Fabulous. I have met more older people in nursing homes this last year who were cut off by United Health at the drop of a coin.

I have had to go through 10 appeals with United Health in regard to my father care over the last two years. They try to cut folks off at every turn.

Who are the groups organizing this civil disobedience?

Jane do not know if you saw this and I know it is off topic. But the speakers list looks like part of a most wanted list for lying our nation into a war based on a “pack of lies’ in Iran…I mean Iraq

there should be a citizen arrest of Douglas (office of Special (lies) Plans Feith at this conference. which is taking place on Thursday in D,c.
Feith is a war and torture criminal..along with the Wurmsers…
http://www.hudson.org/index.cf…..038;id=717

[modnote: please stay on topic here]

Too the streets! No social movement, civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights succeeded without a mass movement willing to hit the bricks to fight for their principles. Transformational health care reform will not occur until people are willing to step away from the keyboard and put on their walking shoes.

Jane

fyi, the Ganz/Flanders link no worky

Correct! After seeing the Moore film about the activists at Republic, it seems the only way to get something done for the common good is to take to the streets.

Fabulous is right. More here, including what you can do to help:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8770

(sigh) I can’t get the video–for some reason, it’s hit or miss on whether they load up or not.

Health care activists in Minnesota were arrested yesterday for refusing to leave when police tried to break up their rally in front of UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest private insurer. Mike McEntee of the Uptake did this very moving video, where they are singing “We Shall Overcome” as they are handcuffed and taken away.

…and the reasons for their arrests are…?

Several of us have been doing this and turning out for health care rallies throughout the U.S., but “step away from the keyboard” is not necessary, that is an important part of this whole movement. Getting the facts and spreading them is what is keeping then public option alive, and getting back toward what we really need, single payer.

So the first step has been taken and I hope it leads to a lot more action. Bless these people in Minnesota who did something about this mess.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

“…people have to be willing to take to the streets in this kind of civil disobedience before healthcare reform will turn into a transformational moment.

What do you think?”

Hell yeah!! But the first thing that hasta happen is for there to be no healthcare bill this session…THEN demonstrations, change in leadership all the way up into the White House and political organizin’ in the Democratic Party grassroots to force a real bill in the new session of Congress in 201O. That’s the only way we get real national healthcare and we disenfranchise the corporations…the mass of people fight it out with money in the street. The numbers are there right now to get this done this session but we don’t have the leadership in Congress to do it.

Remember, I toldja that the only way we get this done is to enfranchise the progressives and forget about the Blue Dogs, that can still happen but I ain’t optimistic…until NEXT year!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE STRUGGLE GOES ON AND ON AND..

To the barricades! Have you been to jail for justice?

Lyrics

Reverend Grant Stevenson of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church should ask “Do you really think Jesus would approve of a for-profit health care system that extorts money from the healthy while denying coverage and benefits to those who need them in the name of making a buck and pleasing their shareholders?”

I hope these protests multiply, and that “We Shall Overcome” is sung at every one.

Headed out to Anthem’s SF headquarters very shortly. Will advise.

our Teddy Partridge commented yesterday that he will be picketing at SF BC/BS “crime scene” today. he included a link for others to find similar actions in their area – of course now I can’t find it – is this an HCAN event, and do you have a link ? (couldn’t find anything on the sickofit page)

Citizen SouthernDragon:

Hell yeah, Brother Dragonman!! Maybe the Director of this divine comedy is givin’ all of us boomers a second chance to get it right and there is gunna be BIG military in our politics this next year to make it all real I’ve been sayin for years that our civil war has been goin on for over 149 years and the last battle up ’til now was 1968 Chicago.

Thanks for this, Jane!

Two things:

1) The UpTake is a fine resource.

2) One of the Democratic candidates to replace current absentee governor Tim Pawlenty, who is too busy trying to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination to be bothered with running his state, is a guy named Matt Entenza. He’s trying to bigfoot his way to the Democratic nod, but the issue of his wife’s position at UnitedHealth is a big problem and has been throughout his career, as he found when unsuccessfully running for Attorney General in 2006:

Mattson says she has two major concerns with Entenza. First, she says Entenza would have a conflict of interest if he’s elected because his wife works for and received stock options from UnitedHealth Group. That company’s stock options practices are currently being investigated by the attorney general as well as federal officials. Secondly, she says she’s disappointed that Entenza hired a Chicago-based research firm last year to look into fellow DFLer Mike Hatch.

hey – do you have the link I mentioned above ?

Just e-mailed WH and told them to get rid of Rahm

Thoughtfully cast as a civil rights issue, this sort of thing could be quite effective.
One has to be careful to not round up the usual suspects to front this. Then, it will flop.

never mind – found the event link in our own backyard

serious face palm

Citizen oldgold:

The last great street actions in Chicago 1968 were “thoughtfully cast” but the old left, “Greatest Generation”, shot their own children to save their comfy retirements.

Damn, nothing within 200 miles of me.

Who are the usual suspects?

Activists should not be creating problems for high net worth individuals. Imagine my surprise to discover that GOOGLE has already solved the problem of people who cause problems for corporations. These troublemakers get put into their own village.

Police riots at national party conventions is in vogue once more. Time to hone our street skills.

Ahhh, the smell of tear gas and pepper spray in the afternoon.

me either. sounds like I’m gonna have to hit the streets and hang out with a sign on the highway

After reading masaccio’s post yesterday – http://firedoglake.com/2009/10…..y-edition/ …I have little hope of health care reform being any thing more than a WallStreet/Auto bailout. They’re broke….we’re screwed.

If there’s a better example of the fact that this (so-called) “healthcare debate” is the civil rights issue of our time, I don’t know what it is…

we may yet have to have a general strike or two before this is all over…

Good to see Reverend Grant Stevenson of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church preaching about what is not ok. There are instances when churches have gotten into trouble with their tax status over controversial preaching, but I don’t think anyone can touch this situation. We are supposed to take care of each other and that’s not just a Christian mandate. Every religion has a similar tenant like the Golden Rule.

RiseUpTampaBay has got some stuff scheduled in the near future. I worked with one of the founders on Samm Simpson’s campaign. Mayhaps we can get something going in the local area. I love stirring the pot in St Pete. Makes the local nimrod pols go snakeshit.

Good luck with that. Not enough union members of ALL unions to make that work. In Right to Work states it wouldn’t get off the ground.

Agreed.

Anent the act of civil disobedience, the message is too nebulous. The most direct one was taken off the table, alas. That emerged dramatically when doctors and nurses were thrown out of the senate finance committee and into the nick with their own chamberpot.

NAACP, La Raza & others are getting in to the act as well – saw they and others are running regional ad campaigns for PO. been sayin’ for a while that NAACP might provide us some traction w/ both Ross & Lincoln. think I’ll check in with the local kidz to see if they got anything goin

link to ad campaign

the Golden Rule.

That the one that goes, “Do unto others, then split?”

Sad to say the local NAACP branch is a disappointment. My white boss is on the board and they side with The Man more often than not.

As Gandhi’s life shows, civil disobedience can be bloody and dangerous. But it remains one of the few and perhaps the most effective tool the powerless can use against the powerful.

It requires the powerless to accept the arrest and injustice thrown against them – the very consequences the powerful avoid via persuasion, lucre and blackmail – in order to show that their cause is not frivolous, their injuries are not harmless, the consequences of ignoring them are not “business as usual”, but intolerable burdens; economic, social and civic decay; and sometimes death.

In the case of foregone or delayed credible health reforms, the Harvard study Alan Grayson pointed to says that that cost starts with 45,000 people who needlessly die each year for lack of basic health care. Listing that many names would require one new Vietnam Veterans Memorial be built each year. How much room on the Mall would that require?

The old media ignores or tramples on reformers. (Who saw these arrests on prime time television or read about them in a major national newspaper?) The government does the same. Civil disobedience may be one of the few tools left for the powerless to send their message. It can carry a heavy price. What makes it scary to those in power (as well as the powerless dealing with its consequences) is when many are willing to pay it because not doing so is more costly still.

At some demonstrable level of injustice, the courts stop enforcing laws against civil disobedients because of their manifest injustice. The legislatures change the laws, and the executive gives a few inches or yards to accommodate the disobedient – because they have met power with power and changed the norm.

Changing the norm was a central tenet of the Bush/Cheney era, be it outsourcing government to private corporations, raiding the treasury to support them, waging unlawful foreign wars or engaging in domestic spying. Consolidating those changes is becoming the central tenet of the conflict averse Bahma & Rahma administration.

Changing the norm back toward what used to be the center may require a level of civil disobedience not seen for fifty years. “We will overcome” is a message we need to hear once more. That voice won’t be Barack Obama’s; he claims we no longer need it.

For some perspective, Mr. Obama will retire in a few short years on a pension worth about $250,000/year, lifetime personal security and medical care, all paid by taxpayers. His book deals, unlike his illiterate predecessor, will be worth tens of millions. So when he says we live in post-partisan, post-racial times, he means, “I”, not “we”.

Actually, I was personally involved in some huge street demonstrations after Chicago. In particular, in the Spring of 1970, following Kent State the protests were massive.

He who has the gold, makes the rules /s

What a wonderful spark to add to the the Mad As Hell Doctors efforts and other efforts around the country. The fire starts with lots of sparks and then a small burst of fire.

A while back I wrote about the fact that pastors would be an incredible voice on this matter due to what they hear everyday from members of their congregations. Even Facebooked about it to some Lutheran pastor friends about what a testimony their stories would be.

Glad to see a pastor take a stand.

Reverend Grant Stevenson and St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church are heroes.

Well said.

sorry darlin’ but not surprising considering what we’ve all learned here about entrenchment and incumbency protection – still will put some feelers out to the locals – and those fabulously disobedient nuns and priests at the ICE family prison protests are probably game :D

I know. But it’s what we need.

OT Tomorrow night Keith is doing a full hour on health care. I’ll bet it’s going to be very informative for Americans.

I’m still pissed that pastors/priests/rabbis/whatever for all intents and purposes remained silent in the runup to the wars. Over 6 years of protests we had 2, count ‘em, 2 pastors join our efforts. Rev Charles MacKenzie came up from Sarasota and John Stewart from the local Quakers (Pax Christi Tampa Bay). The rest in the area I can only describe as a disgrace to their faith.

Boo Hoo. At best, they’ll forget about it by the time they get to their Country Club.
Face the truth. Our elected Dems don’t believe we’re serious. They believe when it comes time to vote, we WILL vote for Dems no matter how this vote goes.
The ONLY way to effect significant Healthcare change is to convince ALL elected Dems. if we don’t get REAL, MEANINGFUL legislation on this, we will NEVER vote for ANY Democrat EVER again. I mean it, do you?

Had to run last night. The girls scared off all the boys? What’s all this I hear about collagen injections??

Citizen oldgold:

“Actually I was personally involved in some huge street demonstrations after Chicago” also…so you know that what I said and what hasta happen now is all true. In 1971 on the University of Minnesota campus, I was wearin’ a red cross arm band behind the barricades on Washington Ave when the Minneapolis police roited and cracked skulls to reopen the campus. It was just an extension of what I saw in the military in SE Asia 3 years previous and those demonstrations were VERY thoughtfully cast also.

And please get pissed at Laura Ingraham. She had a physician on this am to talk about the meeting of docs at the WH…..Laura was so rude as to be abusive to the dr. who was trying to answer L’s questions. Try to get a listen; she’s the female Rush in case that is her goal.

Changing the face of Congress via primaries and election contests – and thereby effecting similar changes in the membership of the executive and the courts – is a building block necessary to institutionalize the changes sought through those and other peaceful means.

The essence of effective civil disobedience is that it is civil, peaceful and non-violent. But it is not passive or passionless; it demands change.

It is effective, in part, because submitting en masse to the lawful, if unjust, consequences of disobedience shines an arc light on the brutality, callousness and injustice of the powerful.

Laura’s not worth the energy.

I think using the nearly totalitarian power of a police state to defend corporate interests and to protect the Medical Industrial Complex’s Turning Sickness and Death into Profit Initiative from the voices of the people is ultimately a losing proposition for the M.I.C.

And I think that, while YouTube and similar venues have many flaws and are often used for nonsense, our ability to make videos like this one and to disseminate them via the internet and television will be seen 50 years from now as a significant change that enabled Liberals and Progressives to advance their causes.

The last few years have proved that the people are only willing to accept so much cognitive dissonance produced by the right’s efforts to spin the truth and twist the truth and lie about the truth, and we know that the right’s got nothing else up its sleeve.

No argument from me on that. Would appreciate the same response on the issue of torture.

But right now, I am at least thankful for this one effort regarding healthcare.

your point of view is definitely on the increase, even on FDL. a co-dependent, exploitive relationship like that between Progressives and the Democratic Party is not solved by more co-dependence. They’ve been daring the Left to make a break for decades, and the Left has done nothing but continue to cling.

Yep, take what we can get.

Some are HCAN events and some aren’t, I’ll see if I can dig up a list, but I don’t think they’re online.

I just wanted to make sure I understand what you’re saying. You’re sneering at people who had the courage to get arrested for their convictions and saying that they’ll forget about it by the time they get to their Country Clubs?

Single payer activists have been doing this for some time. Nice to see the leaders followed.

I agree with Marshall Ganz. Most of the younger-than-I bloggers think of this as old-fashioned, and doesn’t work anymore. But it is turning out that that is wrong.

Yes, there was a huge protest in Seattle and it wasn’t covered. So — there have to be MORE protests — all across the country. Let all Americans see it and don’t let the MSM ignore it.

Look at all the press coverage the Teabagger BS got. And not just from Fox. The majority of Americans, even if they didn’t agree with the teabaggers, admired their actions — after all, they were really passionate about their cause.

Reading/writing blogs just doesn’t seem passionate. Are you sticking your neck out? And not just typing on a computer? As someone 56 years old, I can’t possibly be labeled as a kid in my pajamas, typing from daddy’s basement. But as long as the MSM (and Americans) can’t SEE us, they believe the BS.

Meet UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley: Rich, Powerful, Not Yet Famous

- Tom

This is the site for organizing on civil disobedience in favor of straight-up single payer.

I feel ambivalent about hitting the streets.

There is a certain dated quality to protests and marches, even though I enjoy participating. The question really is are they effective for progressives? Are there any updated methods that would work better for progressives who are the usual suspects when it comes to protests?

Blogging has been tremendously effective, IMO. Maybe there is another strategy that we could employ using new technology to get the buzz that progressives used to get for mass marches. I just think it may be time to think creatively about what will work for progressives.

BTW, I have nothing but admiration for the people in this video. They went to jail for insisting that health care is a human right. The policy they demand is out of sync with the principle they espouse, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Aux Barricades!

Storm the Bastille. Torch and Pitchfork mobs.

Has there ever been a way other than the power of the angry crowd? That is a real question.

These people were arrested? Do the right to assemble peacefully and the right to free speech apply only to teabaggers?

Apparently. And of course The Usual Suspect gave that person a high-five for doing so.

The pattern was set back in 2003.

Blogging is virtual protest. Civil disobedience is the real thing – and Congress and the executive know the difference.

We are so overdue for a general strike – even if only for one day. While I agree with Earlofhuntingdon, the fact of the matter is that the palpable effect of instant community is soul restoring – and don’t we need to build real community with real folks? Here in Sacramento, the Amgen Tour of California is jsut a week long bike race through the state – but what actually happens is that people (even those that don’t bike or care for professional racing) like having a reason to get together and enjoy a civic opportunity. Maybe civic opportunity is a way to frame modern protest. Thoughts?

Hi Jane, I’m enjoying your site, so much so that I’ve contributed as I could. I think YOU are astutely aware the Dems are likely to be clobbered in the 2010 elections IF they fail to use the clout we voters gave them (the presidency & clear majorities in the Senate and the House) to effect substantive Healthcare reform.
To answer your question, ABSOLUTELY NOT – my axe with the demonstrators is that sit-ins are old news, reduced to cliches by our corporte media when they don’t serve corporate interests. The gesture may certainly be sincere but no one cares. The on site Insurance Co. Executives are minimally inconvenienced by the gesture, and the real culprits in this Healthcare debate – our elected Dems – are clearly not taking our concerns seriously.
My observation is that you’re too often dismissed too easily by those Dems who are not already in the choir; that you’re not getting the attention your very important message deserves. I suggest you raise the ante. No one cares when I say I will NEVER vote for another Dem…, but what if 100,000 or maybe 500,000 long-term Dem. supporters (contributors, door knockers & voters) said the same?
Personally, I’m absolutely furious with the Obama Administration and the reason is far greater than its failing to push an agenda I believe is incredibly important to our country. I’m furious with it because every day the evidence grows that the passion for “hope” & “change” Team Obama sold to us voters was rhetorical at best. If the Obama team falls short, I believe it is the responsibility of all elected Dems to rally to PUSH a sound & smart agenda on its own. Failing that, neither the Obama Administration nor the Democratic party deserves support.

Helllo again FDLers..

Five health care activists were arrested today in Philadelphia, for civil disobedience outside CIGNA’s HQ in Center City Philadelphia. They are still in lockup and are expected to be released tonight about 10PM. I just posted a rpt on TheSeminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8776

What IS is going to take? wow! I’m planning on taking Stacie Ritter,(the Manheim, PA mother of twins whose post-leukemia treatment has been denied by CIGNA) to meet with Senator Casey, again. She already testified to Congressional committees earlier this year, about cancer research focused on children’s long-term after effects. A second Senator Specter visit is in the works, too.

Local press and some national press are finally starting to tune into this. We’ve GOT to keep the heat on!
-bleuz

civil disobedience can be very effective….as well as the emailing, calling lobbying etc.

Being arrested for health care reform..they write up your record you plead no contest and your off and running.

But the civil disobedience ends up in the news, blogs etc. Gandhi, Martin Luther King masters of civil disobedience…empowering

a surprise that corporations have its executive branch stooges terrorize citizens ? that would be a surprise to whom?

That Pacifist Ghandi myth is pure koolaid to keep the masses docile. There was plenty of terrorism going on in India at at the same time.
The same principles were at work with MLK, he was the good cop and the Black Panthers were the bad cops.
IOW: the Carrots and Sticks approach.

Are there any updated methods that would work better for progressives who are the usual suspects when it comes to protests?

Want to start up a donation fund to hire some unemployed mercenaries?