This is the third of recent issues of WIN to take a “back to basics” approach. After Grow Food (Vol. 28, Number 3) and The Value of Land (Volume 29, Number 3), WIN now tackles another fundamental topic: health.
If we tried to come up with a list of the most basic building blocks of society, our list would no doubt include land to live on, food to eat, and the ability to lead healthy lives. Unfortunately, in our contemporary militarized society, none of these is guaranteed. We instead live in a perverse reality where funding a standing army and arsenal of deadly weapons is considered more important than providing health care to all.
Margaret Flowers begins our features with a critique of the limitations of Obama’s Affordable Care Act and a rousing call for the need for true universal health care. While the situation for many Americans is dire, Flowers finds cause for hope in new organizing campaigns.
Kimber Heinz, the War Resisters League National Organizer, refocuses our attention on the fact that marginalized populations suffer the amplified consequences of inadequate health safeguards. On indigenous land in New Mexico, the federal government’s negligence in handling uranium mining operations has left a legacy of debilitating illness. One would be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of our society’s collective priorities: nuclear weapons are more valuable than indigenous lives.
In our other features, Arthur Stamoulis exposes how pharmaceutical companies manipulate intellectual property law and trade agreements to keep life-saving drugs too expensive for the people who need them. Bill Weinberg contributes a balanced analysis of the medical marijuana movement and its pitfalls. And finally, Linnea Capps provides a moving introduction to the principles of liberation medicine rooted in her own experience in Chiapas.
We hope that this issue demonstrates the urgent need to confront head-on those governmental practices that directly damage our health and well-being. But with an open mind, one can examine these struggles and see an equally compelling imperative for us to build grassroots, community-controlled alternatives to the existing health care system. This latter task is where our collective creativity comes into play. Let these struggles be the springboard for our imaginations.
