(You’ve seen snippets on telly, Dick Price and Sharon Kyle, our colleagues at LA Progressive attended on of them and file this 1st person look at a healthcare Town Hall meeting.)

by Dick Price, Editor LA Progressive

We almost missed the boat. The raucous town hall debates that captured the nation’s attention through the long Congressional recess nearly passed us by. As good as Keith and Rachel and Jon can be, we knew that just catching the wingnut lunacy on the boob tube wasn’t going to cut it.

We had good reasons for being missing in action, of course. During Rep. Henry Waxman’s town hall over on LA’s Westside several weeks ago, we were visiting colleges in Northern California with my 15-year-old daughter Linnea. Heading into her junior year in high school, she’s a good student with dreams of being a vet or doctor.

There’s an old law on California’s books that gives the kids of disabled Vietnam War vets like me a tuition-free ride at any state college or university. Given that opportunity, we started with those monuments to what effective government can do at the highly respected, if not world-class, campuses at UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Davis.

More recently, during new Congresswoman Judy Chu’s affair in East Los Angeles—Duarte, actually—we were helping our friends with the LA Media group put on a two-Saturday training where Will Coley gave a well-received tutorial to help advance grassroots campaigns.

But those excuses and four dollars will barely get you a cup of coffee nowadays, right?

Urban Issues Town Hall
Salvation came in the form of an invitation from the Urban Issues Breakfast Forum, inviting us to a town hall featuring Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and new Congresswoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach). Most months for the past several years we have attended once-a-month Friday morning meetings at these forums, featuring the likes of Cornel West, Eric Dyson, and Mark Ridley-Thomas. As with this latest town hall, they’re usually held at the California African American Museum, next to the University of Southern California in what folks now want to call “South Los Angeles,” not “South Central” in a public relations scrub.

On television, we had seen the nutcases shouting down members of Congress with wrongheaded, but very angry, inanities. We knew about the mouth-breathers hiding behind the Constitution to terrorize their fellow citizens by packing heat at public events. On the radio, we even heard of fingers being bitten off. We understood that the threat of violence was real and growing. So, we knew we’d need an escape plan, and if that plan was only me knowing which pocket I’d put my keys, Sharon remembering where we’d parked the car, and Nea distracting onlookers with her suddenly reddish ‘Fro—all the plan we could muster in the 104-degree heat—it proved enough in what turned out to be an edifying but rather uneventful day.

Anthony Samad, the linchpin behind the Urban Issues Forum, set the stage by admonishing, to a deep rumble of ascent from the audience, that no screaming or shouting for the cameras and the nightly news would be tolerated. With effort, I spotted three truculent souls at the back who looked a little like me and might have been thinking along those lines, but then heard nothing further from them.

“People, in the richest nation in the world, there is no reason that if your mother, or your child, or your father, or your uncle gets ill that they should not be able to go anywhere in this country to get quality healthcare,” Samad began. “Yet, this is the only industrialized nation that does not provide some kind of universal health care for its citizens.”

And that pointed to the day’s major rub.

There was clearly a huge desire in this overwhelmingly African American gathering to see Barack Obama succeed as the first black man to take the Big Chair in the White House. At the same time, among a population that bears the brunt of America’s failed health care system, there was an evident desire for profound improvement. “Single-payer,” “Medicare for all,” and “universal healthcare” were the watchwords for the day. “Public option,” “health insurance reform,” and “tinkering on the margins” clearly were not.

Or, as Dr. Bradley Rosen representing Doctors for America later said, “I don’t have anything against the insurance companies or the people who work for them, because they’re hard-working Americans just like you and I. The difference is that they’re functioning in a free market capitalist society and the interest of the healthcare industry, just like for any business, is to make money. The perverse aspect is that we shouldn’t be profiting off withholding care.”

How Much Reform?
We’ve heard that President Obama will make a speech next week in which he will try to regain control of the healthcare debate and lay out just what he expects from the bills Congress will ultimately deliver. Mary Jane Stevenson, head of Organizing for America in California, tried to assure the audience that Obama has not changed his stance on the public option.

“He has eight guarantees for healthcare reform,” she said:

No discrimination for preexisting conditions
No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses
No cost sharing for preventable care
No dropping coverage if you get ill
No gender discrimination
No annual or lifetime caps on coverage
Yes on expanding coverage to young adults to 26
Guaranteed insurance for all.

Stevenson said Obama insiders had assured her that the President has not moved away from demanding some kind of public option, despite rumors otherwise.

Speaker Bass, an early and ardent supporter of Obama’s presidential bid, took a harder line. “We’re not going to let the right-wing fringe hold back this train to reform healthcare in our country and make the United States like every other industrialized country on the planet.”

“How is it that we’re the richest country on the planet and we can’t figure out how to provide healthcare for our population?” she continued. “There are many countries around the world that don’t have nearly the wealth that our country has but somehow—because they have the will, because they have the commitment—they have decided that no one in their society will be without healthcare. I think it’s high time that we do the same thing.”

Bass’s background before becoming an elected official lent special weight to her words. Before 1990, she worked for years as a nurse in neonatal intensive care units around Los Angeles, including County General. Then, later, she became a physician’s assistant, working in County’s trauma unit where critically ill and injured patients would wait hours for care after waiting for hours at private hospital and being turned away because they lacked health insurance.

“I worked 12- and 16-hour shifts with babies born underweight because their moms didn’t have prenatal care, with babies that cost society hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said. “That was 30 years ago; now those babies cost society millions of dollars. Why? Because there wasn’t the preventative healthcare for their mothers.”

Bass pointed to a particular problem in the African American community: the high incidence of diabetes and hypertension.

“Have you seen dialysis units in our community? You don’t see them in every neighborhood,” she said looking out at the many black faces before her. “The two primary reasons for kidney failure are hypertension and diabetes. I imagine most people here today, like me, suffer from one or the other. Having health insurance where chronic disease is confronted will increase life expectancy.”

Rep. Richardson, who has had to hit the ground running in Congress, added that getting people better information and support could cut back on those two killers, providing savings that could make the public option—or even universal healthcare—possible.

For Ted Kennedy
Speaker Bass recalled the recent passing of long-time Senator Ted Kennedy.

“We lost a hero in healthcare reform. It’s so sad that he didn’t live to see it enacted,” she said. “It reminds me of Obama’s grandmother. She lived long enough to vote for him, but not long enough to see him win. Senator Kennedy lived long enough to see [Obama] win and start healthcare reform, but not long enough to see him finish. To me, that left all of us with the challenge to fulfill his dream and a dream for all of us as well.”

For this corner of the world, with people who worked hard to elect Barack Obama, whose lives have already been profoundly changed by his election—just look at their faces—and who desperately want him to succeed, Obama needs to deliver on his promises to fix America’s broken healthcare system.

We may quarrel over whether “profound” can mean public option now, moving toward universal healthcare not too much later — or even Medicare for all now. But we know it doesn’t mean fiddling with the broken health insurance system and hoping the problem goes away.

Barack, it’s time to drive to the hoop. That’s why you fought so hard to get the ball, isn’t it?

by Dick Price & Sharon Kyle

In the run-up to Election Day, when Barack Obama’s history-making victory wasn’t exactly a sure thing, our local congressman urged persistence and optimism.

“We’ve got a big ship there in Washington, with a lot of right-wing momentum pushing it forward,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra on a sultry August evening, speaking to our Democratic club here in Los Angeles. “But if you can stop that ship, if you can start to turn it, you can get the momentum going in your direction and really get something done—with healthcare, with jobs, with ending the war, with all the things Democrats care about.”

Saturday morning, we caught up with Becerra again, this time at a “Coffee with Your Congressman” at an elementary school in a working class neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles. In the intervening three months, American’s economic prospects have darkened considerably, with storied Wall Street brokerage houses failing, Main Line banks collapsing, and America’s Big Three automakers alighting in the nation’s capital, top hats in hand, begging for relief.

But as you listened to this ever-optimistic son of a farm worker field questions from the audience overflowing the school’s gymnasium, you knew something else had happened. Sure, Barack Obama has gotten elected, and with him sizeable majorities in both houses of Congress. More than that, you could feel in the tone of the questioners’ voices and the expressions on their faces that something else has happened. Becerra’s persistence has paid off. America’s ship has begun to turn.

The Things Democrats Care About
Not surprisingly, given the largely Latino audience, immigration reform came up first. “We need to stop the magnet of jobs that draws people to our country by prosecuting companies who hire undocumented workers,” said Becerra, who has represented this congressional district in California since 1992. “Then, you’ve got to get the undocumented out of the shadows by providing a pathway to citizenship.”

Based on conversations he’s had in the Hispanic and Democratic caucuses, Becerra expects an immigration reform bill to come forward, perhaps as early as next fall. “Not piecemeal legislation that addresses part of the problem here and part there, but comprehensive reform,” he said.

On the economic front, Becerra explained that he initially voted against the Wall Street bailout package because it didn’t contain explicit repayment guarantees, nor was the money properly directed. “Rather than put money out the back door to prop up banks, I would much rather put it out the front door, giving it to homeowners directly so they can make their mortgage payments,” he said.

“And now we’re seeing that the financial institutions are not spending the money as Congress intended,” he continued. “I doubt we’ll give them the second $290 billion funding.”

Similarly, Becerra is joining with other Democrats, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), to set firm parameters for any auto industry bailout. “You want money? Fine. Prove that you’re going to pivot away from making SUVs to producing solid, energy-efficient vehicles,” he said. “And show how you’re going to pay back the people’s loan. Then we can talk.”

This past Wednesday, Becerra was elected vice chair of the Democratic Caucus, the fifth position in the Democratic Congressional hierarchy. “That puts me in the room,” he said. “For example, when the auto executives visited this week, I was there, able to influence the discussion, better able to represent your views.”

Not All a Bed of Roses
The cardinal defeat for progressives here in California was the passage of Proposition 8, the amendment to the state’s constitution that overturns the recent State Supreme Court decision in outlawing marriages between gays and lesbians.

Becerra’s district overall is 70% Latino; in the working class neighborhood where today’s session was held the percentage is probably much higher. Many are Roman Catholics, as is Becerra, and many likely favored the passage of Prop 8.

So, Becerra’s stout, fully explained defense of marriage equality this morning was especially gratifying, given the political capital it may have cost him.

“If marriage was religious, we could all decide how to handle it for ourselves,” he said. “But it’s a civil institution, protected by the courts. So it has to be for everyone equally.”

Interrupted early in his talk by a call from Obama’s newly named chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Becerra briefly spoke with Emanuel but quickly got back to his constituents turning to the issue he is most interested in — changing the kind of funding decisions made by our government.

“I believe in making investments that will be seen by our kids,” he concluded. “Head Start is a good investment. Health care for everyone is a good investment.”

With Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House, and thoughtful, compassionate leaders like Becerra in key positions in Congress, you have to believe that those kinds of investments will finally get made.

Dick Price & Sharon Kyle
LA Progressive, Editor & Publisher

by Dick Price

I didn’t really mean to do it. I usually have more self-control. Something just came over me. I couldn’t restrain myself. Please forgive me.

I voted Friday.

I don’t have an excuse. I’ll be in town on Election Day and had planned to vote then like I always do. I’ve even taken off work Monday and Tuesday, making myself available to pitch in where needed, which would give me plenty of time to vote Tuesday, no matter how long the lines.

And, ordinarily, I like voting at our local polling place here in Mount Washington; I like bumping into our neighbors and silently congratulating each other in this bluer-than-blue neighborhood for striking our blow for what we hope will be freedom and justice. Oftentimes, I take my 14-year-old daughter along, making it a family affair that I hope will rub off on her.

But after a long, antsy day at the office in Los Alamitos, I found myself behind the wheel Friday afternoon, headed back through the Orange Curtain, to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office in Norwalk. It’s probably no more than 10 miles as the crow flies, but I was confined to surface streets, which were crowded with moms driving their kids to Halloween parties. As usual, I took a couple wrong turns to make the trip more of an adventure than necessary, then had to circle to the large parking lot several times to find an open spot.

Once I processed in at the Registrars, I spent the better part of an hour in a huge, makeshift tent with hundreds of my fellow Angelenos—some who had spent hours there already—until my number was finally called and I could mark my ballot for Barack Obama and Joe Biden—and for our new friends Cynthia Loo and Lori-Ann Jones for LA Superior Court, for Xavier Becerra for Congress and Kevin de Leon for the Assembly, and against Prop 8.

And I’ve got to tell you, damn, did it feel good! Damn, damn, damn!

An Essential Sea Change
Since you’re reading this, I don’t have to tell you how important this election is.

Aren’t we all heartsick at the way the Bush-Cheney Administration has combined wrong-headed incompetence with wrong-hearted bellicosity to bring our country to its knees on so many fronts? Now, doesn’t the prospect of another Republican administration, led by an ill-tempered John McCain and an ill-informed Sarah Palin, leave a pit in all our stomachs?

America would survive a McCain-Palin Administration—Americans are resilient folk—but it would be another four years of grinding through an administration that simply doesn’t represent policies that reflect my views or those of most people I know.

On the other hand, Barack Obama’s performance through this endless campaign, the measured way he has addressed the economic and military crises that have arisen, the galvanizing way he has inspired millions of Americans as no one has for decades, the growing sense that this man and his Vice President, Joe Biden, would put together an administration that would get something done that we all want done—well, it vindicates every hope Sharon and I expressed before the California primary.

And, obviously, we’re not alone.

Even in states that have seemed to have gone over entirely to the Dark Side, the Obama-Biden ticket has a shot just three days out:

The New York Times reports that in Colorado “close to 1.5 million votes, or about 46 percent of the registered total, are already in the can, cast and waiting to be counted.”

In Georgia, the Washington Post reports that a “record-breaking 2 million people cast early ballots in the U.S. state of Georgia, an indication of high enthusiasm over Tuesday’s presidential election that could help Democratic candidate Barack Obama.”

And in North Carolina, where I lived for a couple years as kid, The Nation reports that Obama has a chance: “Obama’s North Carolina campaign, undergirded by 1,700 volunteers, 40 offices and close to 400 paid staffers (McCain has 30 offices but only 30 paid staff), has outregistered Republicans five to one in the state this year and drawn even in the polls heading into the campaign’s last weeks. In the first week of early voting, in mid-October, almost three times as many Democrats as Republicans were casting ballots in a record turnout; while African-Americans are only 22 percent of the state’s population, almost 40 percent of early voters were black.”

Long lines are reported in virtually every state that has established early voting. Not all the absentee and early voters will go for Obama and Biden, of course, but early returns are looking good for the Democratic ticket, darned good. These early returns, the long lines, the masses of Obama volunteers, and the mountains of small donations his campaign has amassed month after month tell us that something is clearly afoot.

America is on the move.

Bringing More of Us into the Tent
The crowd in the tent at Norwalk looked a lot like Los Angeles. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Whites in roughly equal measure. Working class folk and young professionals. Young and old, but a lot of the young. More than a few who struggled with English.

I don’t suppose everyone there cast a vote for Obama. There was no electioneering, in the tent or outside. No one wore an inappropriate button or shirt—my Obama-Biden button was in my pocket and my “No on 8” tshirt under my regular shirt. Still, there were enough winks and nods and high-signs to say that the Democratic ticket was having a good day up and down the line.

I ran into our young friend Francisco Cendejas, who needed to vote early because he had decided to help get out the vote for Manuel Perez’s California Assembly race in Indio and Palm Springs and also pick up a ballot for his girlfriend Ana Mascarenas, who had returned to her home state of New Mexico to help with a Congressional race there. It was nice to see a friendly face in what was a friendly crowd despite the long waits, close quarters, and a bullhorn that rattled your teeth.

This election isn’t about race anymore than it’s about income redistribution. But an Obama Administration is going to make a big difference in race and class relations in this country. As our friend, Anthony Asadullah Samad wrote recently, America is finally letting one of the disenfranchised “drive the car.”  Just the fact that a black man will be our President and a black woman our First Lady, two people who grew up in the straightened circumstances many Black Americans know, will send the clear signal to all the disenfranchised across America that they’re more fully inside the tent with the rest of us.

And that will be a good thing.

So let’s all make sure that good thing comes to pass so we can spend the next four years a dream, not a nightmare.