Health is a Human Right
Santa Clara Community Holds Forum for Universal Health Care
Slide show by David Madrid and Elizabeth Gonzalez // Article by Sandy Perry

 
The hearing resoundingly reaffirmed a moral vision for our community and our country. Health care cannot be allowed to be a commodity for speculation or exchange. It is an economic human right that everyone deserves by virtue of being born. Human beings are infinitely precious, so our life and death needs must be addressed accordingly, with the utmost care, concern, respect, and devotion.
 
When one of us is hurting, all of us are hurting, and what is good for some of us should be good for all. We cannot compromise this vision, and cannot rest until we achieve a health care system that honors it. As the banner in the front of the auditorium proclaimed, “Everybody In, Nobody Out”.
 
The hearing also embodied our strategy for achieving this goal. It brought together an extraordinary array of people from all walks of life, including different backgrounds, colors, nationalities, languages, and those most in need. There were health care professionals and students, union members and unemployed, citizens and immigrants, healthy people and sick people. Universal single payer health care is not only the most moral and cost-effective solution, it is also the one that pulls us all together into the kind of movement necessary for real reform. While we support them, the various incremental proposals are less conducive to this unity, because they tend to impact only one or another sector. And without unity, it is difficult to win any reforms, and in fact difficult to defend the remaining existing health care plans and programs, as they are in danger of being taken away one by one.
 
In addition to educational presentations, we heard moving personal testimonies from 33 people. Some of them represented organizations, including the Indian Health Center, United Food and Commercial Workers, CHAM, Low-Income Self-Help Center, Nine To Five, California Nurses Association, Gardner Family Health Network, California School Employees Association, UC San Francisco medical students, Health Care for All Californians, AFSCME, Save San Jose Medical Center Coalition, and Grace Community Center. In addition, panelists who spoke represented SIREN (Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network), Physicians for a National Health Plan, California Physicians Alliance, Communication Workers of America, and the Labor Party.
 
We want to especially thank Congressman Mike Honda (an HR 676 co-sponsor) and Santa Clara County Supervisor Jim Beall, both of whom attended virtually all of the hearing and spoke eloquently to the moral issues posed by our health care crisis. Other elected officials who attended included San Jose Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez, San Jose Councilmember Linda LeZotte, and Santa Clara Councilmember Jamie McLeod. Supervisor Blanca Alvarado and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren both informed us that they had planned to attend but were unable due to illness.
 
HCA (Health Care for All), CHAM, Low Income Self-Help Center, the Labor Party, and California Nurses Association were all instrumental in the logistics, including sign-ins, banners, sound system, transportation, printing, and translation. HCA (Lynn Huidekoper) donated coffee and doughnuts, and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 428 provided sandwiches, sodas, and bottled water.
 
Our musicians were from CHAM, the Labor Party, and the Raging Grannies.
 
We give special thanks to our childcare volunteers, who helped to make the hearing a family-friendly occasion. They were Shantel Foster, Frances King, Betsy Arroyo, Shelley McClendon, Rhonda Rose, and Raquel Gonzalez.
 
We are grateful to the County of Santa Clara for making the Sheriff's Auditorium available at no charge. The facility, including the outdoor plaza in front, turned out to be perfectly suited for the event.
 
Hebard Olsen provided video coverage of the proceedings at no charge. Elizabeth Gonzalez of Silicon Valley De-Bug was on hand to take still photographs.
 
Finally, we want to thank our sisters and longtime allies from the California Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, Ethel Long-Scott and Caroline Milligan. They attended the San Jose hearing on Saturday as part of their effort to organize a similar one to be held in Oakland on March 25.
 
Among our local Congressional representatives, Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo have still not agreed to co-sponsor HR 676, so please keep them in your prayers, and if you are moved to do so, communicate to them the urgency of this issue. At least 18,000 Americans every year are dying unnecessarily from lack of health care insurance.
 
One needless death is too many. Universal single payer health care costs less than our current system, so there should be no excuse for delay. As the hearing flyer stated, we are fighting for our lives.

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