by Jonathan Krall
On March 12, 2024, after nearly two years of steady effort by a coalition of Alexandrians, the Alexandria City Council passed a resolution in support of Medicare For All, adding to the national map of Medicare For All support. The coalition consisted of Grassroots Alexandria, the Northern Virginia Branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, Our Revolution Northern Virginia, and Tenants and Workers United. This is how we did it.
This is part 2 of a 4-part story. Part 1.
During the long months of intermittent Public Health Advisory Commission debate over aspects of public health deserving of their advice (Medicare For All was not deserving), we turned to the public. In July 2022, we posted action-alert messages, asking our supporters to write to the commissions.
As our institutional support campaign seemed to fall on deaf ears, we built up our public support campaign. In October 2022, we drafted a petition and started gathering signatures. While gathering petition signatures for Medicare For All, we received kind words of support from the public. We also received more than our share of skepticism.
Skepticism
Personally, I know I am not the only one who has little faith that Congress will soon deliver the healthcare, public safety, immigration reform, or life-improving climate action that a majority of Americans are asking for. I am not the only one who feels like they’re screaming for billionaire taxation, social security that gets stronger instead of weaker, and a housing safety-net that isn’t a prison. However, even as my faith in American democracy wanes, I follow tradition and fight on.
Often, we ask City Council to pay attention to issues they’d prefer to ignore. We added Medicare For All to their workload because our current market-based healthcare system is a market failure. The documentary Healing US tells a story of a man, having a heart attack, afraid to call 911. When his wife notices his condition, he sheepishly admits that they need to call 911. After the doctor tells them to forget costs (this is the market failing to constrain prices) and “let me save your life,” and after a quadruple bypass operation, the $135,000 bill arrives. No wonder they were afraid of the healthcare system. We should all be afraid of the healthcare system.
The process, part 2: the public
As this particular campaign became less a matter of attracting movers and shakers (the commissions) and more a matter of attracting public support, we made signs, picked up our clipboards and got to work. Without institutional support, this was now between ourselves, the public, and City Council. Our job was to gather support from the public and, politely and persistently, throw it into the faces of our local political leaders.
We reached out to the public. While our first blog post (July 2022) was an explainer intended to reach commission members, our next blog post (March 2023) was a call to action. While a hot topic in the local news, such as a bike lane or a zoning reform, can generate hundreds of petition signatures in a few weeks, we slowly ran up our total, finishing at 370 signatures in February 2024. Fortunately, a skilled NoVA DSA volunteer knew how to filter the signatures for Alexandria addresses and add the paper-only signatures (those with a physical address but no email address) to the database. We were never asked if our signatures were truly Alexandrians, but we were prepared for the question.
We wrote letters to local news outlets, landing letters in The Washington Post and the Gazette-Packet.
We haunted public squares and farmer’s markets, gathering signatures and handing out flyers. It was here that the broad support and broad skepticism were most evident. For every one person who objected to the perceived cost of Medicare For All, several more expressed support but worried it would never come to pass. According to the documentary Healing US, 49% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats support not-for-profit universal healthcare. Despite this strong public support, free-market believers in both parties have led us to believe that Medicare For All is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy with no public support at all.
We also haunted City Council meetings. In 2023, we spoke at every monthly public hearing from March through July. Showing up early at City Council meetings, we looked for opportunities to speak to individual council members. Most often, Councilmember Sarah Bagley had time for us. At the June public hearing, we presented a petition with over 330 names and zip codes.
By the time of the early-July public hearing, we thought they would soon act and thanked them for giving us a positive reception.
Next, in Part 3: While haunting City Council public hearings, we gain support, but pay the price of persistence.