In my view, this is not extremism on the left. This is what the American people support in poll after poll. Support the right to a job. Support living wages. Support real climate action. Support small community-based banks that make loans available to every day people and small businesses, not these too-big-to-fail banks that rip us off, that crash the economy at taxpayer expense. Support a public-option healthcare system, not Obamacare, which has been a boondoggle for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
I came from a very comfortable, middle-class family living in Highland Park, Illinois.Really growing up in a Jewish community with a fabulous public school.
The idea here is for communities to decide how they meet these criteria for becoming sustainable economically, ecologically and socially.Through a community decision-making process. And exactly how that would be configured, you know, remains to be established. The process of community budgeting, participatory budgeting, is one model that's been suggested.
I was in a community where we were out demonstrating. We were holding vigils against the Vietnam War, in - like, starting in around '67, I think, before it really exploded as a big movement.
There are other forms of community-based decision-making, not unlike, you know, our elected bodies, except that the intention here is to exclude pay-to-play players from determining how these decisions are made.
I became really interested in the community health care movement and community health centers, which Boston was sort of a leading center for.
In terms of what is the solution is going forward, in my view, it is the grassroots human-rights groups - both Israeli and Palestinian - that are doing exactly what needs to be done, which is building trust, developing relationships and building that sense of common community which is essential if we're going to figure out how to move forward.
I was really interested in how a health care center could also be a center for the arts and for music, and for bringing together sort of the isolated elements of the community.
I affiliated with Physicians for Social Responsibility early on, and actually, their major thrust wasn't nearly as much around community health centers, although that was Jack Geiger's thing.
African Americans, in particular, saw their cumulative wealth crash. They used to have 10 cents on the dollar of the average white family. That 10 cents on the dollar that the African American family used to have crashed down to 5 cents on the dollar, given the focus of predatory lending on the African American community and the degree to which they were really devastated by the foreclosure crisis. So yeah, I think there is a lot of disappointment out there.
I think, for one, the LGBTQ community is just a paragon of leadership, of standing up and saying "these are our rights, and we deserve them." As a model of activism, it's so wonderful what the community has been able to achieve towards goals like marriage equality.
I mean, I really loved the mix of personal health and, kind of, community health and justice, and I really saw how they were inseparable.
I am honored to have Ajamu Baraka as a running mate. I think he brings enormous credibility in the disenfranchised communities, not just African American but Latino, Asian American and Native American. He is a recognized advocate for racial justice, economic justice and human rights, and I think this conversation is only just begun. It is very important.
While the President [Barack Obama] did a good thing when he said he personally supported equal marriage, he then quickly backed away and said that he wasn't going to do anything about it - that it was a state matter, and that he wasn't going to interfere, as opposed to being than being a real advocate for equality across the board in marriage. He also, I think two weeks prior to that statement, refused to sign an executive order to establish equal rights in the workplace for the LGBT community.
I was at Harvard Medical School and there were not a lot of, kind of, community health options, and I wound up at - sort of in Harvard Community Health Center for various reasons.
We really are, we represent, the core of basic American community values. And the name of the game is getting the word out, you know, and they are quaking in their boots, which, of course, is why they will not pass ranked choice voting.
I think actually under scrutiny, Hillary's [Clinton] promotion of equal wages at poverty level and of healthcare for children but not for their families, of childcare when there are no jobs, it just doesn't cut it. I think women need a real agenda of justice because women are care-givers, because women are instruments of justice for our families and for our communities.
I was recruited to sort of be the doc to advocate for communities that were struggling with polluting incinerators, polluting coal plants, toxic waste sites, etc.
Because Ajamu Baraka speaks in the language of his community, and makes no bones about it, he really invites in a whole new demographic of voters who have been locked out? - African-American and black and brown people and indigenous people? - who have felt like this system has no place for them. And he is unapologetic about standing up for the rights of the oppressed people and against colonialism and against imperialism.
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