Executive Director's Corner

by Ethel Long-Scott, ED

(A version of this article first appeared at the US Social Forum in THE PRELIMINARY REPORT of THE NATIONAL TRUTH COMMISSION, JUNE 2007, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign)

We are a nation in trouble.  An unconscionable number of people are reeling from the economic disasters structured into the U.S. and world economies.  

We are in our fourth year of a trying war, the disaster of the Katrina non-recovery keeps rolling along, we watch as more Americans go to bed hungry, seniors are crippled in body and soul for lack of adequate health care, homelessness continues to grow, and poverty increases as good jobs disappear from our communities and bad jobs replace them.  The war economy gallops ahead, benefiting the corporate captains of globalization while stealing the future of working people of this nation.   

The soul of America, a nation that claims to value the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, is at stake.  In the 21st Century, our nation is an affront to human rights in the same way that it was an affront to civil rights in the 20th Century.  There is an urgent need to build a social movement to challenge that.

There are many life and death issues in this context, but none are more important than the fight for our people’s health and economic well being.   The push by many of our leaders is to take government out of the business of caring for its people, to replace government with private companies.  As we see from privatization of the military in the Iraq war, and from the Katrina aftermath, corporations will stop at nothing to make more money—whether that means closing hospitals, raising premiums, pressuring our government for huge tax breaks or pursuing patients well into bankruptcy.  The battle ahead of us is to envision a future that works for everyone, rather than tinker with the crumbling existing system.

As important as it is – and polls say it is a major concern of our people – the battle for healthcare cannot be separated from the broader struggle to eliminate poverty.  The right to health means very little without a roof over your head, a meal in your stomach or a living wage to care for your family.  That is why our umbrella organization, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, struggles to build a broad base of poor and working people fighting in unison for the economic human rights of all our people.

Too many people suffer every day in this rich, rich nation. In our first ever National Truth Commission and in similar regional Truth Commissions held throughout the country, the testimony we heard points to the need for justice-- including, but not limited to, the urgent need for standard quality, universal, single-payer healthcare as a economic human right.  We must accept no less than our government owning up to its responsibility to our people!  Whether it’s the destruction of our families, the decaying educational system, escalating homelessness or a broken health care system, the reorganization of society on a cooperative basis is not only a possibility—it is an urgent need.

History teaches that no such fight has ever been won without a movement of the people in support. Once unleashed, the American people can accomplish great things—abolishing slavery, overthrowing colonial rule, winning suffrage for women and African Americans.  Unleashing that potential is what we all must be about.