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Written by Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
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Monday, August 10 2009 08:52 |
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In 2007, USAction Executive Director Jeff Blum and Richard Kirsch, then-director of Citizen Action of New York, were tossing around the idea of how best to advance the fight for quality affordable healthcare for everyone. They reached a simple conclusion.
"If we could bring a wide array of progressive forces together," Blum says, "progressives would be able to compete with the deep-pockets and insider lobbyists on the right."
That realization, combined with vast coalition building experience among the key players and a set of principles all could agree on, led to the creation of Health Care for America Now (HCAN)--the largest single-issue progressive coalition in modern American history. This August, with the battle over healthcare reform raging, the success of HCAN will be a determining factor in whether we get a progressive bill--a robust public option and a progressive tax to pay for it--out of Congress.
Read entire article here.
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