The Culver City Forum at the Culver City American Legion Post 46 was a blast, thanks to the dynamic talk from special guest, Mr. Single Payer – Dennis Kucinich.

In fact we were graced with not one, but TWO major political figures in the health reform fight.

Congresswomen Diane Watson (Culver City is in her District) surprised us with a special introduction for Dennis Kucinich in the two hour + event and threw her support solidly behind the campaign. Then Congressman Kucinich declared the OneCareNow Campaign “the most exciting campaign for single payer universal health care reform anywhere in America.” This comes just four days after he introduced his own single payer bill, HR 676, co-authored with John Conyers.

Congressman Kucinich spoke from his heart about his own rise in politics in Cleveland, Ohio. “This is the defining issue for the 2008 Campaign,”, says Kucinich, “and I intend to spend a great deal of time campaigning right here in California and I will be talking every day about the single payer solution and I pledge to help you every way I can.”.

The Congressman spent over an hour speaking and graciously fielding a range of questions from the audience. CNN, KTLA, local Culver City newspapers and other media covered the event.

When asked if he’d participate in a proposed “Presidential Symposium on Health Care” next August 12 at the Los Angeles event, Mr. Kucinich quickly responded: “I’ll be there.”

Kucinich, and his wife Elizabeth, challenged the audience to join the fight, to get involved and to put pressure on all candidates to go way beyond “incremental, nibbling around the edges” ideas that sound good but don’t begin to solve the health care crisis.

Here are a few not so great pictures I was able to get!. Special thanks to Doris Nelson and to Geoff Cunningham for their help at the site. Also to Dr. Susan Partovi of UCLA and Sandi Segal and Tom Camarella of Culver City.