On Friday, the day before a planned protest in the neighborhood, Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Laurelhurst Community Council released a joint statement saying “the Laurelhurst Community Council (LCC) has agreed to fully support Seattle Children’s as it seeks city approval to end the Medical Review Committee for helicopter landings.”
A rare win for cyber bullying:
A Reddit post last week brought this long-standing agreement to the public’s attention. A Stranger report this week showcased how, starting during the pandemic, the LCC had attempted to further reduce flights due to the noise and personal disruption it caused them.
For a second I thought our Lemmy post did something
Originally, it was a post on X from a helicopter pilot pointing out that their latest flight was only 1 of 3 flights where they were permitted to land directly at Seattle Children’s.
So happy that pilot decided to post. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
That’s absolutely nuts, I hadn’t heard that. I had heard their “reasoning” for why, like “one kid only broke their leg”. Like they really think they have the authority and medical discipline to tell people that children don’t need to be airlifted. Insane.
Yeah it’s been a widely known thing for as long as I can remember, but that X post from the pilot set off a bunch of new discussions about it. I think a lot of (newish) locals just didn’t realize what was happening.
Comment from someone who is (allegedly) a member of the Laurelhurst community:
Here’s a little insight into what happened from the viewpoint of someone who lives in Laurelhurst. Bear in mind that I definitely only know part of the story.
There’s a neighborhood whatsapp group with several hundred members. A few shared the initial story a week or two ago. Obviously LCC members got a lot of calls and hate mail, but then lots of other people in the neighborhood who have zero ties to LCC started to receive death threats, some people got stalked through the neighborhood and heckled, etc. Many people pressed LCC on (1) why this policy even exists and (2) why they released an apathetic non-statement in response to the initial firestorm and urged them to completely capitulate (the members are old and don’t fully grasp the reach of information on the internet). They then sent around an internal poll showing ~90% of the neighborhood thought all helicopters should be allowed to land at the hospital and LCC said they would bring all of this forward in a meeting with the hospital that took place yesterday.
Anyway, feel free to protest still. Most of the neighborhood lands on the side that all helicopters should land at the hospital so please stop threatening to drag people into the streets and kill them in front of their kids lol 😄
A common L for cyber bullying. I think the Needling had the correct level of cyber bullying, but obviously death threats are wildly inappropriate.
Death threats are never ok. I do think there was an appropriate level of public shaming here since it did force the Laurelhurst community to take a step back.
I was surprised at the further discussion on Reddit that supposedly the Laurelhurst Community Council are not elected by the Laurelhurst community and the larger community members had no idea this had happened with Seattle Children’s. There were more claims that they had no idea there were community meetings.
Honestly, I think the Laurelhurst residents are being defensive for being rightly called out for prioritizing their comfort over dying children.
