18,000 Union Members Took Part in More Than 400 Health Care Events in August

[Omaha Steve]

18,000 Union Members Took Part in More Than 400 Health Care Events in August

by Mike Hall, Sep 1, 2009


When Marianne Hoynes rolled her wheelchair into a town hall meeting in Red Bank, N.J., last week hosted by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to share her thoughts on health care reform, she says, “I didn’t expect to be heckled and booed.”

Hoynes sent us her story yesterday, along with a link to a You Tube video showing that some in the audience sneered and jeered as she explained her situation of trying to live with two incurable autoimmune diseases. At the meeting, she says:



America’s a completely different place to live in when you get sick. I live in fear everyday that I will lose my home….I’m afraid because the co-pay for one of my medications is $389 every two weeks. I’m afraid I might not be able to afford my property taxes and I will lose my home. Please hear this voice of the disabled and don’t let the insurance lobby win this fight. Please protect me from the extortion of the pharmaceutical industry. We all need reasonable health coverage to be a basic human right, not a privilege.

The loud and disruptive tactics and outrageous lies that marked so many of the early congressional health care forums can still be found. But a counteroffensive by the union movement, including AFSCME’s recently completed Highway to Health Care Reform, and our allies, notably Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Organizing for America (OFA), show there is strong and broad support for fixing the nation’s broken health care system.

The mainstream media, which Hoynes says has “only been covering the screaming hordes of barbarians,” is taking notice.

Ed Sill, Texas AFL-CIO communications director, says a health care reform town hall and rally in Austin this past Saturday drew nearly 2,000 supporters and only about 100 opponents. The turnout was too large for the church where the meeting was held, so the Texas AFL-CIO opened its nearby auditorium for the overflow, which filled all its seats.

The strong coverage of Saturday’s pro-health care reform rally suggests that the media, which has duly reported the shout-down protesting by right-wingers at previous forums, will not ignore a huge turnout of support in later ones.

Following a rally that drew more than 1,100 health care reform supporters in Orlando, Fla., over the weekend, Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for HCAN, told the Orlando Sentinel:

There were a lot of successful town halls and meetings over the recess, but the ones that got the most attention were those where angry people got up and yelled. We want to make sure the message that they take back to Washington is that the majority of the public stands behind the need for reform and that they need to get it done now.

FULL story at link.