Huge Crowd Demands Health Care Now

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

The debate over healthcare hit the streets yesterday when a crowd of nearly 10,000 rocked the U.S. Capitol with chants of “We Want Healthcare” to the tune of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” The midday sun blazed overhead and speakers called for healthcare reform as the colorful sea of activists swamped Upper Senate Park in one of the biggest and liveliest labor demonstrations in years, organized by Health Care for America Now, a broad-based labor-community coalition. "This is our year!" thundered AFSCME President Gerry McEntee and the sense of urgency was palpable in the crowd that had gathered from up and down the East Coast and out into the Midwestern states, rolling in on buses all morning. “With this health care system, if you don’t have a job, you’re gonna die,” said Marisol Marte, chairperson of ACORN in the South Bronx, which holds the dubious distinction of having the highest asthma rate in the nation. Susie Taylor, a small business owner in Washington, told the crowd how she’d been forced to stop paying for her employees’ health insurance when healthcare premiums skyrocketed. “This is not how we want to run our business or treat people who work for us,” she said. “There is a whole undercurrent of people you don’t know about,” said Reverend Andrew Stephens of Nashville. “I’m a pastor, I know them.  The health care forms are more complicated in places that need more help; we’re going to sick workplaces and sick schools.” Amid the placards saying “No Health Care Profiteers” and “Everybody In Nobody Out,” doctors’ white coats gleamed in the sunlight. “We stand in solidarity with our own patients. We have their back,” said a passionate Dr. Lydia Vaias, founder of the 215,000-member National Physicians Alliance, disputing the American Medical Association’s (AMA) claim to speak for all doctors when it opposes the proposed government-sponsored health care plan. After rousing speeches from workers, small business owners, political leaders and union leaders, thousands of the fired-up activists marched on the Capitol to meet with their elected representatives to demand health care reform. 
- report by Julia Shindel; photos by Adam Wright