> That immense number _potentially_ activated in
> the demand for decent health care won't move until they _see_
> possibilities _in action_ -- which involves, of course, having
> substantial numbers of people in action. Different or more effective
> agit/prop or better proposals won't help here, because there is no one
> to listen to (or even know the existence of) those proposals until they
> see activity around them. I don't know the solution for this, though I
> suspect that initial impetus will take place _within_ some movement
> (such as an anti-war movement) which has more imediate attraction. (I
> suspect that in 1970 no one would have paid much attention to the
> drum-beating for Earth Day, which sort of kicked off the Environmental
> Movement, if they had not been accusomed to such public activity by the
> civil-rights and anti-war movement. It may be the same with a movement
> to demand national health care.)
I don't agree that different or more effective proposals won't help. The last proposal to change the health care system that came from someone in a position to actually do something about it was the Clinton's Rube Goldberg machine; we will certainly have to do better than that.
I don't quite see how a health-care movement is going to come out of the anti-war movement (especially given that the anti-war movement doesn't look to me to have nearly as much support as you think it does). I think a lot more people are interested in changing the health care system right now than are "anti-war" (especially if you define "anti-war" as the "out now" position). To get a good heath-care movement going, someone is going to have to come up with a radical, easily understood and explained plan and put a lot of money and effort into promoting it. For example, national health care, aka "socialized medicine."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt