From communicating with Integrity with Dr. Bob Zellner and Pamela Zellner:
As part of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, Dr. Bob Zellner met both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther, King, Jr. The author of “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement,” was also disowned by his family, beaten unconscious, and arrested 18 times. He and his wife Pamela Zellner showed a video with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, whose Better Angels groups works to unite Americans from opposite sides of the isles around shared values. Zellner works in fusion politics in N.C. finding common ground and shared goals with those who disagree, and working together on those goals.
Action items
- Organize on state and local level: People power can overcome money and media power.
- “Start talking in small groups”
- “Validate feelings not just facts”
- “Work together”
- “ Find Common ground”
- “ Accept and Respect”
- “Admit deficiencies in arguments & Acknowledge complexity”
- “Find the Unmet need underneath the feeling”
- Learn Listening skills, including active listening*.
- Have compassion in your heart for people who want the same things.
Learn active listening: Visit https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm and watch the video.
From “Regional Organizers: Our Leadership Team throughout Colorado: Team Building to Improve our Effectiveness and Empowerment. Led by Laurie Fowler Beckel, PC, regional organizer for Clear Creek County, Senate District 2, which is 70 percent republican.
Action items
- We need a group of activists for universal health care active in every one of the 65 Colorado counties by 2020 or before.
- We need people running for office on a universal health care platform.
- Health Care Action Facebook groups needed in all 65 counties with active leaders
- Share, like and comment on our 2 main Facebook pages: ColoradoCareYES and the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care
- Knock on doors
- Use meetup.com to host health care meetups.
- Understand resistance to the movement and how to work with it.
- Attend regional organizing phone calls.
From Communicating with Elected Officials with Rep. Brittany Petersen, Sen. Irene Aguilar and Commissioner Richard Cimino
Action Items
- Listen to the people on the ground and the experts in the field – with all of the information you get, be inclusive and critical.
- Bring people together.
- Hear and share people’s experiences. Personal connections and stories really help when speaking to elected officials.
- Share dialog openly and fairly with all groups, and don’t make enemies in the process.
- Alliances during the primary will help create long-term loyalty. (This echo’s panelist Dave Sabados’ advice to find out early which candidates support universal health care and support those candidates.)
- Reach out to other influential organizations – What do other organizations think of health insurance and how do they create their messages?
- Keep up the energy up on these issues. Continue to organize people and protest.
- Advocacy, getting on the news, going to the protests – that’s how we change the public’s opinion of how some of these elected officials are representing us.”
- Get people who are not concerned about this issue interested and concerned.
- Reach out to the local business community and their chambers. Find people in your community who do have influence.
- Never disregard anyone because of party affiliation. Just because you have different views, doesn’t automatically mean you have different feelings on smaller issues.
Coordinating and Networking- Breakout Session: Bev Wasserman
Question/Prompt: What can we do to strengthen and unify our message?
Action Items
- Bring together the groups that are working on health care, support each other, and stop duplicative work
- Include mental health in health care
- Include dental health in health care
- Address the Opioid epidemic
- Face Addiction problems head on
- Find a way to de-mystify the Mystery Medical Merry-go-Round (i.e. explain how to navigate the very confusing world of health care and health insurance)
- Utilize this possible window of opportunity for healthcare reform (created due to the failing republican healthcare plan- people are now looking for an alternative)
- Find out where the Health Associations stand on Universal Health Care (American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association etc.)
- Talk to these groups BEFORE we write the next bill
- Need to create a culture shift around choice in health care. We need to inform the public that rationing (scarcity in health care resources) is currently happening, and we don’t need to give every single person we see in the ER an expensive and invasive scan
- Need to change the perception about choice (right now people perceive they have choice, but doctors will order tests/procedures and the insurance companies decide, so people really don’t have choice)
- Focus on preventative care and preventative medicine
- No one ever became a billionaire from prevention, so we have to find a way to combat special interest groups who gain profit from
- Talk to people in groups where health insurance is a necessity not a choice (cancer patients, HIV/AIDS patients)
- Work with clergy and unions more often
- Create a cheat sheet, and frame your message. Make sure you’re using terminology that doesn’t turn people off (Universal Health Care instead of Medicare for all in certain communities). We need to frame our message in a way that meets people on their level,
- Get the message out using simplified terms
- Know your audience and know who you’re speaking too so you know how to phrase your message
- The right has put forth this message that if we give the government the power of health care, we lose freedom. But really shared public resources help create public goods. Good affordable education creates opportunity, healthy communities free of toxic waste and access to health care allow people the freedom to live happy and healthy lives.
- We need to talk to providers- many are on board, but many aren’t. The more providers we can get on board, the better
- Kaiser threatened to leave Colorado if 69 passed- they told their 300,000/400,000 patients that if they vote for 69, they lose Kaiser. We need to work with Kaiser because they’re a large presence in Colorado
- Bring emotions and personal stories into the message
- Run focus groups to see what messages work and which don’t
- Stop duplicity in work
- Frame the message as win-win-win (i.e. with Universal Health Care, everyone wins eventually)
