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Filled with Hope for Kennedy’s Dream of Health Care Reform to Become Reality
Today the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the immigrant movement and the gay communities have lost a friend. Our friend and a great American hero, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has left us, but he has left us with the greatest legislation of our time that has helped move us closer to the promise of America.
Like so many of my generation, my life is full of memories of the Kennedy brothers, John, Bobby and Teddy. When I think about these brothers, I cannot help but return to that day 46 years ago when I stood with my mother in the parking lot across from the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, as President Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy came out to the crowd anxiously awaiting to see them. When we left the parking lot that morning—my mother, to catch her bus so that she could get to her job as a domestic worker, and me, to my spelling class at I.M. Terrell Jr. High School—we would have never dreamed that, by the time my mother would be halfway through her domestic duties of that day and me through three class periods, President Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas.
On that day, for my mother and our family, our spirits were darkened, and at that moment, the hope for the promise that President Kennedy symbolized was diminished. We mourned, we cried and we remembered the lessons of our faith; faith is the evidence of things hoped for and not yet seen. We would soon see the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
As a high school student in 1968, I once again was full of hope and promise. We had the dreamer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke of America as he hoped it one day would be—and there was another Kennedy, Bobby, who would run for president and renew the hope of Camelot. Little would I know that 1968 would have such an impact on me. My father died in a car accident on March 9, 1968; April 4, 1968, would be the day the Dreamer would be killed and June 6, 1968, Bobby, like his brother, would lose his life as the result of an assassin’s bullet. Once again, hopes and dreams crushed.
Then there was Teddy: It was 1980, and once again I was hopeful. I was a Kennedy delegate in 1980. I still recall those days before the convention, knocking on doors throughout my community, talking about the importance of having universal health care and how we would get it if Ted Kennedy became our 40th president of the United States. That was not to be, but I never stopped believing in Teddy Kennedy and working and supporting all that he stood for and fought for.
On Sept. 21, 2007, when I became executive vice president of the AFL‑CIO, Sen. Kennedy called me at home that evening and congratulated me. After some small talk and a Kennedy joke, we spoke about workers’ rights and health care.
Today, I remember that conversation and I can hear his unmistakable voice ringing in my ear. Ted Kennedy will always be in my heart—and today I mourn him but, unlike 1963 and 1968, I am not hopeless. On this day, I am filled with hope and a fighting determination to see Sen. Kennedy’s dream of health care reform become America’s reality.
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6 Comments
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In order to have a voice you have to pay for obama’s site. Nice to know the move to drop all VA benefits for the older veterans. I guess we will know in a week about the loss of entitlement programs.
This is about Senator Kennedy and true health care reform.
Here is a short vignette about Senator Ted Kennedy. I met him in 1973. I was a fraternal delegate to the First Constitutional Convention of the United Farm Workers. It was held in Fresno, CA. Senator Kennedy was a most deserving honored guest. He was, after all, a warrior for human and civil rights, and peace. He was a strong defender of workers’ rights, and was an activist on behalf of farm workers. I got to chat with him for a few minutes. He was engaging, he shared his beliefs, and he listened to mine.
One might say we were “simpatico”.
Working class America has lost a dear friend and advocate.
Yes, he spoke of health care for all. In a 1969 speech on Medicare he said, “We must begin to move now to establish a comprehensive national health insurance program, capable of bringing the same amount and high quality of health care to every man, woman, and child in the United States.” He did
not, of course, envision that we’d still be “talking” about establishing a national health insurance program here in 2009. The power and clout of the medical-profits industry has stifled true reform. Its “generosity” to lawmakers helped its cause.
No bill currently under consideration will do what Senator Kennedy called for 40 years ago. Some people are saying otherwise, but it just isn’t so. (For the real lowdown, it might be helpful if people actually read the draft legislation.)
In the debate and discussion taking place in the here and now, good people are saying that we must be “pragmatic”. The trouble with the use of the word “pragmatic” is that it is being defined within the narrow parameters of a status quo that has existed for 40 years. The working classes’ parameters
of pragmatism must be based on need, and transformational politics. Problems must be solved now. If they are not, those of us who are still alive will be “discussing” status quo “pragmatism” 40 years from now that will then be 80 years old. The draft legislation under discussion today is not transformational! Hoping and wishing will not change that sad fact.
It will take more than keyboard activism. It will require us to leave our comfortable cocoons of complacency and instead take to the streets and join in peaceful protests until health care justice is won.
It is my hope that Senator Kennedy’s name will not be attached to any sham health care legislation. It would dishonor his lifelong advocacy for true reform.
We’ve lost a hero. It is left to us “to establish a comprehensive national health insurance program, capable of bringing the same amount and high quality of health care to every man, woman, and child in the United States” – not 40 years from now – but NOW!
“Health care costs are being treated as if they were largely an economic problem, but they are not. To be solved they will have to be treated as an ethical problem”- Lester Thurow, PhD
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most
shocking and inhumane”-Martin Luther King, Jr.
What I find most troubling is that the role the Kennedys played in bringing national attention to the issue of US poverty/causes of economic disparities and the need for a social safety net (i.e., welfare) seems to have either been forgotten or censored out of the public discussion. Contrary to current public opinion as guided by by modern corporate/political influence, our “failed welfare system” actually enabled some 80% of AFDC recipients to quit welfare and work their way out of poverty within five years. I would call that a shining success! When public opinion was turned against using public funds to aid anyone but the richest, Sen. Kennedy didn’t give up on poverty, but turned his attention to one of the leading causes of US poverty — the inability to access adequate health care. A point Sen. Kennedy made that has been pushed out of the public discussion concerns how the failure to address poverty affects all of us because of its impact on the whole of the US economy and quality of life — a topic not well-suited for sound-bites.
What I find most troubling is that the role the Kennedys played in bringing national attention to the issue of US poverty/causes of economic disparities and the need for a social safety net (i.e., welfare) seems to have either been forgotten or censored out of the public discussion. Contrary to current public opinion as guided by by modern corporate/political influence, our “failed welfare system” actually enabled some 80% of AFDC recipients to quit welfare and work their way out of poverty within five years. I would call that a shining success! When public opinion was turned against using public funds to aid anyone but the richest, Sen. Kennedy didn’t give up on poverty, but turned his attention to one of the leading causes of US poverty — the inability to access adequate health care. A point Sen. Kennedy made that has been pushed out of the public discussion concerns how the failure to address poverty affects all of us because of its impact on the whole of the US economy and quality of life — a topic not well-suited for sound-bites
His dream will only live on if the Democrats give up this illusion that they have to get Republican votes. Kennedy compromised while not giving up the core principal. Anything with out a “public option” (which should be termed “Medicare for all”) will in fact be a slap in the face of anything he held dear.
My own mother, who would be 79 years old today, was a Union Rep for the telephone operators in Brooklyn, NY, working for NY Bell, many years ago, int he 1950s. She always supported any Union protests and actions,, no matter whaere we lived, or who we passed on the road. Vibrant and tenatios, she fought for what she felt was due her workers, even when her future father in law was Management. All people are equal, and even in the early 1950′s she had black friends, and fought for htem when need be. SHe faced much dissent within her own family, but didn’t care what others thought, and knew what was right- and distantly related to the Fitzgerald/Kennedy family, felt the same draw to social service. Though she was divorced with 3 very young children, she worked hard selling Avon door to door, and when she got out of poverty, with her new husband(gift from God), they helped create a Poverty Org in NJ, and taught the three of us kids to give back.
Sometimes it was hard to be part of a family where those in need came first, and we kids came second, but as we grew, we also realized how blessed we were, and have tried to give back to society, without reservation, in any way we can. Keep up the great work Unions do!!