People Power Healthcare Campaign

 

So, last time, I talked about how Canada's healthcare system, specifically single-payer insurance, public hospitals and unionized public sector workforces, were all being deliberately undermined through under-funding, de-listing and privatization (including PPP's) by neo-liberal politicians in thrall to profit-seeking privatizers.  I said that to oppose this we need to construct a legislature-ready plan for the restoration of federal-provincial funding and regulations to bring us back to the status-quo as it prevailed in the 1980's.  This plan was to be presented to the federal and provincial governments as a non-negotiable demand.  Concerns about how to fund it are addressed by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that says that governments spend money on whatever it is that they want and that taxation is used only to stabilize the money supply.  Considering how much the bloated incomes of the wealthy is based on useless, unproductive behaviour [including monopolistic price-gouging] and how much of their wealth is simply hoarded (often illegally overseas) or is used to monopolize real-estate and further drive up the cost of living, heavier taxation of the wealthy will NOT have any adverse economic effects whatsoever.

But how do we achieve this?  Well, writing yet another article or book about how bad things have gotten isn't going to do it.  Marching in the streets shouting incantations that have no power isn't going to do it.  Bitching and whining online or offline with like-minded people isn't going to do it.  Petitioning corrupt psychopaths isn't going to do it.  Healthcare workers going on strike (the most effective recourse we have at the moment) isn't going to do it.  Oh yeah, replacing one neo-liberal government with another neo-liberal government isn't going to do it.

Let's just pause for a second and think about what I wrote in that last paragraph.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?????  Shouting "Hey-hey! Ho-ho! [Insert-name-here] has got to go!" Has not, will not, cannot do it.  So stop thinking that it will.  None of those inane chants have any power to affect things in material reality.  I feel the need to linger on this point because so many on the Left are mortally addicted to magical thinking and this needs to be called-out and it needs to stop.

So what can we do?  Well, as I said in this foundational post, we the people DO have power in numbers but we are divided.  Also, those who call themselves "activists" have continued to pursue the same futile strategies and tactics that have failed to have an impact over decades of use.  The Left only offers vague generalities about "stopping" this or that neo-liberal atrocity, without having a clear plan for achieving anything positive.  The Left doesn't know what it wants and wouldn't know how to get where it wanted to go even if it knew where that was, and, therefore the geneal public doesn't know what to do.

It is my belief that [and I've said this numerous times over recent years] in many respects ordinary people are neither stupid or selfish.  People who can't find their country on a map of the world and whose historical memory of the society they live in doesn't extend past five years (if that) and who don't think about the poverty and oppression of others are, I think, often simply cognitively incapable of thinking beyond their own immediate concerns of self, family, and friends, and the tasks they need to complete in order to provide for those concerns.  [Which can all be accomplished without knowing where Canada is on a map of the world.] But within those bounds, in their jobs, in their relationships, they utilize considerable practical and emotional intelligence.  Furthermore, if the television blasts them with images of suffering war victims, or natural disaster victims, or if they encounter something like a hit-and-run, they will feel empathy for the distressed and try to do what they can for them.  And, with something as important as their own or their loved-ones' access to necessary healthcare, OF COURSE they are interested.  It's just that (as I've said) the people who would presume to lead them to defend public healthcare don't really know how to do that themselves.

The Left is correct to blame the corporate (and corporate subservient media such as the CBC) for masking the simple truths of healthcare privatization and for confusing matters with pro-corporate propaganda.  As always, the extreme example is the US news media's seeming inability to discover that other OECD countries spend less on healthcare overall than the USA and that they obtain superior social outcomes.  (This is when they don't outright lie about it.)  Canada's corporate newsrooms do what they can get away with in this regard.

So, beyond complaining about this, what can the Left do about it?  Well, notice that I stated the importance of a clear, positive goal as the start of this campaign.  This is something to rally around.  This is something real that can be offered to people when they want to know what they're supposed to fight for.  This is something that will constitute a clear and present danger to those who would profiteer from humans' need for medical care.  This is something concrete that we can demand from our politicians.  This is something that we can explain the benefits and the costs of to people when they ask.  This is something the corporate media and other propagandists will attack and which we will have to be able to defend through debate.  (And that includes the trashing of the inevitably stupid and fraudulent arguments such scumbags will produce.)

So, on social media, a people's media campaign criticizing under-funded hospitals, the reduction of hospital beds as the population has grown, the de-listing of services, the under-staffing, the wait-lists, can all be mentioned, perhaps with interviews with the victims or their families.  There can be profiles of the villains of these stories.   Find the corporate records of these companies or individuals or how politicians personally benefitted from doing their bidding.  And then THE PLAN can be shown as the great knight in shining armour to save us all from this nightmare.

Create these little films or memes or what-not and everyone shares them on social media.  All social media.  All the time.

As well (and this is something I've talked about in my proposed campaigns against stephen harper and Doug Ford) the Left has to be prepared to spend several months going out in pairs out on the streets and knocking on doors to talk directly to the people we complain the media won't let us get to.  TALK TO PEOPLE.  Talk to them about the definite plan that you have and hour tactics for achieving that plan.  First of all: Inform them.  Second of all: Assess their level of agreement and commitment.  Which is to say; will they sign the petition demanding this?  Will they subscribe to an email list for updates?  Will they agree to circulate the petition themselves?  Would they agree to come to or host a talk outlining more information and more actions that people can take?

Third: A campaign of escalating actions.  This can include rallies that can include the usual sob-stories and shouts of "Shame! Shame!" but which will differ in that there is a clear GOAL being articulated and clear outlining of actual further tactics, including occupations of government and corporate offices.  The hounding of both the individual corporate and politicial actors who want to destroy our public healthcare system.  I can see that retired people with lots of free time can work in an organized fashion to find out where these neo-liberal bloodsuckers are going to give some self-serving speech and show up and heckle them.

Look.  I'm not being paid to write this.  And, god help me, I don't really think anything will come of this.  Because nobody reads this and even if they did, the odds are they'd stare dully at the screen in incomprehension. [See why my campaigns against harper and Ford never got off the ground.]

Anyway, ... I forgot to state that once the petition got enough signatures, that it should be respectfully delivered to the neo-liberal politicians.  They should be given a chance to show that they can see reason.  They should be made to understood that there WILL be real-world consequences should they fail to implement our proposal.  It is only AFTER they fail to do this that the heckling and hounding and the occupations would begin.

As with my proposed campaigns against harper and Ford, there will be escalations from there should the neo-liberal politicians feel more devoted to their sugar-daddies than they do to democracy.  In all of the MONTHS that such a big undertaking for such a BIG goal is happening, we will be educating people and assessing the support for, such things as a general strike and a tax revolt.  Once the general public has become aware of, understands and supports the PEOPLE'S PLAN FOR PUBLIC HEALTHCARE, more attention can be given to making them understand what it means if the neo-liberals reject it.  This includes the practical impact of the neo-liberals' end-goal of the nightmare of USA-style healthcare here in Canada and the immorality of those who desire to impose such suffering on us.

You can't organize a general strike of any sort in a week.  You can't just post on Fhazebuck "Empty the workplaces! Fill the streets!" and expect anything more than a mild dopamine rush. (And that only if you're stupid enough.)

And while you're preparing people mentally for a general strike, you must also know how you plan on implementing it and sustaining it, so that you can communicate this to the people.  You must know beforehand what you want to do in order to avoid flailing around like an idiot throwing shit together at the last minute and losing all credibility in people's eyes.  The same goes for the tax-revolt.  And any other real-world consequences we might think to impose.

We have to be aware of both OUR power and THEIR power.  We live in a pseudo-democracy which is, for all practical purposes, more of an oligarchy.  Within such a context we have to awaken people power.  And we must do so without illusions and fairy tales.  We will have to fight.  And as we're fighting we have to tell one another: "This is what democracy looks like."

I think I'll write my next post about possible oligarchic resistance to this initiative.  If anyone is reading this, you can check back in if you're interested and see if I insert any links into the post while I'm constructing the next post.  (And maybe I'll actually proofread it and fix my mistakes too!)