In a message dated 2/23/2010 10:12:22 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, _jann...@gmail.com_ (mailto:jann...@gmail.com) writes: Until health care is seen as a basic right of citizenship (or residence), the government can always deny it to this or that part of the population. These workers will go down fighting for something they think they deserve, not what they think Americans or human beings deserve. Even if they win in their struggle, 40-80 million Americans have already lost. CJ Comment I have not been detained enough in describing the actual struggle and process as it took place. RETIREES FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE has as its core Conyers health care bill 676, which proposes to provide health care for everyone in the United States of North America. Our union - UAW, has passively stated in its documents at every Constitutional Convention, its desire for such a system of national health care in America. This call for a system of national health care is perhaps twenty years old. The problem arises because there is never any union activity to realize this goal. I do not want to get lost in all the details but the system of health care for auto workers, was owned and controlled by the auto companies as profits centers. For instance the largest system of hospitals in Detroit remains the Henry Ford hospital to this very day. Thus, there has not been a historic impulse arising from within the organized autoworkers for a all inclusive health care system as an answer to autoworkers health care concerns. When retirees lost our company sponsored eye and dental coverage and as the company pushed to detach retirees from company sponsored health care, retired workers sought to combine together to retain their traditional heath care coverage. This process of combining together is in its first phase and began with four, maybe six people. These older workers retain a sense of organization, militancy and connections with the historic communist current as a part of their age and generations inheritance. What was a hand full of people in six months became meetings of 30 - 40 people, with presidents of Local Union retirees groups meeting. Ten months ago resistance to passing out our literature was faced at various local union meeting in around the city. Some union leaders sought to shout us down in union meetings or prohibit us from disturbing literature in the meetings, although we were polite and respectful and always asked. Then the threat came, which we face and replied "we are fuckng armed and can start dying right fucking now." As the crisis deepened and an interest in the new VEBA plans rose we became popular and all was forgiven about our "anti-union" attitude. The word slowly spread that some of us were meeting on Monday’s at Local 22. People started showing up. We started taking part in all meeting and protest for national health care and began a "running education" on the health care crisis. The point trying to be made in the "same page article" by Sam Webb is how to fight things out in real time and why it is impossible to fight on the level of fighting a system. Condemning Obama and the Obama administration is an act of futility and nothing more than sectarianism in the context of actually trying to organize small groups of people to express their struggle for survival. The struggle of the workers - proletarian, always passes through phases embodying how individuals and the collective mind perceives its rights. This perception of "rights" is shaped by and a product of the era of the bourgeoisie. The struggle of the proletariat in all countries is in fact a struggle over shares of the social products, services and for greater political liberty. As a general rule most strike struggle - not all, go down in defeat but one must fight or die. What is different about this new emerging fight is the perception by these older workers that their struggle is that of a class. Yes, this perception is still fuzzy, but the retired workers combining under the banner of a single payer system means transcending the narrow bound of "my individual needs." We are in for exciting and glorious times. Lt us march on til victory is one/won. WL
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