| Labor
Party Campaigns |
 |
Percentage
of voters in Somerville, |
| Massachusetts
who want |
Just
Health Care |
84! |
Residents of Somerville, Massachusetts who
went to the polls on November 2 found this nonbinding Labor
Party-sponsored referendum question on their ballot:
"Do you favor legislation to create a
system of universal health care in Massachusetts that provides
all Massachusetts residents with comprehensive health care
coverage (including the freedom to choose doctors and other
health care professionals, facilities, and services) and
eliminates the role of insurance companies in health care by
creating an insurance trust fund that is publicly
administered? The public insurance trust fund (similar to the
Social Security trust fund on a federal level) would receive
the funds presently going to the numerous health insurance
companies throughout the state."
Of the 70 percent of voters who pulled the
lever on the referendum question, 84 percent voted yes. That’s
7,100 votes for Just Health Care — more votes than any
politician on the ballot except the city’s popular mayor,
running uncontested.
We talked recently with Bill Bumpus of the
Somerville Labor Party Club.
"We kicked off the organizing for the
referendum about six months ago with a forum. Then, from May
through early September, we were petitioning registered
voters. We got about 2,500 signatures. Some of them we
collected going from door-to-door. But the place that really
worked well was in front of pharmacies — because people had
just come from paying outrageous prices for their drug
prescriptions and were really of a mind to get rid of their
HMOs.
The reaction we got from people was
overwhelmingly positive. And that was certainly borne out in
the results of the referendum.
Strong Language
One thing that struck us was that the
initiative’s language was very strong — we call for
eliminating the role of the insurance companies. Often,
referendums have been a bit more vague and less far-reaching.
So we may have broken some new ground with this language. And
yet, I can’t remember anyone reading the text of it and
saying, ‘Oh well, I guess I won’t sign!’
This was a city-wide referendum for the City
of Somerville. Somerville has always had a large immigrant
population. Most recently, there are a lot of new residents
here from Central America and Haiti. Older residents tend to
be Irish, Italian, and Portuguese. It’s always been a
working-class suburb of Boston, it’s one of the old mill
towns. It’s starting to get a little more gentrified. But
our outreach for this was very broad and grassroots.
Surprising Margin
We ended up getting the referendum on the
ballot by going to the Board of Aldermen with our 2,500
signatures. They were impressed enough with the support we had
gathered to vote to put it on the ballot.
We were pleasantly surprised by the margin of
victory we had. We got some coverage in the local paper and a
mention in the Boston Globe.
After the vote, we had a victory party. And
now we’re planning to meet with some Labor Party folks from
other communities. We want to talk about how we can take the
increased public visibility we have through the campaign, try
to get some recruitment out of it, and build on this
success." |
