Health care bills don’t kill people. The Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA, the Senate version of the GOP’s Affordable Care Act repeal) isn’t a health care bill. It’s a tax cut for very rich people, financed by letting tens of thousands of people in my congressional district get sick, go bankrupt, and die.
These folks deserve someone that will stand up for them when politicians and corporations abuse them this way. That’s why I just participated in a nonviolent act of civil disobedience outside Senator John Cornyn’s office, for which I was just arrested.
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I joined a several local groups (ADAPT, Central Austin People Power, the Austin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, Indivisible Austin, Left Up To Us, Our Revolution Central Texas, Our Revolution North Austin, Texas Alliance for Retired Americans-Austin, Texas Drought Project, and others) at a rally at noon today in front of Cornyn’s office to say no — no to the attack on the sickest, most vulnerable people in our community, and no to the politics of extreme greed that brought this legislative atrocity to life.
And then, at about 12:20 p.m., a handful of us blocked the sidewalk, drawing a line in the sand against the attack on our families represented by this bill. Blocking pedestrian traffic resulted in our arrest. No one arrested the senator, though, whose office 15 floors above us has been dedicated recently to passing a bill to let thousands and thousands of us die each year.
Republicans want to kick 22 million people off of health care and let almost 100,000 people die per year due to lack of care. That’s a horrific attack on the sick and injured.
In moments like this, we are called to accept new risks to save our families and neighbors. Every person of conscience, from working-class folks out here in the district to Capitol Hill Democrats, must escalate their resistance to Trump and the GOP.
We’re running a different type of campaign here in Texas, one that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with working people in Texas 21. We’re not taking corporate PAC money, and you can expect us to keep finding ways to fight not just from behind a microphone, but also in the streets.
Because Cornyn and Smith act on behalf of very wealthy interests, I also want to address the corporate bosses, monopolists, and economic royalists directly: You’ve just picked the fight of your lives.
You can have your yachts. You can have your mansions. You can have your big companies and your big bank accounts. But you can’t have our neighbors, and you can’t have our lives. We will fight to save our families and neighbors. We’re going to beat you.
And then we’ll pass Medicare for All.
In the 21st District of Texas alone, 54,000 nonelderly people will lose insurance coverage under the ACA repeal as passed by the House, and the Senate bill appears very similar in this respect. In addition, 83,509 people still lack health coverage in Texas 21.
Any representative worth their salt would be spending their time trying to get the 84,000 people who don’t have insurance into health coverage — instead of working to add to their number. If you send me to Congress, you can expect me to put myself on the line to fight for health care coverage for every American. No exceptions.
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Derrick Crowe is a progressive Democrat running for Congress in Texas’s 21st District. He’s running against a climate-change-denying, Trump-backing supporter of the Republican health repeal. Join Derrick’s campaign for liberty and justice. For all.