I'm making phone calls, sending e-mail messages, connecting with volunteers from the campaign to REMOBILIZE the campaign effort for the passage of real, lasting health care reform THIS YEAR. I am serving as the OFA Regional Lead for part of the 4th Congressional District and the 7th Congressional District in Virginia. Staff will be in state soon, but for this effort it is up to us volunteers to take the reigns and restart the campaign to fix our health care system.
If you have not signed up to host a Health Care Organizing Kickoff meeting for the first weekend of June, please do so.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/create
Even having five friends sitting around your kitchen table for this would work. We will be working on this project all summer and until an acceptable health care reform package is passed and signed into law. We will be canvassing, making calls, and reaching out to our communities. Please reconnect with your campaign friends to INSIST on a new health care system that will provide health care to ALL at an affordable price and allow patients to choose their own care providers.
If you cannot host a meeting, please sign up to attend one.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/search_simple?source=sidenav
I have volunteered to serve as a Regional Lead for part of Virginia to assist hosts of the kickoff meetings for the OFA's efforts to support real Health Care Reform. I don't know yet which region I'll be assigned other than my own. I was so fortunate to quickly find a willing volunteer for our group's kickoff meeting so that I can be freed up to work with all of our region's hosts. This is a passionate issue for me. Three members of my family, including myself, are just one layoff notice away from being uninsured and uninsurable due to existing health conditions. My negative experiences with health insurance companies over the past 26 years have caused me to favor a single-payer system. I would like to see the existing for-profit insurance system killed, and a new expanded Medicaid system enacted. I don't believe that will happen, of course, because the health insurance industry has a tight grip on Congress. Unfortunately, the influence and power gained by the insurance industry through the surgical distribution of campaign contributions and other enticements is too huge to defeat. Still, I am hopeful that we can find a way to provide an ALTERNATIVE to private for-profit insurance.
If you have not already done so, please sign up to attend a meeting near you or host a meeting yourself.
Chester Campaign For Change Volunteers
ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN HOUSE MEETING
Friday, February 6, 2008
REPORT
We gathered and watched a portion of Katie Couric's interview with the President, and the video with Governor Tim Kaine. We decided to remain warm in our small family room with several of us sitting on the floor instead of going to a larger space in the cold. We set respectful ground rules for discussion, then began to share stories.
SHARED STORIES:
How has the current economy affected your life?
Yvonne - "My 401 K is now a 201 K, I'm retired, and sick!" Jim is a career recruiter and there is no demand for his services because no one is hiring. Sharon and Jim own several rental properties. Their renters cannot pay their rent, so Jim and Sharon have to pay instead. Rick lost his job due to the economy. Christal and Chris both were employed by Circuit City which went out of business last month. Both wage-earners in the family lost their jobs at the same time. The high cost of groceries and fuel have put a strain on everyone's budgets.
How is the economic crisis affecting our community?
Our local school budget has been drastically cut, causing loss of employment, reduction of classes offered, and larger class sizes. The decrease in state funding is causing cuts in services to senior citizens, the disabled and the mentally and physically challenged. Property values are dropping while property taxes are remaining the same or rising. Properties are not selling, and foreclosures are disrupting neighborhoods. Neighborhood home daycare providers are losing their homes to foreclosure, and working parents are left stranded for convenient safe child care. Crime is increasing. Local small businesses are not able to get loans to help cash flow, and banks are not cashing large checks from clients and customers.This causes a cash flow stain on businesses that cannot be sustained. The last mental health facility which serves indigent children in Virginia will soon close due to a budget shortfall. This will leave juvenile detention centers as the only option for housing indigent children in need of immediate mental health services. As people lose their homes to foreclosure or can no longer afford rent, they move in with older generations. Combining several generations into small houses designed for two creates tremendous stress.
What aspects of the economic crisis need to be addressed immediately?
We must:
Create a universal health care system, include alternative and preventive medicine, and eliminate the "donut hole" for Medicare; Stop or slow down foreclosures and give homeowners more time to pay; Stop the distribution of taxpayers' money to banks and instead use that cash to end mortgage foreclosures and invest in small businesses; Get the unemployed back to work. Ideas: Create more jobs for the unskilled and provide training so that the solution will be long-term; Put war veterans to work rebuilding our infrastructure; Employ people doing FDA inspections; Automate medical records to reduce unnecessary duplication of procedures and reduce mistakes; Use this opportunity to create a green energy manufacturing base and create a new greener infrastructure which will increase our securiity and help stabilize fuel prices; and Stop rewarding businesses for outsourcing American jobs.
Why is the economic recovery plan important?
We must not leave this mess for our children and grandchildren to suffer through. We must preserve a strong middle class and help those in financial need. Creating a new bipartisan atmosphere can have a positive psychological benefit to jump-start the economy. Trust must be reestablished. All aspects of the economic recovery plan must be transparent. Repairing the economy will reestablish our good reputation in the world. We can seize this opportunity to establish green energy systems and universal health care. Individually and collectively we must enter a new era of global financial responsibility. We need to return to taking care of what we have and thinking long term instead of short term. We must reduce the income disparity between the extremely wealth and the middle and under classes.
BRAINSTORMING:
How can we, individually and as a group, encourage public support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan?
We must be familiar with the plan ourselves. We can review the Recovery.gov site and share the information and site address with others. We need to insist that the plan is transparent at ALL levels, including locally. We must speak up with friends and neighbors when they misrepresent the details of the plan instead of just letting these comments go by. We can challenge misinformation that is being spread from the pulpits of local churches. We can pass on information about the plan to friends and family by sending facts by e-mail. We can tell people about the my.barackobama.com site We can contact our federal, state and local government representatives to insist on bipartisan constructive action to speed recovery. We can encourage others to do the same and make it easy by composing a sample letter to share.
In what other ways can we work to improve the economic situation of our community?
Sign cards in support of the Employee Free Choice Act so that employees can more easily form unions. Write to US Representatives to support HR676. Push for a single payer health care system. Support local businesses buy buying locally and using local services. Help to stock our local food pantries to help the unemployed weather the crisis. We can run for public office and change public policy. We can establish relationships with our elected officials and those running for office.
ACTION STEPS:
We will contact our elected representatives and urge them to support a new bipartisan atmosphere, to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, and make the distribution of money transparent on all levels. We will encourage others to do the same. WE can call the Organizing For America hotline, 1-888-642-4264 We can stay in touch with what is happening in the future by visiting my.barackobama.com regularly and by communicating with each other through the Chester Campaign For Change Volunteers Facebook group. We can use meetup.com to recruit people to our group.
Submitted by host, Elizabeth Kimbriel
This is part of a message I sent to the Chester volunteers on the day after the Inauguration:
We are hosting an Economic Recovery Plan House Meeting Friday night at 6:45. The event is searchable on this site in area code 23831. If you plan to attend, please go through the online RSVP system.
On Saturday morning I finished preparing for our Change Is Coming gathering at our home in Chester, then drove up to Richmond for their meeting at the old HQ. On the way, I received a call from a reporter from Channel 12 news who wanted to attend our house meeting. I told her about the Richmond meeting, and encouraged her to attend.
When I arrived at the old HQ building on Marshall Street, I had a flashback to November 5. That day I helped Wilson, our field organizer, return our office equipment and supplies to the HQ for distribution to local schools. Other volunteers were doing the same, and more volunteers were sorting supplies and cleaning up. We all were on a high from election night - BEAMING! Returning to the building brought all of those memories back. How grand!
There was lively and interesting discussion at the Richmond meeting, and Channel 12 aired clips from the meeting on the 11 p.m. newscast. After the meeting I headed back to Chester for our own gathering.
We were privileged to have Evette who attended the Obama For America 2.0 convention in Chicago participate and report on the national plans for the next steps. We spend over two productive hours defining important issues; noting our personal and professional contacts with elected officials, media and community organizations; and planning a local food drive to take place between December 26 and January 15.
We also signed up to help contact the Chester campaign volunteers to reconvene online in a Facebook group which we will use as a launching pad and bulletin board, at least until we see what resources the national organization will provide us.
What a great group of people we have here in Chester!
