Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren
As I started writing this commentary, the U.S. was suddenly jolted by the actions of a new breed of activists who feel the wall at their backs. Los Angeles was jarred by the kind of massive student demonstrations that the city has literally not seen since the sixties. For several days, tens of thousands of kids staged school walk-outs, marching along the freeways, stopping traffic. Law enforcement and school authorities were outraged, many students were arrested, and many people criticized the demonstrations. The movement spread to other cities as kids protested the hawkish position by many Americans on the immigrant problem. Hawks feel that all our national problems would be solved if illegals were kicked out and our borders turned into a Berlin Wall.
Today our country needs activism, for sure. Every person who cares about the survival of democracy—and that includes a fair shake for immigrants—needs to act on that conviction. And it’s not just our democratic well-being that is at stake. The personal health of Americans is at stake as well. We need activism from every American who is concerned about the shoddy state of much of our medical research, and the fatal crumbling of our healthcare system.
Our news media are proof of this apathy—for every story about the fifty million Americans who don’t have health insurance, there are two stories about who’s winning on American Idol and the latest serial killing and celebrity scandal. Tabloid news thrills are making us incapable of feeling the up-the-spine chills of deadly reality. TV advertising shows us a glossy Pleasantville world in which happy-looking people can always get their hands on the right drug or diet pill or sleep aid.
A recent nationwide survey done by the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement reports the shocking—but not surprising—fact that most Americans, not just poor Americans, get poor-quality healthcare. An AP story put it this way: “Americans—rich, poor, black, white—get roughly equal treatment, but it’s woefully mediocre for all.” Not only that, but the most basic “care” comes with an ever higher price tag.
Generally people become real “activists” only when they know their backs are against the wall. They have nothing to lose, so they act. That’s what activism is…actions. The civil rights movement of the 1960s exploded into existence because black people reached the point where they felt they had nothing left to lose, and started marching and boycotting. When enough people had died in Vietnam, the sixties peace movement started. When women had finally eaten enough dirt, the feminist movement was born.
Hawks are missing a point that the kids see very clearly: There is no easy solution to the illegal immigrant problem. There are an estimated ten to twelve million illegals whose presence here has an enormous effect—on agriculture, education, taxes, wages, healthcare, etc. Illegals are automatically guilty of a federal crime mandating six months in jail and possible deportation. Yet families will be torn apart by hawkish legislation and law enforcement…a point that the student demonstrators are trying to make. Thousands of children are not illegal aliens themselves—they were born here and therefore are “legal,” but they will see “illegal” family members arrested and jailed or deported. Growing numbers of legislators, like Sen. Feinstein of California, are finally seeing this human face of the problem and trying to propose reasonable solutions.
Our national healthcare tragedy is on a scale even bigger than the illegal immigrant tragedy. The numbers are even more staggering. More than ten million children have no health insurance. Many elderly people get poor healthcare; statistics show that many die sooner as a result. The cost to the country is surely more staggering than even the immigrant problem. But you wouldn’t know it from the tabloid news headlines or the TV ads—or the torpid performance of lawmakers.
Even a numerically small group points up our national collapse in healthcare. Our nation swore it was going to lick AIDS globally, but it’s so mismanaged and corrupt that it can’t even take care of 800 PWAs who are currently languishing on state and local waiting lists for treatment—even as $100 million in unspent Ryan White treatment funds was returned unused to the Treasury after Congress failed recently to reauthorize the Act.
I think it’s amazing—this explosion of the first sixties-style demonstrations in nearly fifty years. Does it mean that Americans will finally react to feeling the healthcare wall at their backs as well? Since marches, boycotts, etc., is historically what it took to shake our lawmakers out of their slumber?
Author of fiction bestsellers and provocative commentary, Patricia Nell Warren has her writings archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.
May 2006
Copyright (c) 2006 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved.
