If right-wing protesters are going to show up and yell at their elected officials during town hall meetings, left-wing activists need to start coordinating with those representatives to provide "cover" for them says a 4-page memo distributed by Health Care for America Now!, a group supporting President Obama's recommended plans.
Conservative groups who help mobilize like-minded people to oppose the legislation have outraged Democrats, left-leaning think tanks and blogs, in light their success in spurring contentious town hall meetings that have been filmed an uploaded to the Internet. Much to their chargrin, video clips of conservative activists in Pennsylvania and Texas chanting and booing their elected officials have become a symbol of public angst over President Obama's agenda.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has even accused conservative organizations of distributing "rent-a-mob instructions" on how to protest the President's health care reform plans. As evidence she pointed to a mailer from group called Right Principles.
To help push back HCAN, whose members include the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now! AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the NEA and National Council of La Raza, has some instructions of their own. The memo, emailed to HCAN's 120 field staffers in 44 different states on Aug. 4, encourages activists to contact elected officials before public events to plan ways to preempt the opposition.
"Ask the Member's staff what would be most helpful and talk through a strategy for making sure the right messages don't get drowned out by chaotic protesters," wrote Field Director Margarida Jorge. The memo's introduction says she has "years of union organizing experience" and has "laid out tactics for people attending town halls to follow to blunt the right."
Another one of Ms. Jorge's tips is to "Address the MOC directly with a positive message: Remember, these Members need cover and they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots in these meetings."
HCAN Communications Director Jacki Schechner said protecting elected officials who support their favored reforms was necessary given the contentious nature of some town hall meetings
"People are trying to bait them [elected officials] into having something so they can get yelled at and they don't want to feel unsafe and uncomfortable," Ms. Schechner said. "They don't want to put themselves out to be bait for pushing and shoving, that's not dignified discourse."
By Amanda Carpenter on Aug. 6, 2009 into The Back Story
Seriously? I think we need health care..i know I [ a small business owner] do. After all we have a 'socialist military that works pretty well, fire, police, legal services. It is rediculous that the greatest country in the world does not havea health care system!!
ReplyDeleteThe insurance companies are completely corrupt!
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ReplyDeleteThis country does need healthcare reform!
ReplyDeleteTort reform, insurance fraud reform, fraud reform of Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran's Healthcare and Indian Health Benefits... is what we need to reform our healthcare system while retaining the best medical care in the world. And if you investigate and checkout how those programs presently (and historically) work, Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran's Health Benefits and Indian Health Benefits you'd run before you wanted the government running all healthcare!!!
If we truly initiated tort reform and fraud reform, allowed small businesses and the self-employed to form co-ops to purchase health insurance, allow interstate health insurance purchases and portable health insurance, we could improve our quality of health care, insure the uninsured minus the illegal aliens and pretty much maintain the present costs.
Obamacare will increase costs, lower quality of care, cause doctor shortages and cause the rationing of healthcare... as it has in every country that has socialized medicine, which this will be... whether they pull it off in one, two or three steps!
I have read the entire bill, HR 3200, twice and outlined it the second time. Plus I read everything that I can find that has been written on both sides of the argument about healthcare reform and about socialized medicine in other countries as well as the writings by the Obama's scary advisors like Ezikiel Emanual (Rham Emanual's brother), Cass Sunstein and the Science Czar John Holdern.
I have also compared my outline of HR 3200 with that of several doctors and an attorney... and they are the same.
As far as fire, police and legal services... the federal government does not run fire and police and our legal system is bogged down. The programs they do run and oversee like the Post Office, Social Security and the programs listed about are a shambles and full of waste and fraud!
And I have family in Europe... and their medical care is rationed and scary compared to ours!
The greatest thing about America is our Freedom and Team Obama is on a campaign to take that away. And without freedom you have nothing!
Read the bill (HR-3200), the writing of Ezikiel Emanual, Cass Sunstein, John Holdern and even Obama himself as well as the book Catastrophe and others listed on this site, and you will surely change your position!
There are some great (simple ideas) that will overhaul our healthcare system suggested by sitting and past Republican and Moderate Democratic Congressman and Senators that the Pelosi/Reid gang won't even look at. There are several governors who have some great ideas that have even already been tried that are working or that they can use to learn from their mistakes that are also being ignored. And Safeway and some other company CEO's testified before Congress about their healthcare programs and not one of their ideas has been incorporated into HR 3200 or any of the 4 other bills, that I've been able to find.
This is a power grab and an ideological grab... not healthcare reform to benefit the average American!
I passed out my outline of the bill in our community and with a two-day notice got 300+ people to attend a discussion meeting on healthcare... and half those people had read the bill or were well on their way through it.
I have also personally been to tea parties and a healthcare town hall. There were no "right-wing" organized groups there or mobs. There were scared average American individuals. But the left is now sending in groups like ACORN, SEIU, La Raza and others that they hire and pay... Like the SEIU (union) thugs who rousted about blocked entry of a man who had cancer and his daughter who just wanted to ask some questions at a townhall over the weekend.
Ask Marion~