I just now came to this sudden realization and wanted to make it the topic of my first diary.
Over the last couple days I had occasion to revisit the civil rights movement and Malcolm X's contribution to that movement and then it hit me.
We need a Malcolm X of health care. Someone who can ratchet up the urgency of the situation, and talk about people who have been left to die in emergency rooms. Someone who can speak militantly -- yes... MILITANTLY about the issue and in stark and aggressive terms that make our politicians who do support the public option appear more centrist instead of leftist which is how they appear right now.
I'm not a civil rights scholar and I haven't read everything about Malcolm X, but I do think I understand in a pretty rudimentary way what his impact was on the Civil Rights movement.
Malcolm X advocated a violent response to violence visitted upon his community.
"Concerning nonviolence: It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law."
"It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence."
"Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary."
I want to point out that most people who know me in real life, I am the last person you'd think would think of picking up the proverbial pitchfork. But dammit.
This is the second time down this road, and something is still missing.
If we do believe health care is a human rights issue, then something is missing.
- We're getting a mixed message from our political leaders.
- We're not seeing the same enthusiasm for this issue as we saw for getting our president elected. So it does occur to me that regarding this issue, America is still, on some levels, asleep, and needs to be woken up. The number of people who are made victims of our pernicious health care system, while great, is still not large enough, nor does it encompass those people who find it easier to ignore the dark realities of American Life. And furthermore, without the media on our side, the work involved on this issue is just, well, not as much fun.
And lastly,
- while there is a mixed message and a lack of enthusiasm, there is also, from the opposition, an unhinged vitriol the likes of which I haven't seen in my lifetime.
I assume people who agree on the goal will still disagree on the tactics. None of us advocate violence, but my guess is there would still be some difference of opinion on the actions taken by the main character in a movie that came out in 2002, John Q. In it a factory worker played by Denzel Washington (who has also played Malcolm X in Spike Lee's biopic) is denied a procedure to save his sons life, so he takes an emergency room hostage and threatens to kill the hostages if the hospital does not consent to perform the surgery on his son. It's not a whodunnit movie so I can spoil the outcome. His son survives and he goes to jail. So the ultimate question is asked. Who wouldn't go to jail to save the life of their child? That is the kind of question that is only made relevant by the kind of health care system we have here in America??
While I don't advocate violence, I do advocate language like this:
The health care system right now is a gun pointed right at the heads of people who do not have insurance, and self-defense is justified.
If there's anyone still unconvinced, I'll offer one more quote from Malcolm X and this is for those who have had their fill of our great and wise president being portrayed as a socialist:
"I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King."
The uninsured need a Malcolm X.