[the photo link is here, the email text is next, my rant ends the post, please think]
"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dear Eric,
When I was a child, my father, Martin Marty, was engaged in the civil rights and anti-poverty movements. He was among the faith leaders who marched with Martin Luther King at Selma. It wasn’t a simple choice – he received hate calls and threats and there was good reason to worry about his safety. But he knew that Dr. King was fighting for justice, regardless of the cost. You take the risk, and you do what is right.
Almost a half century later, we still have not addressed the injustice in health care that Dr. King described as the most inhumane. Ignoring this injustice is immoral and it is economically unsustainable. People are hurting, some are literally dying, businesses are folding, and it is crushing our state budget. The solution is not to extend health insurance to more people; it is time to make health care available to everyone, no exceptions.
Now is the time to fix the health care system to meet this moral challenge, and provide care that meets people's needs.
Please join me as we work for health care for all, as well as ending poverty, and treating all people with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Justice requires no less.
It is a fact that the King assassination happened as he was broadening his message from primarily moving against racial injustice to reaching out with a larger focus on all social and economic exploitation and injustice.
The language King in the quote, and Marty in his email use is indispensably appropriate for all to face and reckon with -
inequality, injustice, shocking, inhumane, "regardless of the cost," "you take the risk, and you do what is right," "ignoring this injustice is immoral and it is economically unsustainable," "it is time to make health care available to everyone, no exceptions," "provide care that meets people's needs," "health care for all, as well as ending poverty, and treating all people with the dignity and respect they deserve,"
Justice requires no less.
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We have seen the unpalatable result of equivocating compromisers and appeasers in Washington DC, and we have seen how their flawed activities have been appropriately rejected by voters in a winter Senate special election where enthusiasm for the mess could not be manufactured to defeat an obvious opportunist. Those trusted to represent the people in DC dithered endlessly, with a decisive nose-count majority, and ultimately willingly undercut any true notion of "reform," giving only a lobbyist written mess. With excuses.
Not anything to be proud of; most certainly not the action people wanted.
Not single payer. Not strong public option. Not anything but a mess.
Democratic members of both houses undercut a mandate that Obama and his chief of staff and other advisers too willingly compromised from the start and throughout dealings. Marty saying no compromises are acceptable, is telling us all the truth.
Equivocation is the path to failure when all know what is moral and right.
Vote John Marty, in caucus, in a primary if he runs, in the general election if he remains an option at that time.
And if Marty does not reach the general election but Mark Dayton does, then we have a credible though less emphatic option.
Anything less, is inadequate, and a compromise - and will be a choice as usual, among lesser evils, which is a choice that I, and I expect many others, are tired of facing time and again.
Comments agreeing or disagreeing will not be accepted on this post. Anyone with strong convictions can find his or her own way to publish a message.