The dead rose to walk the streets of Boston once more yesterday, hungry for revenge against those who put them in the grave — health insurance companies.
The zombies converged on Blue Cross Blue Shield offices, chanting “What do we want? Braaains. When do we want them? Braaaains.”
Whether they were denied coverage for “pre-existing conditions”, had their insurance rescinded upon contracting a serious illnesses, were denied life-saving treatments, or had their medical claims delayed by miles of insurance paperwork and bureaucracy, these undead insurance customers came back to stop insurance company crimes, and they don’t care whose brains they have to eat to make health care reform happen.
The undead were also seen walking the streets of Providence, RI yesterday, driving home the point that “living without health care can be scary.”
As you probably know, health care reform is making its way through Congress. This week, the House of Representatives introduced their health care reform bill. The bill is strong in many ways, but two single-payer amendments that were promised a vote this fall were not in it. The House leadership still has the power to change that.
One of the amendments, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would allow states to implement state-wide single-payer systems. The other, by Rep. Anthony Weiner, would call for a vote on national single-payer legislation for the first time in history.
We need your voice to get these amendments back on the table. Call:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: DC (202) 225-4965 or SF (415) 556-4862
Rep. George Miller: DC (202) 225-2095 or Concord (925) 602-1880
Rep. Henry Waxman: DC (202) 225-3976 or LA (323) 651-1040
The message is simple: Keep the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to pass single-payer, and allow Rep. Anthony Weiner introduce his single-payer amendment!
CHASE is a major contributor to the effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act who recently received billions of dollars from taxpayers. Instead of using the public’s money to renegotiate home mortgage loans and prevent small and medium size businesses from closing, they’ve prioritized obscene bonuses to overpaid executives!
Oregon activists are committed to continuing their fight to rebuild the economy so that it works for everyone (not just Wall Street) and are pledging to “CHASE the thieves!” out of town.
As the compas from ENLACE said, “Chale con CHASE!”
Lakeside worker Lana Wegner-Harden, joined by SEIU Organizer Baschki Leo, Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, and Tompkins County Workers' Center/JwJ Organizer, Linda Holzbaur Speaking at Tuesday Press Conference (Photo: Marty Luster, Photo News Service)
One hundred thirty workers at Lakeside Nursing Home in Ithaca announced Tuesday (supported by their union SEIU1199, Assemblyperson Barbara Lifton; Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson; Pastor Rich Rose of the First Baptist Church in Ithaca, the Workers’ Center, families of residents, and various community organizations) their intention to fight requirements by the new owners of Lakeside, the Peregrine Health Management Company. Health care workers at Lakeside have been told they must reapply for jobs, will have their wages lowered, and lose retirement pensions when Peregrine, take over as owners on November 1st.
The workers at Lakeside (to be renamed Cayuga Ridge LLC) demand that Peregrine guarantee the jobs and pensions of the healthcare-givers they have employed for the past nine years. Lana Wegner-Harden, an LPN at Lakeside for the past 16 years,
On October 27th, more than 400 JwJ activists came from Detroit, Buffalo, Columbus, Indiana, DC, Chicago, and across Illinois to join the 5,000+ protestors at the American Bankers Association meeting in Chicago. Our delegation included workers, union members, students, and working people who are tired of watching Wall Street get in the way of meaningful reform on issues like Healthcare and financial reform. (Our coalitions in several other cities, including Orlando, FL and South Bend, IN, held solidarity actions.)
In Chicago we joined allied organizations including National People’s Action, SEIU, AFL-CIO, and many more to send a message to the bankers that we will no longer will be idle bystanders in the fight for the direction and future of our country.
Our message was summarized by new AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, “Business as usual is over. We are shutting you down now!”
One of the noteworthy pieces to lift up from this mobilization is that regular people and grassroots
While the scope and length of the current economic crisis is still unclear – unemployment rates are at a record high, the number of day laborers looking for work at Home Depot is growing, and a quarter of DC residents are living below the poverty line — what is clear is that Mayor Fenty’s administration is chipping away at DC’s safety net by selling off the public sector to private interests. This summer DC Jobs with Justice launched the Take Back DC campaign in conjunction with Empower DC, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Dominion of Cab Drivers to protect the public sector and hold elected officials accountable.
Public health is just one of the sectors on the chopping block. DC’s Addiction, Prevention and Recovery Administration shut down this month,putting hundreds of patients out on the street while they wait for a private provider to be selected. A few months ago, the Community Services Agency of the Department of Mental Health was also privatized. 800 patients are still not linked to providers. According to John Walker, President of AFGE Local 383, disability
Activists will be in the streets of Chicago tomorrow to protest the American Bankers Association meeting. These banks took bailouts that add up to $15,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. They claimed they were “too big to fail.”
The reality is that these corporate criminals are too big and powerful politically. Explaining why even minor reforms have been bottled up in Congress, Senator Durbin from Illinois admitted that the banks “frankly own the place.”
Day laborers in DC scored another big victory on October 2nd, recovering over $15,000 in stolen wages for eight workers.
Several members of the Union de Trabajadores de Washington, DC, a day laborer association, had been doing work on a DC public school building over the summer, and were paid less than promised. They reached out to DC Jobs with Justice and the DC Employment Justice Center, who quickly realized this public project entitled the workers to higher, “prevailing wages” for their work. After reaching out to other workers from the project and talking with several building trades unions to confirm the proper rate, DC JwJ and the DC EJC went to the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization to discuss this violation of DC’s contracting laws. The Office collaborated in forcing the contractors to pay back wages, including proper overtime rates.
This victory not only secures justice for the workers involved, but sends an important message to contractors who believe they can hire immigrant workers and pay them lower rates. Current broken immigration laws invite such exploitation by creating
Twenty years ago, 60,000 workers from New York City to Maine rallied against healthcare cost-shifting at the telecom giant then known as NYNEX (since “rebranded” as Verizon).
NYNEX was a very profitable, multinational company seeking to capitalize on a demoralizing decade of lost strikes, contract givebacks and widespread unionbusting. At a time when many workers were forced to make concessions, NYNEX strikers held the line for four months and emerged victorious. They successfully resisted the company’s demand that they pay hundreds and eventually thousands of dollars a year for medical benefits. But this singular union win didn’t come cheap. Customer service was disrupted by the work stoppage, resulting in tens of millions of dollars worth of lost wages. Hundreds of strikers were arrested, fired or suspended–and one, Gerry Horgan, was killed on a picket line in Westchester County.
In every other advanced industrial nation, the contentious issue of who pays for medical care was taken off the bargaining table long ago. And no worker would ever lose his or her life defending job-based private health insurance.
To this day, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) who work at
Looking to get fired up before heading to the Showdown in Chicago, October 27? Here are a few reasons we’re looking forward to facing the American Bankers Association meeting in person next week.
After driving their companies and the entire economy into the ground, Wall Street took bailouts that add up to $15,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. They claimed they were ‘too big to fail.’
We consider these to be corporate crimes, which is why JwJ coalitions across the country have been staging actions, wrapping the ‘bailout bandits’ with crime scene tape and demanding new regulations and a major jobs program.
The simple fact is that “too big to fail” is as much a political as an economic issue. Failed banks are taken over every year by
The dead rose to walk the streets of Boston once more yesterday, hungry for revenge against those who put them in the grave — health insurance companies.
In Oregon, dozens of JwJ activists participated in joint actions Wednesday Oct. 29th in solidarity with 400 other JwJ activists who 
