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Rep. Joe Neal speaks to the crowd on behalf of SC lawmakers who support Medicaid expansion
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around!
South Carolinians to rally at State House Jan. 14!
Outraged by lawmakers’ refusal to fund education and health care, South Carolinians from across the state will rally at noon on the south side of the SC State House Jan. 14 to demand that lawmakers quit grandstanding and start governing.
The Truthful Tuesday Coalition – a grassroots campaign led by members of the faith community and advocacy organizations – is working to hold lawmakers accountable and to help the public understand the truth: South Carolina is not too broke to fund these core services. It simply lacks the political leadership to properly fund and manage responsible government.
“These are not political issues,” said Rev. Brenda Kneece, Executive Minister of the SC Christian Action Council. “These are moral issues we are called on to address.” The Council’s 16 denominations have endorsed the rally.
Gov. Nikki Haley led the opposition to reclaiming billions of our federal tax dollars to provide health care for South Carolina’s poorest citizens by refusing to participate in “Obamacare.” These federal funds would have expanded Medicaid to 250,000 people living below the poverty level.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was intended to provide health insurance to working people by subsidizing policies for people earning less than $45,000 a year, and to provide free coverage to those earning less than $11,490.
Refusing $1.4 billion to expand Medicaid this year means our state’s citizens will continue to have difficulty in accessing affordable care for costly chronic conditions and in accessing the ACA’s “essential health benefits” — not the least of which is cost-effective preventive care, warned Dr. David Keely, who heads the state’s chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
The SC Hospital Association estimates that the $11.7 billion in federal funding being refused through 2020 would create 44,000 jobs and generate enough tax revenue to completely offset the state’s 10 percent match required in 2020.
Dr. Robert Oldendick, Executive Director of the USC Institute for Public Service and Policy Research, reviewed a Harvard School of Public Health study on the consequences of states refusing the Medicaid expansion. “The study concluded that every 176 adults covered by Medicaid prevents one death each year. So if we assume that all 250,000 eligible South Carolinians were covered, about 1,420 deaths would be prevented annually.”
“It is unacceptable that our lawmakers are willing to throw our neighbors under the bus to make political points,” said SC Progressive Network Cochair Virginia Sanders, who works as one of the Network’s trained navigators helping people secure insurance through the health exchange. “It’s heart-breaking to tell people they are too poor to receive help. These are human beings; not numbers. They shouldn’t be political pawns.”
All 170 legislators and the governor have been invited to descend the State House steps at 12:30 to join the rally. Rep. Joe Neal will make a statement on behalf of legislators.
“One of our goals is to put a face on what is too often just an ideological debate,” said SC Progressive Network Director Brett Bursey. “We need 1,300 people to stand together on the State House grounds to symbolize the human cost of playing politics with people’s lives.”
The rally will also address lawmakers’ continued refusal to adequately fund education. “In 2013, K-12 funding was nearly $500 million below what is required by state law,” said Jackie Hicks, Executive Director of The SC Education Association. State higher education funding is 40 percent lower than it was in 2002, and tuition at our state colleges is among the nation’s highest.
The Coalition will be calling on legislators to address the fact that our state has the nation’s least-competitive elections, with nearly 80 percent of lawmakers facing no major opposition in the general election. “With only about half our citizens voting, and most of us only having one choice at the ballot box, it’s a shame that the legislature keeps trying to make it harder to vote rather than easier,” said Dr. Lonnie Randolph, President of the SC NAACP.
“The rally is a continuation of the work for sound public policies and a moral budget that we have been doing for years,” Bursey said. “The rally is not just an event; it is the launch of the next phase of our ongoing efforts.”
The hour-long rally will take place on the south side of the State House at noon on Jan. 14. The initial conveners are the SC Christian Action Council, The SC Education Association, SC NAACP, National Association of Social Workers, the SC AFL-CIO and the SC Progressive Network. Dozens of sponsoring organizations and churches, as well as information on the rally, transportation and parking, can be found at the coalition’s web site: TruthfulTuesday.net.
Free food and beverages will be available. Attendees are asked to wear black as a symbol of mourning for the 1,300 who will die this year is South Carolina because of petty partisan politics.
Contact the Coalition at 803-808-3384 or info@TruthfulTuesday.net.
If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.
Navigators latest target in Right’s war on “Obamacare”
The SC Progressive Network‘s Charleston Navigators are featured briefly in this MSNBC piece on the right wing’s latest war on “Obamacare.”
We anticipate legislation in January that will require Navigators to be licensed by the state Dept. of Insurance. ALEC-crafted bills requiring licensing requirements to make it almost impossible for anyone other than an insurance agent or broker to serve have passed in a number of “refusnick” states, and are expected here soon.
A bill to make it illegal for the City of Charleston (local governments) to offer space to Navigators, or help in anyway to implement the ACA, passed the SC House last session. The “Nullify Obamacare” bill is number two on the Senate’s agenda when it reconvenes Jan. 14.
South Carolina press and Nelson Mandela: Give credit where credit is due
By Kevin Alexander Gray
Columbia, SC
I was truly surprised that all our major daily paper could offer South Carolinians and the world after Nelson Mandela’s death was a 1998 picture of a 95-year-old Strom Thurmond holding up Mandela’s arm as though he’d just won a prizefight. The photo was snapped during the South African President’s visit to Washington to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.
Conservative hardliners like U.S. Senators Thurmond of South Carolina and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, among others, supported Reagan’s position against the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, which called for economic sanctions against the racist apartheid regime. Reagan vetoed the act when it came before him. He insisted that the 16 percent minority white population in power were “strategically essential to the free world,” although the 84 percent majority of black South Africa’s citizens (to include Coloureds and Asians) were being violently kept un-free.
Reagan and his supporters were on the wrong side of history. Fortunately, Congress ultimately overrode his veto.
Doubtless, Thurmond changed in later life from the segregationist firebrand he was a younger man — but not very much. I thought: Is this photo all the most widely circulated paper in South Carolina had to offer? Surely they had on file countless stories of the anti-apartheid activities in South Carolina.
Maybe someone thought the photo of Thurmond was funny or ironic. Maybe the person who posted the picture was at best, ignorant of history or, at worst trying to revise history by giving the photographic impression that Thurmond supported Mandela and the anti-apartheid cause. It would have been more accurate to locate a picture of Democratic Senator Ernest F. Hollings, who voted to override Reagan’s veto.
For me, telling the history of what was done in our state to advance the cause of freedom is a better story to tell.
A lot happened in the 1980s in the fight against apartheid that Columbia can be proud of. Like in 1985 when the City of Columbia barred any city investments that would benefit or encourage the racist South African government. The unanimously passed measure was introduced by then Councilman Luther Battiste.
Battiste’s counterpart on Council Rudy Barnes at the time said, “This is not a partisan or racial type motion at all” and that the “resolution sends the signal to politicians that we must distance ourselves from this type of oppression.”
Another council member, William Outzs added, “[T]his is further indication of this city’s support for human rights.”
Imagine trying to get City Council to pass a measure condemning a foreign government today.
Maybe there could have been mentioned how a year after the City of Columbia took action that then-South Carolina State Treasurer Grady L. Patterson withdrew $43 million in state investments from companies doing business in South Africa. Or, State Senator Theo Mitchell of Greenville’s efforts to pass an anti-apartheid bill in the State Legislature.
I’m sure somewhere there are pictures of the weekly pickets at what used to be the C&S Bank on Sumter Street to force them to stop selling the South African gold “krugerrand” coins. The picketers won.
There were also the Friday noon pickets on Pendleton Street in front of the University of South Carolina Educational Foundation offices that corresponded with the Carolina Peace Resource Center’s legal maneuvers to force the university to disclose and withdraw their holdings with companies that did business with South Africa. I believe that effort was the beginning of the end for then President James Holderman, who resigned in 1990 under fire over his hidden financial dealings.
Then there were the numerous student marches and rallies at the State House, along with participation in various regional and national marches. Students from Benedict, USC, South Carolina State, College of Charleston and many other campuses across the state took part.
There’s an activist history yet to be written. When it is, it will include familiar names like Modjeska Simkins and Nelson Rivers, then executive director of the state NAACP, Brett Bursey and his Grassroots Organizing Workshop [which grew into the SC Progressive Network], the USC Free South Africa Alliance, which at one point built and occupied a shanty in front of the Russell House to demonstrate and condemn bantustan living conditions of poor black South Africans.
There are lots of heroic people to write about in our local anti-apartheid efforts. They are “part of the collective,” which is how Mandela said he wanted to be remembered. Those are the people who should be highlighted. Strom Thurmond shouldn’t be our state’s reflexive default.
Had enough? See you Jan. 14 @ SC State House
You’re invited to celebrate the late, great Modjeska Simkins at a birthday party Dec. 5
Since moving its offices into 2025 Marion St., the historic home of Modjeska Simkins, the SC Progressive Network has thrown a party in her honor on her birthday, Dec. 5. Modjeska lived in the home for 60 years, where she entertained friends such as Thurgood Marshall and others not welcome in the white-only motels of the day.
Modjeska was the larger-than-life matriarch of South Carolina’s progressive movement. She spent her long life (1899-1992) acting on her belief that civil rights were just part of a larger human rights struggle. She was ahead of her time, often the only black woman at the table, and was never shy about speaking her mind.
The public is invited to a casual drop-in on Thursday, Dec. 5, between 5:30 and 7:30pm. The event is free and open to all. Light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments; cash bar. Friends, family and colleagues will be invited to share their stories of Modjeska.
See photos from last year’s gathering.
At last year’s party James Felder read a passage about Modjeska from his book Civil Rights in South Carolina: From Peaceful Protest to Groundbreaking Rulings.
To preserve the fighting spirit of Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the SC Progressive Network is establishing a school to teach a new generation of activists the skills to be effective leaders in their communities and in their government. The school will launch in early 2014. To follow the school’s progress, join us on Facebook.
Donations for the project are always welcome, as are your ideas. Contact the Network at 803-808-3384 or network@scpronet.com.
Network launches ACA help center in Charleston; seeks volunteers
From the SC Progressive Network’s Lead Navigator in Charleston, Loreen Myerson:
Dear Friends, Trusted Allies, and Valued Volunteers:
I am writing to request your help with a matter of great urgency. The demand for Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace policies has been intense since its historic launch on Oct. 1. As an ACA navigator for the SC Progressive Network, it has been my honor to assist dozens of SC families in enrolling in comprehensive health insurance policies at a reduced cost.
I have spoken with hundreds of members of civic groups throughout our region, educating them about the implications of the ACA for South Carolina’s families and small businesses. Yet, obviously, no one person can meet this great need alone. That’s why I’m writing to you.
On Monday, Dec. 2, the SC Progressive Network will launch its Lowcountry Surge Center at 360 Concord St. in Charleston, on Fountain Walk, near the aquarium. I ask you to please sign up for a shift or three between Dec. 2 and Dec. 13 to help folks to improve their lives by enrolling in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace policies.
We will have trained healthcare navigators and certified application counselors on hand to meet with the public both by appointment and on a walk-in basis. Additionally, we require volunteers to make the public feel comfortable and welcome as they arrive; register voters; supervise children in the arts and crafts area; answer phones and schedule appointments; distribute flyers, etc. We will be working hard, but we will celebrate with each new application.
Please take a moment to review the sign-up sheet here.
For more information, call (843) 475-2859.
Thank you!