From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: Little Rock Marchers Demand Health Care
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 08:08:09 GMT

Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


LITTLE ROCK MARCHERS DEMAND HEALTH CARE

Special to Workers World

Little Rock, Ark.

A thousand health-care activists from 27 states converged here
Dec. 12 to send a message to Bill Clinton: Dismantle the
health-care-for-profit industry and institute a universal plan.

They drove from around the country in a "Peoples Health
Care-avan" to press their demands at a "Peoples Town Meeting."
The gathering took place at the Little Rock Convention Center,
just down the street from where Clinton's so-called economic
summit was to begin two days later.

It was a determined, multinational crowd, about a quarter African
Americans. They weren't about to be placated by empty promises of
vague reforms delivered by Clinton stand-ins.

The restless crowd chanted health-care advisor David Wilhelm off
the stage, shouting, "We want Bill," and, "Health care is a
right!" Secretary of Commerce-designate Ron Brown got a similar
reception.

Finally people decided to go confront Clinton. They marched 15
blocks to the State Capitol. The weather was bitter cold and many
people were in wheelchairs or had serious medical problems--but
hundreds stood outside for over three hours until Clinton finally
emerged.

All he did was shake some hands. He didn't offer any real
answers.

Before  the Town Meeting took off into the streets, a dozen
community activists spoke. Ida Bodie of North Carolina's Black
Workers for Justice, who has carpal tunnel syndrome, talked about
the 25 poultry workers killed last year in Hamlet, N.C. She
brought the crowd to its felt when she declared, "There will not
be real change in this country until we end racism!"

Gerry Scoppettuolo, representing Nashville ACT UP and the
Movement for a Peoples Assembly, urged everyone to continue the
struggle after the conference, and to join with the MPA in
coast-to-coast April demonstrations for jobs and justice.

Organized labor was well represented. So were community groups.

Brenda Scott, vice president of the Communications Workers
Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, told Workers World, "Our
state is 50th in the nation in income, and until we get real
leadership of the people we will have no real program for
change."

"This was the first large protest of the Clinton era," Movement
for a Peoples Assembly organizer Johnnie Stevens of New Orleans
told Workers World. "And it shows that people aren't going to sit
back and wait to see what Clinton is going to do. We're going to
get out into the streets and demand jobs and justice now!"

The conference was organized by Georgians for a Common Sense
Health Plan and the Universal Healthcare Access Network of
Cleveland. At a Dec. 11 news conference, Stevens had linked the
health-care crisis to the problems of plant closings, evictions
and unemployment.

"The health-care crisis affects us all," he said. "The MPA urges
you to participate in a week-long series of rallies and
demonstrations April 25 to May 1, when we can intensify the
pressure for all our demands."

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)


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