MoveOn Members Demonstrate
at
Senator Webb's (D-VA) Arlington Office
1501 Route 29 / Lee Highway #130
Arlington, VA 22209
photos by Jerry Nelson
9 July 2009
bottom & links
click to enlarge
PUBLIC OPTION NOW !
MoveOn.org converges on downtown Arlington to demonstrate in front of
our Senator's office for health care reform. Tom Pratt, left, volunteered to put out
the call to Northern Virginia MoveOn members.
We waited for Senator Webb's staffers to come out to meet with us.
People shared stories of family members working in Europe and unable to
come home to face certain loss of medical converge, stories worse than
that, stories
will all know.
Senator Webb (D-VA) staffer Gwen Sigda was given the task of coming out
to meet the crowd from MoveOn.org.
She was given only the briefest prepared statement:
Sen. Webb was considering
support for the Public Option we wanted.
Ms. Sigda was not from the legislative staff and had been given nothing
further to say or explain to us. But
we started talking to her anyway.
We are an engaging bunch, and eventually we engaged Gwen Sigda.
One MoveOn member asked for a show of hands,
How many here had manned the phones or canvassed neighborhoods to get
out the vote that put Jim Webb into the Senate?
Nearly every hand in the crowd went up. We are MoveOn.
We are the activists that volunteer for your election
campaign. You can get corporate money, but how are you going
to spend it? We are the feet on your street.
Sen Webb staffer Matt Lucas explains the fine points of an advocacy
letter to a MoveOn member.
click to enlarge
Tom Pratt, MoveOn voluneer organizer (right, yellow), with Sen Webb staffers
Gwen Sigda and Matt Lucas
click to enlarge
MoveOn members pressed Sen Webb staffers in a lively discussion of
health plan priorities.
We all had fun, we got our points across, we made it clear that we are
the base that got this man into the Senate in the first place.
Senator Webb should see MoveOn as a tool he can use, not an irritant.
We would enjoy meeting his legislative staffers at our next
event.
We are a nice bunch of people. We know our stuff.
And we are on his side.
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION
It is funny how obvious things like impeachment for crimes or
single-payer
health insurance get to be "off the table". You
wonder who decides.
If leaders can only run away from single payer, then lets try a public
health option, a plan of last resort that anyone in the nation can get.
A public health option
among the corporate insurance plans might some day grow to underwrite
all citizens and average out all risks -- a single, strong underwriter
who would not have to deny treatment to avoid a hit on earnings.
So here we are with MoveOn.org in July, 2009, trying to keep at least a
public health option in the Congressional health care legislation.
Yet I still wonder why we are here. Why
this form of government, one that no longer cares about the
welfare of its
citizens?
Capital gets invested. You can put it into one corporation or
take it out and put it in another. The wealthy do not need
health insurance corporations, others might be more profitable.
But the corporations one has at the moment seem to be the
ones that finance many facets of the political process.
Thank
you everyone. A special interest group promoting the interest of
all citizens is the most patriotic interest group of all.
click to enlarge
POST MORTEM
MoveOn's letter of thanks to volunteers across the nation leads off with the photo above, and fully 88 Senators were pressured publicly so we did good.
On
a sadder note, we lack power and we are retreating from the
single payer solution that other countries use, to a compromise
in health care (a "public option"). Here is what a leading
scientist has to say about retreats to the land of future hope:
Is MoveOn.org naive about the health insurance interests that just drove the legislative truck over us?
--jerry
top
MoveOn thank you email
home for this Website
Rev 9Jul09; 10Jul legislative staffers 11July thankyou email+Hansen
