Though the health care reform movement down in DC seems all but in a coma now or dead, as our representatives seem to beholden to the campaign cash from the health insurance companies, “the best democracy that money can buy,” the movement for single-payer health care reform in Vermont still has plenty of fire left. The Vermont Worker’s Center in Burlington is hosting a series of forums on health care around the state.  They are called the “People’s Forums on Healthcare,” and are public forums with members of the Vermont legislative delegation from each of the counties where the forums will be held invited to attend.   The first one is on Tuesday, September 22, at the Montpelier High School Cafeteria, from 6:30-9:00.  The others are listed below.  

People’s Forums on Healthcare: The County Organizing Committees of the Healthcare Is A Human Right are beginning to hold public forums with local legislators about developing policy in Vermont to make healthcare a public good for all. Please join us for these events to hear how in Vermont we can win legislation that makes healthcare a basic right.

Washington County

7pm, Tuesday, September 22

Montpelier High School Cafeteria

Bennington County

7pm, Thursday, September 24

Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church

200 Pleasant Street, Bennington

Windham County

7pm, Tuesday, September 29

Brattleboro Union High School, Multi-purpose Room

Chittenden County

7pm, Thursday, October 1

Imani Community & Youth Center

294 N. Winooski Ave, Burlington

Rutland County

6:30 pm, Tuesday, October 6

Rutland Free Library, Nella Grimm Fox Room

10 Court Street, Rutland

To learn more about these forums or about how you can help start a local Organizing Committee on this campaign, please email james@workerscenter.org

Father Roy Bourgeois,

Founder of the School of the Americas Watch,

September 17, 7pm

First Unitarian Universalist Society

at the top of Church St. in Burlington

In 1990, Fr. Roy founded the School of the Americas Watch, an office that does research on the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Each year the school trains hundred of soldiers from Latin America in combat skills – all paid for by U.S. by US taxpayers. Union and worker activists have been particular targets of the SOA tactics.

Father Roy has also spent time recently in Honduras, where labor and other social movements have been struggling for more than two months against a military coup. The Workers’ Center released a statement condemning the coup in July.