The NYPD is well-known to abuse folks who are having any mental health difficulties. We are horrified that Apicha, which is supposed to be a safe place for low-income trans people to receive healthcare, allowed this abuse to happen to a trans woman seeking support. Lucy strongly objected to being sent in for psychiatric care. Lucy told her medical practitioners she had been beaten by cops, that her trauma stemmed from police. Lucy volunteered to travel to the hospital on her own, for the CT scan alone. The medical staff should have known better. Without considering the consequences, they made a decision that left Lucy shattered and traumatized.

Queer support systems, especially at the institutional level, must find alternatives to actions that result in a police presence. People of color, homeless people, immigrants (of any legal status), sex workers, trans folks, and especially people who fit two or more of these categories often rely on clinics and sliding scale services for essential health care.

Apicha’s website boasts, “Our providers have extensive experience working with Asians and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, African Americans and other people of color.” Yet police violence against people of color, is documented and should be an obvious threat to anyone who is “culturally competent,” as they claim to be. Is this type of situation Apicha’s standard operating procedure? If so, who else have they put at risk to date?

In addition to donating, please call or write Apicha (click here, full link below) to let them know how you feel about this incident. Ask them what they plan to do to get better. Tell them why what they did was dangerous. Tell them that what they did to Lucy was wrong and inexcusable, and hold them accountable in public forums. We do not want this to happen to another one of their clients, or anyone, for that matter.

Thank you for your support.

Contact Apicha: https://www.apicha.org/en/contact-apicha-community-health-center/

We are hoping to raise more than $1000 but that is our initial goal.