The Social Security Act.
The Social Security Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1935 and formed a centerpiece of Roosevelt's "New Deal" agenda. After a lengthy debate in Congress, the "public option" providing the elderly with monthly payments from a federally administered Social Security program was rejected in favor of a mandate requiring all Americans to acquire an annuity issued by a private insurance company upon attaining the age of 65. The Social Security Act was effective in virtually eliminating poverty among those who can afford to purchase substantial annuities.
Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
The United States Supreme Court voted unanimously to reject the "separate but equal" doctrine that permitted racial segregation in public education. Although Chief Justice Warren's opinion suggests that there may have been majority support for a "public option" that would have required public education facilities to be made equally available to all without discrimination on the basis of race, the court instead reached a bipartisan and unanimous compromise imposing a mandate on the parents of minority children to pay tuition for private schools.
Rose Parks, Montgomery, Alabama.
Rosa Parks' refusal to surrender her seat on a Montgomery municipal bus to a white passenger triggered protests in Montgomery and ultimately across the south in the form of mass campaigns to call and write congressman to urge a ban on racial discrimination in all public facilities and transportation. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference opted to organize the letter and phonecall campaign rather than endorse a Montgomery bus boycott proposed by a local minister. The letter and phone campaign is generally credited with sparking the historic movement to require that any minority person required to surrender a seat to a white person must be provided with a private cab voucher in an amount equal to the value of the public bus fare involved.
John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address to the Nation
On June 11, 1963 President Kennedy addressed the nation on the day that he issued a proclamation ordering Alabama Governor George Wallace to admit two african american students to the University of Alabama. Kennedy said:
"We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is time for Congress to act by adopting tax legislation that will encourage private market solutions to the plague of racial discrimination in our country."
Medicare, 1965.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act in 1965. The "public option" of a governmentally administered program guarantying each elderly American basic healthcare was rejected by Congress after Congressional republicans, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, deemed the expense of the public option to be a "budget buster." Congress opted instead for a bipartisan bill mandating that each American purchase a health insurance policy from a private insurer upon attaining the age of 65.
The National Voting Rights Act of 1965
This Act outlawed discriminatory voting rights practices responsible for widespread disenfranchisement of African American voters. Senate Republicans, citing a Congressional Budget Office report regarding the expenses associated with increased minority voting, demanded that a provision prohibiting all poll taxes be removed from the legislation and threatened to otherwise filibuster the measure. A compromise proposed by the so-called "Gang of Nine", a bipartisan group of republicans and southern Democrats, agreed to remove the poll tax prohibition in favor of a provision requiring that any poll tax imposed on minority voters be limited to the actual estimated incremental expenses of registering such minority voters.
The Universal Health Care Act of 2009
Well, what's it gonna be, Kossacks? These bullshit half-measures being backed by Baucus and Bayh and the rest of the Big Healthcare pimps in Congress are denying Americans their right to healthcare. Innocent people are dying, being driven into bankruptcy, and going without medical care because they lost their job, or hit a coverage cap in their policy, or had their coverage arbitrarily rescinded after they became ill.
But there are no marches. There are no dramatic images on television of firehoses being turned on the uninsured as they march in protest, or dogs sicced on the ill by fat, good ol' boy cops with faces twisted by hate. There is no gathering of hundreds of thousands at the Lincoln Memorial to demand peacefully and with dignity their right to basic health care.
And there isn't a single Democrat in Congress standing up and saying "we should be ashamed ourselves, gorging ourselves on contributions from the private healthcare and insurance industries as we refuse to even seriously consider a public option that would compete with the illness profiteers who earns tens of billions on the misery of their fellow citizens."
We're sending e-mails and making phone calls, as if Baucus is going to say "let me see, on the one hand I've collected millions in campaign contributions from Big Healthcare, but on the other hand there are all these phone calls." Or as if Bayh is going to say "gee, Wellpoint, Inc. might decide to stop paying my wife $800,000 a year if I back a public option that will compete with its health insurance business, but I'm going to support the public option anyway!"
What are we prepared to do? Because right now we're not making the kind of commitment it took to get universal suffrage, or social security, or medicare, or civil rights for African Americans.
I'm asking for ideas for dramatic action. I'm asking for this community, with the active help of Kos and the editors at this site, to organize a DKos sponsored event in D.C. - a march, or protests at the offices of Baucus and Bayh and every Blue Dog congressperson, or something that will powerfully focus our collective will in the most dramatic way.
Let's hear some ideas.