Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Sit-in for Single-Payer in Pelosi's OfficeBreaking news from the folks at the Mobilization for Health Care for All:CALL PELOSI NOW! (415) 556-4862 and (202) 225-0100 There are 8 people sitting in RIGHT NOW in Nancy Pelosi's Office in San Francisco! They are not leaving until they get an answer to their demands! Their demands are that the Kucinich amendment MUST be in the health care bill that the House votes on, and that the House MUST vote on the Weiner amendment. Pelosi PROMISED the American people that she would ensure BOTH of the above would happen, and she has betrayed us by reneging on those promises! YOU can HELP! Call her office in SF at (415) 556-4862 and Washington, DC (202) 225-0100; demand that she talk with the people sitting in. Demand that she keep her promises and put Kucinich Amendment in bill and allow Floor vote on the Weiner Amendment! Burn up her phone lines people! This is NOT business as usual! This is FOR REAL - we can make a difference in the future of health care in this country! Labels: health care, health care reform, Mobilization for Health Care for All, Nancy Pelosi, sit-in Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Next Wave of Health-Care Sit-InsThe Mobilization for Health Care for All had its latest big wave of sit-ins for single-payer on Wednesday (and this wave is ongoing). Here's their report:Yesterday [Oct. 28th], the next wave of the Mobilization for Health Care for All began with great success. See below for a list of media coverage of the actions. In 11 cities across the country, hundreds of everyday Americans who want Medicare for All confronted the insurance companies and demanded that they redirect the money they're spending to control our democracy to pay for the care they deny to their members. Almost every company refused to even talk to us, and 37 people were arrested including doctor Matt Hendrickson at a Cigna office in Glendale, California. Dozens more - like the 30 people who blockaded the Blue Cross office in San Francisco for hours - sat in but weren't arrested. In Rhode Island, however, the protestors who joined cancer patient Robert Darling in occupying the UnitedHealthcare office won the first concessions of our campaign - a company representative agreed to give an answer to Robert about paying for his previous bone marrow transplant within 24 hours and to arrange a meeting for the group with the UnitedHealthcare CEO within a week! After 115 arrests in 18 cities, these companies are starting to feel the heat of our movement. And with more than 900 people now signed up to sit-in, this battle is just beginning. Today, the Mobilization continued in Louisville, Kentucky and Baltimore, Maryland. The brave folks in Louisville are in the 9th hour of their sit-in inside the Humana headquarters as we send out this email. Humana is trying to wait them out, but may are prepared to stay overnight if they have to. In Baltimore, four people were arrested at a CareFirst (Blue Cross) office including two doctors. One of those doctors, Margaret Flowers of the "Baucus 8," has withheld her name and is planning to stay in jail until the CEO of CareFirst, Chet Burrell, agrees to a public meeting with her. Please call Mr. Burrell immediately and regularly at 410-528-2222 to demand that he agree to meet publicly with Margaret. You can also email CareFirst by going to http://www.carefirst.com/email/html/ContactMediaRelations.html. Send the following message in your email: I am writing to urge CEO Chet Burrell to agree to a public meeting with Dr. Margaret Flowers who was arrested at the CareFirst office in Baltimore while demanding to meet with Mr. Burrell about CareFirst business practices. She is going to stay in jail until Mr. Burrell agrees to a public meeting with her. CareFirst must publicly account for the serious concerns that citizens have about your company's practices. Also, please donate generously today so we can be prepared to pay any bail that is set for Margaret's release. She decided to risk arrest and stay in jail despite a possible 6 month jail sentence for violating probation from her previous arrest in the fight for real health care reform - let's show her that we've got her back. Please donate today to support Margaret and post messages of support for her at our Facebook page (we'll read all messages to her over the phone when she calls from jail). The Mobilization continues in Philadelphia tomorrow, and in more cities across the country next week. Click here for updated lists of all the upcoming actions and info about how you can plug in and participate. The insurance companies, the politicians in their pockets, and even some of the corporate media apparently want our movement to go away. But it's just getting started and spreading across America. Let's show them we're not going anywhere and we won't stop until health care is a right for everyone in America. Thanks for everything you do. —Katie, Kevin, Kai, Julia, Lacy, and the Mobilization team Press Coverage from 10/28: San Francisco Chronicle South Florida Sun-Sentinel NJ.com (Star-Ledger / Trenton Times / Jersey Journal blog) projo.com (Providence Journal blog) Glendale News-Press National Public Radio, Topics Democracy Now Free Speech Radio News Huffington Post Institute for Public Accuracy Atlas Press Photo La Jornada (Mexico) OpEdNews (featured story about doctors, by Kevin Gosztola): OpEdNews (about Philadelphia rally) Bay Area Indymedia (quality article, good for reference): Press Coverage from 10/29: Southern Maryland Online Wave3.com WFPL News Labels: health care reform, Mobilization for Health Care for All, single-payer, sit-in Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Dissenting Account of the Republic SettlementAn interesting dissenting view, from Darren Hutchinson of Dissenting Justice on the settlement between Bank of America and workers who staged a sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. (See our recently-posted article about the sit-in and settlement here; our January/February issue will include a comment by UMass-Boston economist Randy Albelda on the financial crisis and the shredded safety net.) The back-story about the company's political connections is particularly interesting. I think part of what is going on is that people are so unused to any kind of labor militancy that they were quick to take anything they could get. An Argentine-style takeover of the factory (with or without help from the state) would have been even better than state-supported safety-net provisions and retraining, no?.What (I Think) Progressives Should Have Done for Workers of Republic Windows and Doors This is the full post; click here and scroll down for related earlier posts on Dissenting Justice. Labels: bailout, Darren Hutchinson, Dissenting Justice, financial crisis, Republic Windows and Doors, sit-in, United Electrical Workers Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). How to Get a New New Deal (John Nichols)We noticed this in the Boston Metro, our subway paper ("world's largest circulation global newspaper" or something--it really is worldwide), by John Nichols of the Nation. We include the article in full because the Metro doesn't have permalinks (and it's a characteristically tiny article).Workers sit-down for a New Deal Much has been made about the prospect that Barack Obama's presidency might be a reprise of the New Deal era — due both to economic necessity and the President-elect's interventionist inclinations. But there will be no "new New Deal" if Americans simply look to Obama to lead them out of the domestic quagmire into which Bill Clinton and George Bush led the country —with a toxic blend of free-trade absolutism, banking deregulation and disdain for industrial policy. Just as Roosevelt needed mass movements and militancy as an excuse to talk Washington stalwarts into accepting radical shifts in the economic order, so Obama will need to be able to point to some turbulence at the grassroots. And so he may have it. After Bank of America—a $25-billion recipient of Bailout Czar Hank Paulson's "Wall Street First" largesse—cut off operating credit to Republic Windows and Doors, executives of the firm announced that they were shutting its factory in Chicago. Instead of going home to a dismal holiday season like hundreds of thousands of other working Americans who have fallen victim to the corporate "reduction-in-force" frenzy of recent weeks—which has seen suddenly-secure banks pocket their federal dollars rather than loosen up their credit—the Republic workers occupied the factory where many of them had worked for decades. Members of United Electrical Workers Local 1110, which represents 260 Republic workers, are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes, which led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: "You got bailed out, we got sold out." If the right history of this time is written, it will be said that the new New Deal began in Chicago—not just because of the city's rich record of labor struggle (from the Haymarket martyrs in the 19th century to the steel industry organizing of the 1930s) or Obama's Chicago ties—but because the workers there were the first to stand up by sitting down. John Nichols is a Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine. Labels: Bank of America, Barack Obama, New Deal, sit-in, United Electrical Workers Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
