Mobilize for Health!

Will Civil Disobedience For Health Care Make Obama and Dems Listen?

By Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

They're not listening. They're just not listening. It simply does not matter to the president and his advisors, to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, or to those who decide what is broadcast and published in corporate media that two thirds of the American people still favor an everybody-in-nobody-out health care system, a Medicare For All solution to the nation's health care crisis. For these players Big Pharma favors and insurance company dollars speak louder than their own campaign promises, louder than the will of the American people. Maybe it's time to turn up the volume.

45,000 Americans die every year for lack of affordable, available health care. Not for lack of insurance --- for lack of care. Almost a million Americans went bankrupt last year, two thirds of them for unpayable medical bills. Most of those did have insurance when they first became sick or injured. If we really want health care for everyone --- all of us in and nobody out, maybe it's time to stop deferring to our imagined betters. Maybe it's time to get loud, to get impolite. Maybe it's time to raise their cost of business as usual to unacceptable levels. Our costs, the costs of ordinary American families have been unacceptable for some time now.

Maybe it's time to show we know the truth and to speak that truth to power. That's why they call these things “demonstrations.” Maybe it's time again for nonviolent civil disobedience, time to get arrested, not in the cause of “health insurance reform,” but in the cause of universal and accessible health care for everybody, Medicare For All. That's the thinking behind the good people at MoblizeForHealthCare.Org, a collaborative project initiated by Healthcare-NOW!, Prosperity Agenda, and the Center for the Working Poor.

“It's high time to let go of the political pessimism that says well, we don't have the votes in Congress...”

The participants threw up a web site at www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org, and kicked off a national campaign of civil disobedience with a September 28 appearance on Democracy Now, and a demonstration the following day at the New York offices of Aetna Insurance. 17 people inside the insurance company offices were arrested as hundreds more marched, chanted and sang outside. A few hours after this article is published on October 8, a similar civilly disobedient action will take place at the Chicago office of one or another greedy insurance company. On October 15, similar actions will take place in Los Angeles and several other cities, and continue until this administration and congressional leaders abandon their plans to bail out the insurance industry, until they remember and implement their campaign promises of universal, accessible, affordable health care --- not health insurance, but real health care for everybody, Medicare For All.

Black Agenda Report talked late last week to Kevin Zeese, who told us that in the first four days the site was up, nearly a thousand people signed up, with about half expressing a willingness to get arrested in a nonviolent demonstration at an insurance company or some other likely location. We thought this was a great start, and heartily endorsed the effort. In the days to come we will certainly do all we can to help out.

It's high time to let go of the political pessimism that says well, we don't have the votes in Congress, 86 (the number of current HR 676 co-sponsors, down from 99 in the pre-Obama congress) is not 218. It's time to stop caving to the un-elected billionaire-owned corporate media who tell us every day that “the political will” for Medicare For All just isn't there. These are the same media and politicos who told us tech stocks and real estate prices could only go up, that Saddam had nukes and maybe there's no such thing as man-made climate change. They are the same bipartisan crowd who emerged from the White House only yesterday to assure us that continuing the Afghan war with tens or hundreds of thousands more troops is absolutely necessary and not subject to debate, even if only 39% of Americans believe it.my son died

If you believe a democratic political process consists of elections, the world's free-est press and three branches of government that do what the people who elected them told them to do, you have to admit this process is broken. It's time to step outside that box. If you think politics is broader and deeper than what laws are passed and what our bipartisan establishment and corporate media deem “politically feasible” it's also time to crank up the pressure a notch.

We should not imagine that the path of a widespread national campaign of civil disobedience to obtain univesal health care will be easy. The first demonstration got adequate coverage in New York, even in the corporate press. Today's action in Chicago might do the same, or maybe not. In recent years we have seen half a million marchers on the mall in DC ignored by corporate media while a crowd not one tenth or twentieth that size demonstrating against single payer, a public option or anything of the kind in mid-September was inflated to the dimensions of a near-insurrection by CNN, Fox News and C-SPAN.

We can and should utilize the internet, text messaging and social networking tools like FaceBook, Twiiter, MeetUp and others to grow support, to collaborate and coordinate this effort. But we should know that Verizon and other telecom providers have blocked antiwar, pro-woman and other text messaging before and may do it again. Only last week local police in Pennsylvania and the FBI in New York arrested and charged activists with felonies for using Twitter to let anti-G20 demonstrators in Pittsburg talk to each other over their accounts. Being arrested and having your house trashed is no picnic, and being charged with felonies, especially federal ones --- federal courts convict more than 97% of all defendants, according to the National Lawyers Guild --- is no joke. But neither are the 125 Americans who die daily from lack of accessible, affordable health care. Both are prices someone is defintely bearing, one to bolster insurance company profits, the other for peace abroad and justice at home. It shouldn't be hard to decide which price you'd rather bear.

So we ask our readers to go to www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org and sign up. The form asks six questions.

· Are you willing to be arrested in a nonviolent demonstration for health care for all?

· Will you demonstrate legally in support of those who are civilly disobedient?

· Have you ever given nonviolent training for other efforts?

· Can you contribute bail money for those arrested?

· Are you a legal professional competent to help defend the arrested?

· Have you or someone in your family been denied medical coverage by an insurer?

“Back in the 60's it used to be said that the young people were impatient with injustice. We need to lose that patience again to get something done.”

And after you sign up at www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org, we encourage you to open your phone books and email lists and bend the eyes and ears of all your friends, vial email, FaceBook, Twitter and especially in person. Let them know you gave a few dollars for bail money, that you have offered to demonstrate, legally or otherwise in your city or town to get affordable, accessible, Medicare For All. If you're in a fraternity or sorority, a motorcycle club or a church, carry it to them. There is almost no family in the nation untouched by the health care crisis. Tell them what you know, and what you are doing. And invite them to do the same. If you're anybody I know personally, you can look for my call or email. It's coming.

At some point we are either grownups or children, we either lift up our eyes and put our faith in democracy, or we bow our heads and submit to authority. Submission to authority including unjust authorities, automatic deferral to the wishes of the wealthy and entitled are a big part of American political culture.

We expect that few elected Democrats, and those who aspire to or are already dependent upon their patronage will want to touch this. That's OK. There are Elected Democrats and their baggage train differ from small-d democrats in that their careers are funded by corporations, the most profoundly anti-democratic force in modern human societies. There are way more small-d democrats than the elected ones. Those few are, like Langston Hughes used to say, not the sea, but just the foam on the sea. We are the rocks and the mighty waves themselves. It's about what we want, not what the corporate-sponsored elect consider "politically feasible."

This has to change and nobody can do it but Americans. Back in the 60's it used to be said that the young people were impatient with injustice. We need to lose that patience again to get something done. We can raise their cost of doing business to unacceptable levels. We can make them listen, if only we will.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and lives near Atlanta GA. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.