Nathan Newman wrote:
>Do the single payer advocates really think it would be better to drop
>resources for those two campaigns and divert them to a single payer fight
>that has little chance of success?
-This is a classic bit of your propaganda mode: create false -all-or-nothing, black-or-white choices. SEIU is pushing its own -health care scheme, trying to organize janitors, and trying to create -a new union federation all at once. Obviously they think they can -walk and chew gum at the same time. What's with this "drop -everything" bit?
SEIU is basically collaborating on whatever health care campaigns are viable in each state, including endorsing single payer in a scattering of states where there's some critical mass. But most of the union movement has embraced fair share health campaigns for this year so that's where their putting their efforts.
So which of the projects that SEIU is already engaged in do you think they should drop to mount more serious support for single payer? You evaded the question. Yes, SEIU is doing a lot, and they've also dropped various projects over time to be able to pursue the ones they are. So again, which projects should SEIU drop in order to make single payer a serious campaign?
Unless you say what they should drop, telling them to spend money on a multi-million dollar camapign like single payer is ridiculous.
-And what's with this "little chance of success"? There's little -chance of successfully organizing Wal-Mart any time in the next -decade, but lots of resources are going into that.
The Florida campaign has already begun organizing workers and getting results in changing Wal-Mart's policies around part-time workers, the Maryland bill has been passed, Wal-Mart's have been blocked in cities ranging from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, and Wal-Mart has come out for raising the minimum wage under pressure from the attack.
In fact, very few resources have gone into NLRB elections and recognition fights in the last year or so, because that hasn't been the immediate goal. Instead, because a direct majority recognition campaign was seen as a poor use of resources, the unions involved decided fighting for more intermediate goals was a more viable strategy than an all-or-nothing waste of resources.
Pretty much their same evaluation of going for fair share bills rather than single payer.
It's all about resources and goals.
-Polls show great -potential support for single-payer. I know how huge the odds are -against it, but it's far from hopeless.
In the longer-term, not hopeless at all. But spending resources campaigning for it directly is a bit of a waste when other campaigns along the way to universal coverage are more viable right now.
-Should someone have advised -Rosa Parks that her movement had little chance of success too? Betty -Friedan?
And obviously, Rosa Parks was a sell-out since she did not immediately demand the end of all private segregation, but instead started on public segregation of transportation. No movement was more incremental than the civil rights movement, and the movement was no less radical for a tactical intelligence in picking fights they could win step-by-step.
-- Nathan Newman