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The Oasis Clinic, a Hepatitis-C facility in Oakland CA, and the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC), staged a successful demonstration on Gilead Sciences’ front doorstep, in the Silicon Valley corporate hideaway of Foster City CA, at 12 noon on April 1st, 2016. We demanded “Public Health, Not Corporate Wealth,” and “Hep-C drugs on demand! People Not Profits–That’s Our Stand!”

Our demonstration was timed to join up with actions by Act-Up affiliates against Big Pharma in Paris, London, New York and numerous other cities around the world on the same date. The Labor Action Committee was joined in this effort by Doro Chiba, the militant Japanese railway workers union, which demonstrated against Gilead’s offices in Tokyo.

Some 40 people from various organizations, including Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), the SF Labor Council, various unions, left organizations and gay activists joined the LAC and Oasis for this demonstration. A UAEM representative came all the way from UC Davis to join us. Jack Heyman, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) retired, was our rally chairperson.

We called attention to the plight of the growing number of prisoners in the US with Hepatitis-C, such as innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who are being denied the curative treatment Harvoni. Owned by Gilead, Harvoni is marketed for the outrageous price of $1,000 per pill, or over $84,000 for a full course of treatment.

Gilead tries to lay the blame on insurers for the lack of availability of the drug, but, as Dr Diana Sylvestre of the Oasis Clinic points out, “insurers cannot print money.” Corporate suppliers like Gilead, together with insurance companies and government agencies such as prison and veteran administrations are all pointing their fingers at each other while increasing numbers of working people and poor are being forced to go without adequate treatment for this deadly disease.

We salute the participants in the other actions around the world. Activists in New York demonstrated against Big Pharma giant Pfizer Corporation, while the Yes-Men managed to fool the Washington Post into printing a fake press release that said Pfizer was holding the lid on drug prices–an assertion that the real Pfizer readily denied!

London activists held a nude-in at Gilead in that City to protest lack of availability of a crucial HIV medication, which is deemed too expensive to be funded by the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS was originally designed to provide free health care for all, but is now unravelling due to corporate pressure for privatization.

Demonstrations also took place in Sydney, Johannesburg, Brasilia, and Washington DC. All of us were united in taking a stand against the rapidly increasing prices–and profits–of Big Pharma. In Foster City, we said: “Health care is a right, it’s for this that we will fight!”

This report by the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal