Cooper Green supporters to protest at Civil Rights commemorative events | News

BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC)- Supporters of returning Cooper Green Mercy Urgent Care to a hospital plan to use commemorative events for Birmingham's 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights movement for staged protests.

This week Jefferson County turned over it's license to operate Cooper Green as a hospital to the state of Alabama. The Committee to Save Cooper Green says the poor who depend on the hospital for medical care are at risk and they do not understand how the new setup will work.

The protests at anniversary events will drive home their point.

"We will be out there walking around with signs. The same way Dr. King, Fred Shuttlesworth and others marched in the 60's...to educate people about what's going on," Emory Anthony, Birmingham attorney with Committee to Save Cooper Green, said.

The first event will be the Unity Breakfast on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

"Dr. King would certainly be concerned about 210 employees losing their jobs incorrectly. Concerned about 40,000 indigent individuals not have the correct healthcare to take care of them," Anthony said.

Anthony says if the protests fails to generate enough support the committee may call for boycott of anniversary events.

Copyright 2013 WBRC. All rights reserved.