Below, feisty Latina activists Mirna and Fabiola sport our first Spanish-language placards (which Mirna helped me make); in the middle is one of our newer members, Dr. Jack Kent (a retired physician who is on dialysis and so "approaches the subject from a unique angle")
And here is a legend of California healthcare reform: the tireless maverick Republican Allan Beek who has been with HCA from the beginning through all its ups and downs:
"A FREEWAY RUNS THROUGH IT"
Any Orange County event, in a city through which a freeway runs, as does the 55 through Costa Mesa, is not complete without a couple of hours of rush-hour "Freeway Blogging." No exception here (Vern's son J is minding the banner.)
APRIL 17: The Historic First "City Council Blitz"
This is something we had been planning to do at various city council meetings for a while, but it finally came together in Costa Mesa April 17: Six of us showed up with prepared 3-minute speeches designed to complement each other while presenting an 18-minute argument for single payer and SB 840; ostensibly to convince the city council to endorse the bill because it would save the city money insuring its employees as well as improve its citizens' lives, but secretly also with the TV audience in mind.
A blogger from the Calitics site took the following photos and wrote a very complimentary article about us, which you can read here:
Above, three of the posse: Dr. Richard Lara (philosophy professor at Orange Coast College) Dr. Paul Flanagan (retired physician and immigrants' rights activist) and Vern. As the Calitics article mentions, after our presentation councilmember Katrina Foley was so impressed she requested the city's legislative director to put together an analysis of SB 840. So we continue to show up at the meetings, because follow-up is everything. You can watch our speeches at this link:
(go forward to about 12:30 -- there's Joe Tyndall, Richard Lara, Paul Flanagan, Allan Beek, Shirley Conger, and finally Vern Nelson around 27:00)
APRIL 19: The Forum
This forum was put together at the Costa Mesa Community Center by loose cannon member Dr. Henry Duke. The panel included Senator Kuehl's beloved aide Emily Gold, and a representative of CARA ("the good AARP"), and concluded as we so often do, with a rousing singalong of "This Plan is Your Plan." We wish this forum had been better attended, and have no photos of it, but the local progressive paper the Orange Coast Voice (
www.ocvoice.com) sent a couple of reporters, and rather than write an article about it they invited Vern to write a letter on SB 840, which they duly printed in their May issue. They printed the letter perfectly with no changes, except for shortening the great title to the dull "Healthcare Costs Skyrocket". Here is the letter with the original title:
Health care costs skyrocket
