As promised, here's my diary about the June 19th rally against AHIP, the people supposedly "insuring people's health" but in reality they are parasites sucking the lifeblood out of our economy and our people.
I have a lot to talk about here so I think I'll put it behind the flip.
First off, here's some video I shot.
Rally at San Francisco's Moscone Center against AHIP 6/19/2008 from Michelle Klein-Hass on Vimeo.
Pretty awesome, no? Hopefully the Vimeo embed will work, but if not I'll republish with a YouTube embed. I prefer Vimeo: they were on the side of Free Speech in the dust-up between the Church of Scientology and their critics, where YouTube were initially quite cowardly and pulled certain critics' accounts because the CoS complained. Also Vimeo is much better, quality-wise, than YouTube.
The day started for me actually the night of the 18th -- I took a Megabus bus up from Downtown LA to San Francisco. It was a Red Eye bus and I was hoping to actually get some shuteye between LA and SF. Fail. So there was one night's sleep down the tubes. We stopped at a Booger King near the Harris Ranch stockyards (ugh) for grub about halfway up. I had a perfectly miserable chicken sandwich. First Breakfast at 3am! w00h00.
We arrived at about 6:15am. I got off the bus, which let us off right in front of the CalTrain station, and went to Panera Bread for a spot of Second Breakfast, caffeine and bandwidth. That was better. I then grabbed a bus (FREE! on 6/19 because of a special promotion! Score!) and headed off to Moscone Center.
You have to admit...the California Nurses are totally dedicated to what they are doing. The picket was up at 8am, so I was there too. Our own NYCEve was there...she was looking great and feeling a lot better after her own personal health crisis. In fact, she looked better than I did at that point, with a sleep debt of 8 hours and climbing.
The suited goons who were filing in for the AHIP convention stepped a little bit livelier than they normally would had we not been there. Was that pangs of conscience I saw on their faces, or was it just gas from fast-food breakfasts? Probably the latter.
At about 10:30 we broke to walk down to a big gothic Catholic church for an early lunch in the Fellowship Hall and a CNA pep rally. Apparently there were other reasons to be picketing AHIP other than advocating single-payer health care...CNA's National Nurses Organizing Committee is trying to organize HCA hospitals...HCA being the company Bill "Video Diagnostician" Frist inherited. Frist has been running rough-shod over patients and nurses alike, before, during and after his time as Senator and Senate Majority Leader. They looked back on their wins over the years, including their epic victory over Ah-nuld and his attempt to roll back nurse-to-patient ratios. These are progressives worth emulating. If there's anyone who can change the broken US health care system, it's them.
Then came the main event, the Jazz Funeral for the broken US health care system. This is what I primarily recorded on video. I had to go with different music because my video camera is not great about recording audio under high background noise conditions. Also I picked up a few private convos on the audio that I didn't want to broadcast. I love Archive.Org... the collections of old recordings that have slipped into the public domain are wonderful.
We marched through the streets of San Francisco, led by a Jazz band, a group of very spirited black veiled "mourners," and lots and lots of CNA members. Laissez les bon temps rouiller! Didn't we ramble! But the true awesomeness of the day was still ahead of us. Because there was already a huge crowd ringing one of the Moscone Center's buildings. And I mean ringing. They had the building completely surrounded! And that was before the arrival of our party! Amazing.
There were a bunch of suits hunkered down in the building, looking a little perturbed. Sympathy for the Murder by Spreadsheet industry? Nah. Let 'em sit and stew a little. ;-) Besides, they could get out of the building, nobody was stopping them. It was not a picket line in the truest sense of the word. We weren't out to "shut 'em down." We were there to inform the world that there were literally thousands of people willing to go to San Francisco on a work day, taking the day off to do so, because the issue of health care for all was so important to us.
The crowd was so large, that the warmth of all those 98.6 F bodies added to the already warm almost-Summer day. It got to the point where I had to excuse myself and find some air conditioning before I passed out. Then again, I was among all those wonderful nurses...I was in good hands if I hadn't found the Starbucks around the corner. I got to hear Senator Sheila Kuehl speak, which was great. She's going to be termed out soon. Anyone have any ideas what she's going to do next? I say she's our best hope for the Governorship in 2010, when Ah-nuld terms out and apparently goes back to Hollywood to resume his acting career.
We came, we saw, and we kicked AHIP's butts. Let's take this momentum and move forward on getting health care for all, not just for the privileged. The whole world is watching, dammit.
I'll update this diary later when the stills are up.