Health Care for America Now!

A busload of Local 100 members traveled to Washington on June 25 to join ten thousand other union members for a rally demanding health care reform.Capitol Hill was a rainbow of t-shirted union members – Local 100’s dark blue, CWA’s red, SEIU’s purple, IBEW’s electric green, UFCW’s yellow, AFSCME’s green, along with hundreds of white-coated physicians and other health care workers.The crowd of union members and health-care activists stood in the bright sun to hear members of Congress and union leaders deliver a clear message: “We demand affordable, high-quality health care for all, and we aren’t waiting any longer.” Among those who gave short speeches were Senators Charles Schumer Kirsten Gillibrand and Representatives Charles Rangel and Anthony Weiner, all from New York.Rangel, who is chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, told the enthusiastic crowd: “we have to have a health care system that works for everyone, not just the politically connected, not just the moneyed. Congress must expand health care to the 45 million individuals who still lack coverage. We must do the same for our nation’s children and working population.”After the rally, Local 100 members fanned out to the offices of members of Congress from the New York region, carrying each of them the message that the Union and its members can’t wait for health-care reform. As Stephan Thomas put it while dropping off literature in the office of Rep. Nydia Velasquez, “We have to get real reform in 2009. We simply cannot fix our economy without fixing our broken health-care system.”