On Monday, lunch time in the plaza outside the Zuckerberg SF General Hospital and Trauma Center turned into a symbolic stage for a different type of surgery: a call to strip away a controversial name, and instead replace it with a name that reflects legacy and care.
Sasha Cuttler, former supervisor Gordon Mar, and many other healthcare workers and community leaders gathered for this figurative renaming of San Francisco’s primary safety-net hospital. The new proposed name: “Pretti Good SF General.”
Sasha Cuttler, a retired nurse and PhD who has spent years in the very walls of the hospital, argued the ethical values behind Meta, particularly privacy rights and the social platform’s role in polarization within politics, don’t reflect San Francisco values.o
While this name was in place during the symbolic renaming, Cuttler and others said they hope the public will have the opportunity to vote on whether to adopt the name permanently or keep the existing name. That would require a ballot measure—and a supervisor to sponsor it.
The name “Pretti Good” is a clever play on words, but within that is a tribute to Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, and Renee Good, a queer poet. Both died at the hands of ICE in Minneapolis, fighting for social justice.
Cuttler and others sought to contrast the bravery of frontline workers with the corporate greed of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
To someone passing by the spirited chant “You say Pretti… I say Good…Pretti Good” might have sounded like a simple slogan. To those standing in the plaza the weight of the names defined a mark for justice. The call and response transcended the names of the fallen activists into a demand for better, and a more ethical tribute to the hospital’s name.
This event marks a revived escalation of a battle that began in 2015, when the hospital was renamed following a $75 million donation from Zuckerberg. The taxpayers of San Francisco put up $1 billion to rebuild the hospital.
Mar said that “a public institution does not serve as a billboard for a billionaire.”
To everyone in the crowd, it was clear that it was time to get “Zuck Off’ the hospital.
While each speaker provided the crowd with political context, the energy of the event was driven by love. As the chants continued, the crowd took the symbolic transformation to the actual sign of the hospital.
Sasha placed the letterings over the actual sign to spell out “Pretti Good,” Brother Sin from The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence blessed the new sign and anointed it:
“May this hospital remember that it existed long before Zuckerberg bought his way on to this sign, and it will heal long after his empire crumbles. We cleanse this space of the delusions that wealth equals virtue, and restore it to the people who actually keep these patients alive.”
