|
August 7, 2009
Dear [[supporter.First_Name]],
 The right-wing, always so scornful of CODEPINK, has taken a page from our playbook and distorted it by disrupting congressional town hall meetings on health care. While we wholeheartedly support the practice of peaceful dissent, we can't stomach it when that dissent is based on ignorance or when the dissenters are actually thinly disguised lobbyists for the corporate health care industry.
We need to make sure that their angry, fear-mongering voices don't drown out the voices that can bring true reform to our nation's health care.
 Call your representative at (202) 224-3121, to ask if she/he is holding a town hall meeting this month. Go to the meeting with your "Healthcare, Not Warfare" signs and make sure to ask your Congressperson hard questions about why we're channeling so much money for endless, unjust war that could be used to protect and care for the American people.
For inspiration, watch CODEPINK in action at a health care rally on July 30 here.
CODEPINK has long been a supporter of a single-payer healthcare system, also called Medicare for All. There will actually be a vote on this in the U.S. House of Representatives after the August recess and we need to lobby our representatives to commit to voting Yes.
Another way we can support single-payer healthcare is by supporting Congressman Dennis Kucinich's amendment that would let individual states create single-payer healthcare systems without the risk of having them blocked or tied up in the courts for years by insurance companies.
That's exactly how Canada evolved towards single-payer: one province at a time. Given the corporate-funded resistance to single-payer in Congress, the U.S. may have to follow the Canadian path.
Send a message directly to your Congressperson to support the states' right to create single-payer, to support single-payer nationally, and if we don't get that, to support as strong a public option as possible.
If they ask you where to find the money, tell them to cut the military budget and end illegal wars. That's the best way to pay for our nation's first line of defense-our health.
To our collective health!
Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Janet, Jean, Jodie, Medea, Nancy K, Nancy M, Paris, and Rae
p.s. Our campaign to pressure the Israeli beauty products company AHAVA is working! "Sex & the City" star Kristin Davis, who has been a spokesperson for AHAVA as well as for the humanitarian group Oxfam, has been suspended from all goodwill publicity work by Oxfam, and the scandal has been covered by everyone from Page Six of the New York Post to the UK Telegraph! If you haven't yet joined our Boycott Ahava action team, sign up at www.stolenbeauty.org.Thanks for giving this boycott legs!
|
