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National radio commentator, author, and speaker Jim Hightower will bring his unique combination of political insight and down-home humor to Busboys and Poets Restaurant on March 17 to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Capital Area members of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and help kick off PDA's “Healthcare NOT Warfare” national campaign.
Also featured will be Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Co-Chair of the 'Healthcare NOT Warfare' campaign and author of HR676, Enhanced Medicare for All, to create a universal, single-payer system to guarantee healthcare to all Americans. Norman Solomon, new PDA Advisory Board member and co-chair of the campaign will also appear. The event will begin at 6 p.m. in the Langston Hughes Room at the restaurant, which is at 2021 14th St. NW in Washington, DC.
This event is a fundraiser, open to the public. Admission will be $60.00. Members of the media are invited. Interviews with speakers before and after the event may be arranged.
“It's great to have Jim Hightower here for St. Patrick's Day,” said PDA Executive Director Tim Carpenter. “If anyone besides St. Patrick can drive a few of the snakes out of this town, it's Jim.” Hightower, a former two-term Texas State Agriculture Commissioner, has "spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be -- consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.”
In his latest book, “Swim Against the Current,” Hightower writes: "The [healthcare] industry is controlled by insurance middlemen, HMO chains, and rip-off drug makers --all putting profits over patients. The industry's lobbyists impose public policies that leave 47 million of our fellow Americans with no health plan whatsoever, while tens of millions more hold miserly plans that provide very little balm in times of need. The industry has created such a screwed-up system that we Americans spend more each year on health care ($6,280 per capita) than people in any other country, yet the treatment we get ranks a pathetic 37th in the world." He highlights the efforts of activists to bring about fundamental reform of this system and asks, "Who would've thought that in the moral morass of what is now called the health 'industry,' the flower of social responsibility could still bloom?"
PDA's 'Healthcare NOT Warfare' campaign is designed to pressure Congress into ending the Iraq Occupation and redirecting some of the funds now being squandered on that adventure into a much-needed universal healthcare program at home. PDA Chapters in California, Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere also have organized events to promote the 'Healthcare NOT Warfare' campaign.
Order tickets here.
Sign the "Healthcare NOT Warfare" petition.
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