This diary entry is used to promote an idea originally posted in this diary. The basic idea is that we decide to light a candle at 8pm local time in support of real and meaningful health care reform, and that we keep doing this, ever night, until real reform is achieved.
Obviously one candle is not much, but it is a start.
UPDATE 8:28 EST
Well we did it me and my family, but I figured, if I'm gonna be standing out in the cold for 10 mins., I ain't doing it just for HC reform. What I really want is systemic reform. I'm standing outside with a candle for nothing less than a change in the U.S. Constitution, so that power is not reserved for the rich but is given to all.
A Start
I have no base, no net-roots, no blog to whip millions into action. All I know is that our healthcare bleeds unnecessary billions for no result. It is a system which at its heart is a system that says that the common public good must be suborned to private greed and excesses. I want real reform: if not single payer, then a clear and tangible path towards single payer.
I do not want a system that is a transfer of wealth from the middle-class into the pockets of for-profit monopolistic health insurance companies.
It is for this reason that I, my family, and anyone else that I can get to join me will stand outside our houses with a candle this evening.
I Know it is Small
Perhaps this simple protest is fated to the dustbin of history. Perhaps no one else will join me tonight. Perhaps I will be alone in a wilderness of apathy, and fear.
Yet I hope. I hope because me, and millions of people like me stood up, and fought, against the inherent bigotry, small mindedness, and corruption that is the Republican Party. We fought by cold-calling, by going door-to-door, by speaking with our spouses, friends, and families about why it was so important that change (and the change candidate Obama represented) needed to happen now.
Some may feel disheartened by the lack of change that the current administration exhibits, and others may feel disheartened by the lack of change represented by the current health care bill. It is for this reason that we must stand once more.
Perhaps
Perhaps a candle is not much.
Perhaps we will not accomplish change.
Perhaps this is doomed to failure.
But I do know that no change will ever be accomplished by our acquiescence, or our consent to the inherent rise of a plutocracy run by corporations and their interests.
I will stand up tonight. I will brave the 15 degrees Fahrenheit weather, and shiver and shake. I will light a candle in the hope that the nation that my children grow up in will be more free than it is now. I will light a candle in the hopes that the needs of the many will triumph over the greed of the few. I will light a candle tonight in the hopes that real health care reform will become a reality.
I will not stop until real health-care reform takes place.
I hope you join me.