By Next Generation of African American leaders
Black communities know this pattern.
If we wait quietly, we are ignored. If we speak up, we are told to be patient. And if we challenge power, especially power that has grown comfortable and unaccountable, we risk losing what little we already have.
That is not theory. That is our history. And that is exactly what happened again this month in Northwest Pompano Beach.
Broward Health, our public health system funded by taxpayers, withdrew services from one of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the county. That withdrawal came after the community spoke up to support more health care options in the city.
So how did we get here?
Earlier this month, the Pompano Beach City Commission voted to update its zoning code to allow free-standing emergency rooms, or FSERs, in the city.
You probably have seen them cropping up around the area. FSERs are exactly what they sound like. They are real emergency rooms closer to home for emergencies that often do not require hospital admission. It means a closer option when your kid breaks his arm playing ball, your mother has a fall, or you have an allergic reaction.
The vote came after HCA expressed interest in expanding emergency care options in the city.
For Northwest Pompano Beach, that mattered deeply. For too long, our community has been captive to a single public system and expected to accept whatever level of service we were given.
Competition in health care is not an abstract policy debate in Black communities. When health care providers compete to serve our community, we finally gain leverage. And with leverage comes better care.
It means choice. It means care closer to home. It means shorter drives when minutes matter. It means providers who have to earn our trust instead of assuming it. That is why our neighbors showed up in support.
Then came the response.
The very next day, city staff were informed that Broward Health would withdraw from the Pompano Beach Community Court. Real services were gone.
Community Court is not symbolic in Northwest Pompano Beach. It is essential. It serves people struggling with untreated illness, addiction, and instability. Community Court works because it combines accountability with services, including health care. It keeps people out of jail. It keeps people out of emergency rooms. It saves taxpayer dollars while helping people stabilize. Remove health care from that system and it collapses.
This was not framed as a neutral budget decision. According to the city’s own email, Broward Health leadership stated that the timing of the withdrawal may be connected to the commission vote about allowing FSERs in the city.
Read that again.
They did not just threaten. Broward Health withdrew real services from a Black community after that community supported more and better health care for their neighborhoods. The moment the community supported more access, services were pulled back. The message was clear. Challenge the monopoly and pay the price.
It is impossible to separate this decision from who holds power at Broward Health.
There are no Black members on the Broward Health governing board. There are no Black hospital chiefs of staff in the system. The most senior Black executive holds the title of senior vice president of operations. This position is beneath a chief executive officer and a chief operating officer and lacks leadership over core silos like finance, medicine, law, technology or human resources.
That is not shared leadership. It is structural exclusion. When decisions are made without Black voices in real positions of authority, Black communities bear the consequences.
This is what monopoly looks like in practice.
That is why Broward Health’s monopoly is a threat to communities like ours. It is not competition. It is a monopoly backed by public dollars and insulated from accountability.
When a public institution abandons a Black community for daring to challenge power and ask for better care, outrage is not just understandable.
It is earned.
