A year ago, a convention of 500 community residents sponsored by Community Organized for Responsible Development (CORD) ratified a proposed community benefits agreement (CBA) they'd like to see Yale-New Haven sign as part of the controversial and stalled cancer center project. The center would be the largest building project in the city’s history and has been the focus of an intensive battle pitting the hospital against local unions, some local politicians, and some people in the Hill neighborhood.

People at Monday night's CORD rally stayed warm â€"- or tried to â€"- chanting, “Fired up! Won’t take it no more!" CORD members say the hospital has refused to meet with them to discuss their concerns, which include jobs and job training, access to health care for all and an end to lawsuits against the uninsured, affordable housing, protecting the environment, resources for youth, and solutions to the traffic and parking crisis. Oh, and the right of hospital workers to unionize.

Speakers emphasized again and again that they want a cancer center. The Rev. Henry Morris said, “We want a cancer center that is for the benefit of all the people of New Haven. I’m insulted by the insinuation by the hospital that we don’t care about people who have cancer. Yale-New Haven provides great medical care but it has outrageous business practices, such as punitively pursuing people to collect debt. The question is, if there is going to be a cancer center, are they going to do the same things to people that the other pavilions do?"

Morris and the Rev. Emilio Hernandez were among 100 clergy who signed and delivered a letter a month ago to Yale-New Haven President Marna Borgstrom outlining their concerns. They are still waiting for a reply. To the hospital’s claims that it has forged a community benefits agreement with many community groups, Hernandez scoffs, “They got a handful of small agencies and some of them are either connected to the hospital, or the hospital funds them. The hospital is using them to say they are working with the community, but they have to understand that the CBA came from 500 people who met and decided what kinds of things they wanted."

As the march left the corner of Congress Avenue and Cedar Street and proceeded one long block to York Street to the hospital’s main entrance, Edith Woodard, 80, was right in front. She said she was cold on the outside, but fired up on the inside. “I feel very strongly about the people who work at the hospital," she said, “that they’re not getting what they need. I think a lot of people who are poor are given a bad time there. I come from that kind of family and I know what it’s like. I hope the hospital will provide more."

Grace Jackson joined CORD as soon as she learned about it. She lives across the street from the hospital. “I joined it for my community. We’ve been walked over too much, too long over developers doing what they want to do without asking us what do we want, would you like to have this in your community? No, it’s enough. We’re fed up with that."

Yale-New Haven vice president Vin Petrini says, “We think tying the approval of the cancer center to a union organizing campaign is simply wrong. We’ve met with CORD, we’ve met with dozens of community groups. We’ve put millions of dollars on the table in new community benefit payments, which would cover everything from affordable housing and day care to community health infrastructure improvements and education."

CORD members say the funding Yale-New Haven has promised is a fraction of what’s needed and what the hospital could afford to do, and should do. So they will keep hammering the hospital to get the CBA they want. And while that may hold up construction of the cancer center, they repeat that their goal is not to block it, but to see a cancer center for all the people of New Haven.