Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I had heard about Occupy from a lot of different sources. I had heard about all of the abuses by the police, and it seemed like they were totally unjustified. I wanted to go down to the park to see what was going on for myself. It was really intimidating at first because the police had the whole park surrounded, and it felt like they might move in at any moment. I remember when I finally crossed the police line into the park, it felt like jumping into a pool, a pool that was teeming with activism and people who cared and people who want to change things. They weren't just thinking about changing things. They were showing that there were different ways of doing things with the People’s Library, the kitchen, the bicycles that were powering equipment. I thought all of that was really creative and inventive. Seeing that stuff evolve kept me coming back.
I was going down and attending a lot of the general assemblies, which I thought were great. I loved the focus on consensus and the progressive stack, the hand signals, everything. I started seeing that people were forming groups on issues. Education was one of the first ones I joined. I was with a couple other health care advocates one day, and it hit us, "What if we proposed a healthcare group?" We saw that other people were interested in health care. I'll never forget seeing a woman holding a sign in Zuccotti that read, "The dogs I walk have insurance. Why don't I?" Things like that just hit you, so we decided to make a health care group, which became Health Care for the 99%. I don’t think any of us knew what we were creating. I’ve been a part of a lot of health care advocacy groups, but I have never been part of anything like healthcare for the 99%.The focus was that health care is a human right, not just a policy point. It wasn’t focused on policy. It was focused on how health care was impacting people’s lives and all of the different facets of health care, which opened the door to discussions a lot of things that have been left out of the debate on health care, like financial and racial inequality and mental health. We were able to explore health care on a whole different level than I’ve ever explored it before.
We reached out to doctors' and nurses' groups and start talking about providing health care in the park and what that could look like. They were already on it. Everybody was just on the same page. We knew there were going to be limitations. There’s only so much you can feasibly do in a park, but it was awesome seeing what evolved. There was a mixture of street medics, doctors, nurses, everyone from social workers to chiropractors were volunteering to help people sleeping in the park, holding the ground. Activists and advocates were running around. It was like everybody came with good intentions and things were really moving. It felt like everyone was pushing in the same direction.
The medical tent was the first tent in the park. The police were sent to shut it down, but people fought for it and won. Then, when all of the other tents sprang up left and right, it was great. It felt like we were all rooting for each other, pushing for one another. There were all of these unintended consequences, which often led to better ideas and better ways to communicate. Every little thing you would get involved with created a domino affect involving all of these other issues, and then those issues would come back and make you aware of new things. The park was really a place where you could learn about other people's issues, struggles and points of view.
Occupy was a great magnet for socially conscious people to come together and talk about what was going on in their different communities. Our meetings included people from groups across Occupy to community groups that have been fighting health care injustices for years, which made us aware of what was going on in their communities. That's what got us involved with hospital closures from the get-go. We had people who were fighting to keep their hospital in Brooklyn open talking with people who fought to to try and keep Saint Vincent's Hospital open. The whole issue of the 99% and the 1% definitely rings true with the health care crisis that’s going on. It’s only pure greed that would allow someone like Christine Quinn to take campaign contributions from the Rudins. Then, she decided that it was fine to close Saint Vincent's Hospital, and the Rudins were right there ready to buy the hospital and turn it into condos. Health Care for the 99% always says, “We occupy Wall Street because Wall Street occupies our health care. It’s simply unsustainable to allow all of these hospitals to close. Hospitals are part of the community, and when you let one close, you’re pulling the roots out of the community.
We reached out to doctors' and nurses' groups and start talking about providing health care in the park and what that could look like. They were already on it. Everybody was just on the same page. We knew there were going to be limitations. There’s only so much you can feasibly do in a park, but it was awesome seeing what evolved. There was a mixture of street medics, doctors, nurses, everyone from social workers to chiropractors were volunteering to help people sleeping in the park, holding the ground. Activists and advocates were running around. It was like everybody came with good intentions and things were really moving. It felt like everyone was pushing in the same direction.
The medical tent was the first tent in the park. The police were sent to shut it down, but people fought for it and won. Then, when all of the other tents sprang up left and right, it was great. It felt like we were all rooting for each other, pushing for one another. There were all of these unintended consequences, which often led to better ideas and better ways to communicate. Every little thing you would get involved with created a domino affect involving all of these other issues, and then those issues would come back and make you aware of new things. The park was really a place where you could learn about other people's issues, struggles and points of view.
Occupy was a great magnet for socially conscious people to come together and talk about what was going on in their different communities. Our meetings included people from groups across Occupy to community groups that have been fighting health care injustices for years, which made us aware of what was going on in their communities. That's what got us involved with hospital closures from the get-go. We had people who were fighting to keep their hospital in Brooklyn open talking with people who fought to to try and keep Saint Vincent's Hospital open. The whole issue of the 99% and the 1% definitely rings true with the health care crisis that’s going on. It’s only pure greed that would allow someone like Christine Quinn to take campaign contributions from the Rudins. Then, she decided that it was fine to close Saint Vincent's Hospital, and the Rudins were right there ready to buy the hospital and turn it into condos. Health Care for the 99% always says, “We occupy Wall Street because Wall Street occupies our health care. It’s simply unsustainable to allow all of these hospitals to close. Hospitals are part of the community, and when you let one close, you’re pulling the roots out of the community.
I think it’s important whenever you get people together to talk. There’s power in that. There’s power in knowing that we’re not alone and also seeing how all of the issues that we’ve all been fighting for years really do cross over. It’s that cross pollination of issues and ideas that’s really important. Some of the cross pollination that I’m referring to are issues of social determinates of health - a health care activist talking with an environmentalist about pollution and how pollution affects people’s health, that kind of cross pollination of ideas. One of the things that really resonated with me with Occupy was the message that all of our issues are connected. I think that one of the things we can do better is to be more attentive even though there is not a physical occupation, to still try to make sure that we stick together and make those connections. Even though I’m a health care activist, I feel like I should be out there with people against fracking and other causes supporting them too. I feel like there is still a lot of give and take that can go on.
A lot of that was happening at Zuccotti. There would be a march every day, and if you were down there, you would march in solidarity. We would march with other people. Other people would march with us. It was nice to see everybody in the same place. That had never happened in my lifetime. I loved that about Occupy, the cross pollination of issues. There really was a strong solidarity and a will to change things. Another thing I really loved about Occupy was the creativity and the art of activism that was happening on a daily basis. I always thought that was amazing. Everything was so creative about it - the hand signals, using music, not having permits. There were so many things that happened all at once that just freed us as activists. Until then, we were just spinning our wheels, doing the same actions, getting the same results. I’m incredibly glad it happened.
Health care seems like a clear problem with a clear
solution. After advocating for it for years, what is clear to me is that there
has not been the political will, and I think that a grassroots movement is what
it’s going to take to make that happen. One of the major problems with health
care in America
is that when we talk about care in the first place, we’re actually talking
about insurance. What insurance perceives as progress is profits, not actually
delivering care but profiting off of denying it, and then they go and use those
profits and use the democratic process against us through lobbying and pushing
for legislation that insures their profits.
It’s important to stand up against injustices that are going on. Otherwise, they are just going to keep happening. There are so many problems. It all comes down to being a for-profit system. Whether it’s the insurance companies or the pharmaceutical companies, the major problem is the profit in the health care system. When you have a system that’s focused on how much you can make off a medicine or how much someone should have to pay for care, it really creates a self-destructive system. Insurance is completely absurd. Looking at the difference between Medicare and insurance, Medicare is a non-profit system, so all of the money going into Medicare is providing care for people and paying people to do the work. In the insurance industry, which is a for-profit system, the whole thing changes because you’ve got CEO salaries. You’ve got advertising. You’ve got denial of claims and billing departments, which is where things really start to deteriorate.
With the for-profit system, you have the whole mentality of, “Well, how much money can we make by providing the least amount of care possible?” Whereas with a non-profit system like Medicare, that's not the goal. It’s just appalling that health care is treated as a product. It’s completely absurd. With the pharmaceutical companies, they’re able to charge individuals as much as they want because it’s the big corporation against the individual, but when you have a single payer universal health care system, it flips the table because than everybody in America has the same plan, so then everybody is able to bargain down a lower price from the corporation. We would phase out insurance companies, expand programs government already provides.
Then, you would be paying health care for cost, not including CEO salaries, advertising, bonuses, and a profit margin. The cost savings would be enough to cover the people who aren’t covered now without making it more expensive. We can very easily transition to a universal health care system. The solution is in the problem. The problem with the health care system is that it’s for-profit. The solution is that it should be non-profit. On top of that, our health care system just doesn’t provide health care. It doesn’t provide rehabilitation services. It doesn’t provide mental health services. It doesn’t provide people with the medication they need. That’s all just because people are trying to make a profit in all of those areas. Then, there’s also the really serious issue of medical apartheid. There is institutional racism that’s a part of the for-profit system. Whereas, with a universal system, where the priority is that health care is a human right and that everybody should have access to it, then it creates a more equal system. There’s a quote that was going around that said something to the effect of when the people of the parks and the people on Park Avenue have the same health care, then we’re moving to a more just society. It just blows my mind that the 1% are always like, “We just have to have more” to the point where it’s self-destructive for society. Universal health care does put people on an even playing field, and that’s not really what they want.
It’s important to stand up against injustices that are going on. Otherwise, they are just going to keep happening. There are so many problems. It all comes down to being a for-profit system. Whether it’s the insurance companies or the pharmaceutical companies, the major problem is the profit in the health care system. When you have a system that’s focused on how much you can make off a medicine or how much someone should have to pay for care, it really creates a self-destructive system. Insurance is completely absurd. Looking at the difference between Medicare and insurance, Medicare is a non-profit system, so all of the money going into Medicare is providing care for people and paying people to do the work. In the insurance industry, which is a for-profit system, the whole thing changes because you’ve got CEO salaries. You’ve got advertising. You’ve got denial of claims and billing departments, which is where things really start to deteriorate.
With the for-profit system, you have the whole mentality of, “Well, how much money can we make by providing the least amount of care possible?” Whereas with a non-profit system like Medicare, that's not the goal. It’s just appalling that health care is treated as a product. It’s completely absurd. With the pharmaceutical companies, they’re able to charge individuals as much as they want because it’s the big corporation against the individual, but when you have a single payer universal health care system, it flips the table because than everybody in America has the same plan, so then everybody is able to bargain down a lower price from the corporation. We would phase out insurance companies, expand programs government already provides.
Then, you would be paying health care for cost, not including CEO salaries, advertising, bonuses, and a profit margin. The cost savings would be enough to cover the people who aren’t covered now without making it more expensive. We can very easily transition to a universal health care system. The solution is in the problem. The problem with the health care system is that it’s for-profit. The solution is that it should be non-profit. On top of that, our health care system just doesn’t provide health care. It doesn’t provide rehabilitation services. It doesn’t provide mental health services. It doesn’t provide people with the medication they need. That’s all just because people are trying to make a profit in all of those areas. Then, there’s also the really serious issue of medical apartheid. There is institutional racism that’s a part of the for-profit system. Whereas, with a universal system, where the priority is that health care is a human right and that everybody should have access to it, then it creates a more equal system. There’s a quote that was going around that said something to the effect of when the people of the parks and the people on Park Avenue have the same health care, then we’re moving to a more just society. It just blows my mind that the 1% are always like, “We just have to have more” to the point where it’s self-destructive for society. Universal health care does put people on an even playing field, and that’s not really what they want.
Talking about it in a perspective of the 1% or the 99% kind of makes people think a little bit more about who the 1% is in health care, and then begins that shift of power, at least in their minds, that there is more of us than there are of them. That also encourages people to organize more and work together more, to raise their issues and have speak-outs. A lot of what we’ve been doing with Health Care of the 99% is speak-outs, which have been incredibly helpful because people talk about the impact of health in so many ways, from the perspective of poverty and debt, not being able to afford medicine and care or housing issues. If their housing isn’t quality housing, then that can be a reason why they're sick. Doctors have been sharing issues that they come across with their patients. One story that blew my mind was somebody who was a doctor who prescribed their patient medicine. When the patient came back to the doctor, the doctor asked them if they had taken their medicine, and the patient said, “Well, once I had purchased the medicine, I wasn’t able to afford food, and the medicine said I had to take it with food.” It’s just these circular systemic problems that happen. That’s also an example of how the issues cross over, with poverty or housing or pollution.
Everybody I know is affected by health care. There's a guy I know who broke his arm, and he left it broken because he said he couldn't afford to go to the hospital. It’s just appalling to me that the system is just so insanely unjust and that people are hurting so bad because of it. I just can’t stand to see people hurting when there are solutions out there. It’s important to call it out. I think it's our duty as citizen to stand up and call out an insurance company for denying care, or a pharmaceutical company for making AIDS and HIV medication so expensive that people can’t afford it, or the Department of Health for not making preventative medicine available. People are getting sick and dying because they can’t have it. Even if you're not directly affected by it, if it's wrong, it's wrong, and people should fight for what's right.
People know how the world affects them, and even with that, it's hard for a lot of people to come out and say, “I am being adversely affected by the system.” There are also issues that people don’t even know are out there, so going out and protesting is also education. When people see a march going by, they read the signs. If you hand them a flyer, then they are learning about what is happening. Either they are just finding out about it, or they’re like, “Oh, I know exactly what this is about,” and they join you. That’s a perfect example of why we need to protest because of what happens during protests. People join you. That happens because people finally see something is happening, and they support it. Then, they go home and they educate people about what they did that day.
I hope it brings about a world of participatory democracy, a world where people work together and talk and share their ideas and see that our struggles are interrelated, where we're working to make it a better world. For health care, I think that more education needs to be done, but in new ways. We need to educate people more on the impact, sharing our stories about how people are affected adversely by the insurance industry just for their own sake of making profits. I think that sharing stories will get us closer to making a tighter grassroots movement to be able to fight for the universal health care that we need. What I’d like to see is what is happening at Occupy, which is people sharing their stories, working together and building a grassroots movement. I can’t really say what a world like that would look like because I didn’t expect to see half of the things that I’ve seen since Occupy happened.
I would like the world to look a lot like what the Occupy Town
Squares look like. This is really the ideal, where people are coming together,
sharing food, sharing knowledge, having fun, sharing skills. If we could
actually solve the problems, then we could actually enjoy the knowledge that
people have and each other's personalities. I feel like the arts would flourish,
in all aspects, whether it’s music, theatre, painting, sculpture, photography
or dance. Hopefully, then we’d be able to just talk about knowledge. Hopefully, one day we could get to a point where we can focus on what we can build and create instead of what we're against or what's holding us back from getting there.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/