Current Events

 

Healthcare NOW Strategy Conference

HC 4 AllIn Chicago on November 10-11, 2007, WEAP joined dozens of other organizations and labor unions from 30 different states, including the NNOC, CNA, PNHP, IBEW, UE, and the UAW at Healthcare-NOW's national strategy conference. Opening the first day was a speech by Congressman John Conyers, who has sponsored federal legislation for single payer. Soon after, WEAP's executive director, Ethel Long-Scott, spoke about the importance of framing health care as a human right. She pointed out that we must build a broad social movement that recognizes health care is a fundamental right for all people if we ever truly plan to guarantee humane health care to everyone. She also spoke on her expertise with "Truth Commissions" as a venue that not only hear the often silenced voices of poor and working people but also educate and move forward with solutions to our dire health care crisis. On the second day, WEAP was given an opportunity to present their Just Health Care Financing tool, which breaks down the affordability of single payer universal healthcare by taking the profit out of the health industry. The conference ended by kicking off a 12-month SICKO-Cure National Road Show in support of a progressive congress and mobilizing our communities for support. Track the road show's movement here!

 

"Health Care is an Economic Human Right" Teach-In & Dialogue

Teach-InOn March 5th, 2008, many of WEAP's allies gathered at the WEAP office for the third in a series of teach-in and dialogues on the subject of “Health Care is a Human Right”. Over the last few teach-ins, enlightening presentations have been given by representatives of CNA, SEIU, Alameda Health Consortium, the West Oakland Community Collaborative, CHAM, ILWU, and others about the work each of these organizations is doing around healthcare issues. The teach-ins have also included many involved discussions in which participants have aimed to educate each other. WEAP has presented several papers on individual mandates, which have focused on what individual mandates are and how they are one of the major threats to universal healthcare today.  Yet, talking about the solution, through tools like WEAP’s "Just Health Care Financing or How to Pay for Single Payer" fact sheet, has also been very important. The overarching theme of each  teach-in has been that we must frame our fight for health justice as an economic human rights issue in order to give it the principles and ethics all broad-based movements need in order to be successful.  Much ground has been covered over the last few months but there is a lot left to learn and accomplish. WEAP’s next teach-in and dialogue is scheduled for June 18th and will focus on securing Health Care as a Human Right through the building of a resident’s movement. 

 

Community Health Access Forum

Health Access Community Forum

Health Access Community participants at work.
Credit: Rick Rocomora

On October 9, 2007, WEAP co-sponsored the Alameda County "Health Access Community Forum". This event was just one of many replicated throughout the county in fall 2007 and brought together several organizations and individuals, including a large constituency from the Asian Health Services. The primary purpose of the forum was to hear local voices talk about the problems evident in our health care system and to discuss possible solutions. The participants divided into facilitated groups in order to record everyone's experiences and ideas, which were then compiled into a larger report sent later to state policy makers. Throughout the evening, WEAP provided a message of the need for a resident's movement, which would mobilize in the name of a comprehensive, just health care system and would not leave out a single member of our community.

The US Social Forum

USSFIn late June 2007, WEAP sent several of its members to the five-day long U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia. The USSF was dedicated to providing a space for social justice conscious organizations and individuals around the world to share their analyses and build relationships and leadership in the movement in order to realize a better world. WEAP met up with the National Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, partaking in panels, workshops, and truth hearings that highlighted poverty in the U.S., especially around healthcare, housing, and hunger. The Forum culminated for WEAP and PPEHRC with a march from the Martin Luther King Jr. History Center to the Headquarters of Coca Cola under the mantra of "Another World is Possible, Another U.S. is Necessary: Stop the War at Home and Abroad!" For more information on this event, read about two of WEAP's community organizer's experiences, Heather McLaughlin and Dorothy Cooper, at this event.