39 arrested at Georgia State Capitol for demanding Medicare expansion.
On Tuesday, in a scene that recalled the civil rights struggle of the 1960's, non-violent demonstrators organized by Moral Monday Georgia were repeatedly arrested and led away in hand cuffs for civil disobedience actions at the State Capitol.
Calling for the expansion of Medicare by the State Government, protestors unfurled banners from the visitor's gallery of the Senate Chamber, chanted slogans and sang spirituals, disrupting business as usual as the Republican dominated legislature moved to reinforce the State's refusal to expand Medicare.
At one point a group of protestors, including Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the congregation once led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested for blocking the entrance to the office of GOP Governor Nathan Deal.
Governor Deal has called for repeal of laws requiring hospitals to provide emergency care for uninsured persons.
The CD actions were organized in successive waves for maximum impact and drew heavy media coverage from the local press, The New York Times and The Rachel Maddow Show.
The GOPosaurs were not pleased:
In Atlanta on Tuesday, as protesters disrupted the Senate session for the fifth time, State Senator Frank Ginn, a Republican, referred to them as “fecal matter.”
The contrast between the two sides couldn't be more stark:
“We have people dying every day just because they don’t have access to health care,” one protester, Shayna Adelman, 32, said in an interview before she was jailed. “It’s morally repugnant to me. Sometimes you have to take dramatic action to get people’s attention.”
Further coverage
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here and
here.
Moral Monday Georgia can be contacted here and here. Show them some love.
3:46 PM PT: Burned provides some valuable back ground from the comments:
"What the Senate did Tuesday (0+ / 0-)
was approve a bill that took the ability to expand medicaid away from the Governor and put it in the hands of the solidly for as long as I can see Republican legislature. Governor Deal was in favor of that bill.
http://www.legis.ga.gov/....
The bill also opens up child welfare services to private contractors.
Give Moral Monday all the backup and support that they need. If there hadn't been arrests we wouldn't have heard much more than a peep about this."