Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist, CNA/NNOC

CHICAGO --  Last week, Americans gathered all around the country to protest the for-profit, health insurance industry which has turned our healthcare system into their own little playground of greed and graft.  In San Francisco, thousands gathered.  In other cities, hundreds, and in still more, scores of people cared enough to stand up and speak out for healthcare justice.

I am home in Chicago now.  And I am reflecting on an incredible week for the single payer healthcare movement. One incident at the close of the San Francisco protest event will be etched in my mind and others' minds who saw it for a very long time.

I walked slowly along one shaded wall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco with a few of our nurses -- we were all pretty hot but very happy to have been a part of this protest. We sipped water and waited patiently as the crowd broke up.

We noticed a tiny, elderly woman who was hunched over, carrying her protest sign and shuffling quietly along the windows of the Moscone Center.  Inside the convention center, some of the insurance company groupies were sitting in the air-conditioned lobby, sipping sodas and other cool drinks and watching the protest break up outside.