MoveOn.org and several coalition partners are leading the Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform today, coinciding with the completion of HCAN's the completion of "Melanie's March" -- insurance company survivors who have marched from Philly to DC -- at Union Station today. Melanie's March was held in honor of Melanie Shouse, a health care activist and Obama volunteer who just died because she couldn’t get affordable health care
From the organizers' press release:
The nation’s leading progressive organizations are joining forces today for "A Virtual March on Washington" to send Congress one million messages urging action on health care reform. This will be the single largest day of action yet in the health care fight.
"The Virtual March on Washington: A Million Voices for Change" campaign is bringing together some of the largest progressive organizations in the nation including, MoveOn.org Political Action, Progressive Congress Action Fund, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Campaign for America’s Future, Democracy for America (DFA), TrueMajority, USAction, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), EQUAL, MomsRising.org and FixItandPassIt.com....
The organizations released the following joint statement:
"As Washington plays politics as usual instead of fixing our broken system, people are dying. Americans simply cannot wait for comprehensive health care reform - it's time for Congress to stand up to Big Insurance and their conservative allies, and get reform done right. During the Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform, we'll send a million messages to Congress to make sure they know that voters want them to get to work and get health care done. Our message is simple: It's time for Washington to stop stalling. Pass real health care reform now."
Our own nyceve and slinkerwink have been instrumental in making this virtual march happen, the goal of which is to show Congress that their constitutents demand real healthcare reform, and if that means that the Senate has to act first, Kent Conrad's just going to have to live with that. He actually does work for us, though he seems to forget that on a regular basis.
MoveOn has created an easy to use tool for contacting your representative and Senators, and you'll get addicted to watching the counter of constituent contacts scroll. A few hours in, and they're very nearly to the 500,000 well over the 622,000 mark. They're racking up about 2,000 contacts per minute, by my count.
Go add your voice.