“If I Were A Rich Man”

By Zevi K. Southeast PA Healthcare Rights Committee
Put People First! PA

I adapted the song “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof… So many of us learn to believe all our problems would be solved if only we, as individuals, had more money. But really, that won’t save us and we need a bigger understanding of what “wealth” is. This song is me imagining what it could be like to be “rich” in a way that includes all of us….

If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
If I were a biddy biddy rich, yidle-diddle-didle-didle man

I’d build a big health clinic with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
Doctors, nurses, techs went to school for free
And there’d be workers whose one job is to check
On you if you haven’t been around
Co-pays and deductibles are banned!

We’d all have jobs that don’t make us want to die
Because they’d value human life
Instead of squeezing profits for billionaires
And we’d find ways to stop destroying the Earth
Because that’s a thing we could just do!
Can you feel the breeze of that sweet air…

If I were a rich man…

I see my kids, my children, looking like a rich man’s kids
With their bellies full of food
Getting the care and attention that they need
I see them putting on plays at cultural centers,
Learning how to cook and how to swim,
Singing, there’s a future still for me…

The politicians of the land would come to call on us!
They would ask us to advise them
Like Solomon the wise
What do you see, my people?
What do you need, my people?
When they told us we were powerless they lied!
Yabba dee die die…..

And it won’t make one bit of difference
If you’ve got money to pay
When we’re all rich
We all really own

If we were rich we’d have the time that we lack
To heal from centuries of pain
Even if we don’t know exactly how
Because the poor have always had to know
How to make a way out of no way
Can’t you see we’re doing it right now?

If we were a rich man! Yabba dibby….

Lord who made the planet and the stars
You decreed we would be what we are
Give us strength to carry us that far!
Till we all are a…wealthy… man !!!!

That Which is Invisible?

That Which is Invisible?
By Melissa Wiertz, United Workers, Maryland

Do you see the person
Who is dealing with mental illness?
Do you know the person
Who hurts to walk?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who cannot afford to buy groceries?
Do you know the person
Who needs to get medication but can’t?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who needs to take each step carefully?
Do you know the person
Who needs help with housing?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who is struggling to survive?
Do you know the person
Who is hurting more than they show the world?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who wants to walk without pain?
Do you know the person
Who barely made it through the day?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who barely makes ends meet?
Do you know the person
Who cannot find the silver lining?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who cannot hear what you say?
Do you know the person
Who doesn’t know how to tell you what is wrong?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who wants to cry because their children are going without?
Do you know the person
Who cannot find words for what they need?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who cannot read and write?
Do you know the person
Who has no voice?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who was refused healthcare?
Do you know the person
Who was told there was no hope?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who was just given 2 weeks to move?
Do you know the person
Who was told they have cancer?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who was falsely charged for something they didn’t do?
Do you know the person
Who cannot see the world around them?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who needs special food they cannot afford?
Do you know the person
Who was told they make too much?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who cannot get out of bed everyday?
Do you know the person
Who needs a reason to keep going?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who is too tired to keep going?
Do you know the person
Who is in too much pain to move?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who looks up to the wrong person?
Do you know the person
Who has their thoughts racing faster than Nascar?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who is so cold their teeth rattle?
Do you know the person
Who lives in the elements?
Do you see that which is invisible?

Do you see the person
Who cannot go another step?
Do you know the person
Who cannot cry another tear?
Do you see that which is invisible?

“Our Hospitals Are Being Erased” The Medicaid Army in McKees Rocks

The Medicaid Army in McKees Rocks

In Southwest PA, Put People First! PA members rallied outside of recently shuttered Heritage Valley Kennedy in McKees Rocks, PA.

Lezlee, who helped organize the action, cries, “Our Hospitals Are Being Erased. Our Communities Are Paying the Price. 10 hospitals. Gone. In just 5 years, 10 pillars of community health have fully or partially closed across Pennsylvania. This isn’t just a trend; it’s policy violence. When a rural hospital closes, death rates rise. It’s that simple. It’s a life sentence for residents left without emergency care, without critical services, without a lifeline.

“Take the Ohio Valley Hospital. For 130 years—since 1890—it stood as a guardian of this community. Then, Heritage Valley Health system bought it, not to save it, but to shutter it. They didn’t see a vital institution; they saw a line on a balance sheet.

Amanda from Southwest PA shares a powerful testimony for #MedicaidMondays — right outside the recently CLOSED Ohio Valley Hospital:

“I was born in Ohio Valley Hospital. 29 years later, I had hoped to have my daughter here but the labor and delivery department had closed. I thought I could always rely on having a community hospital minutes away but monied interests and greed took it away as they do many things. I know many older people, including my grandmother, who went to Heritage Valley (it’ll always be Ohio Valley to me) for routine appointments and physical therapy. They now have to travel to Oakdale, Sewickley, or downtown. Many of them do not drive and rely on rides from family and friends. The closure of a hospital trickles down and affects a whole community: the jobs lost, the time and money spent going elsewhere, longer ambulance rides.

“Losing federal dollars threatens these hospital systems, especially hospitals that take Medicaid, and when their goal is profit and not maintaining community care, their solution is to consolidate and close them down. We need to fully fund Medicaid and then fight for universal healthcare that will no longer tie employment to receiving medical care. Policies that focus on the health and well being of each and every one of us. We were put on this planet to take care of each other, it’s time to come together and do exactly that.”

#HealthcareIsAHumanRight

#Medicaid4All

Projects of Survival across the New York Boroughs

By Kelly S.

The Nonviolent Medicaid Army Week of Action has played a large part in the development of the New York Nonviolent Medicaid Army state formation. Not only did the 2024 Week of Action mark the official launch of our group, this year’s Day of Action went a long way in consolidating and developing a strong group of leaders to carry out this work. This past September’s actions in front of the closed Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, and near Albany Medical Center in Albany, further strengthened and energized our statewide organizing efforts.

Our folks were inspired and eager to continue to organize around the Medicaid cut-offs and other attacks on our healthcare. Taking collective action is not the only tactic in our theory of change, but the collective planning, the art build and the execution of the action can be really galvanizing, as it was in our case.

With that experience and given the current attacks on SNAP and the implementation of work requirements starting November 1, our NYC team recently launched a multi-week SNAP organizing drive. We are using the amazing toolkit created by Put People First – PA and adapting it to the specifics of New York. Our goal is to visit multiple communities around New York City through the end of the year. By holding drives every weekend in a different community, we hope to better understand our base, educate folks on the cruel work requirements that began November 1 and the exemptions to those requirements, and build a growing and powerful movement of the poor. For us as still a relatively young formation, the goal to do (most) every weekend between now and January 1 is daunting but so are the challenges facing our communities. This is not a time to let fear get in the way.

We kicked the SNAP organizing drive off in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at a spot connected to the Tompkins Square Food Distro. We found almost immediately that asking about SNAP sparked great organizing conversations. One 72 year-old gentleman talked about how he worked his whole life and had hoped at some point he would be able to stop and not stand in food lines. Another gentleman said he has been trying to find a job for over a year but asked how he is supposed to get one when he doesn’t have stable housing and doesn’t have food to eat.

The following weekend, we went to Harlem. We did an organizing conversation training, practiced with each other and then headed out into the street. In our training, we emphasized how we are not here to take the place of social workers or case managers; we are here to support people, cut through isolation, and to help navigate the arduous system that puts stumbling block after stumbling block in folks’ way as they try and get the food and healthcare they and their families need to just survive. Next weekend, we’ll be in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and we will keep going, keep talking to people across the five boroughs of New York City.

People are clear when we talk to them. They know the system is broken and has been for a long time. Or perhaps it’s working as intended, allowing millions to suffer while the millionaires and billionaires get richer and richer.  We know it doesn’t have to be this way. We know the richest nation in the history of the world has MORE THAN ENOUGH to provide healthcare, food and housing to all. We know these things are human rights and so we will continue to talk, share, support and organize, organize, organize!!!

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