Don’t mourn, organize!!
By
Davinski
on October 1, 2009 at 05:24 am
It looks like meaningful health reform that the Obama administration wants is going down in ignominious defeat. The confluence of the powerful insurance companies public relation's arm and the perpetually mad-at-government vocal minority have flexed its muscles, preventing any semblance of a health care system that looks out for the needs of all our people’s health, rich and poor.
The media puts the blame on President Obama. All sorts of reasons given. Analysts and experts are quick to point the finger at him. But is Obama the reason it failed? Hardly.
Whenever radical change needs to be made, and it certainly does concerning health care, nothing will be done unless we stand up and demand it. History is replete with examples. Remember the civil rights struggle? The protests against the Vietnam war? The fight against apartheid in South Africa? The battle for the 40 hour work week?
Obama’s hero, Abraham Lincoln summed it up well: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute.”
Perhaps Obama failed at rallyng folk like the insurance companies did. But we can’t rely on our politicians to take the lead in this fight.
Another American hero said it best when he spoke about ending the war in Vietnam. I believe he would be saying similar words in our battle for universal health care: “We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr., “CONSCIENCE AND THE VIETNAM WAR” in The Trumpet of Conscience (1968)
The media puts the blame on President Obama. All sorts of reasons given. Analysts and experts are quick to point the finger at him. But is Obama the reason it failed? Hardly.
Whenever radical change needs to be made, and it certainly does concerning health care, nothing will be done unless we stand up and demand it. History is replete with examples. Remember the civil rights struggle? The protests against the Vietnam war? The fight against apartheid in South Africa? The battle for the 40 hour work week?
Obama’s hero, Abraham Lincoln summed it up well: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute.”
Perhaps Obama failed at rallyng folk like the insurance companies did. But we can’t rely on our politicians to take the lead in this fight.
Another American hero said it best when he spoke about ending the war in Vietnam. I believe he would be saying similar words in our battle for universal health care: “We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr., “CONSCIENCE AND THE VIETNAM WAR” in The Trumpet of Conscience (1968)
