Zackary Sholem Berger's Blog, page 7

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, or: Why I Disrupted the Senate

This originally appeared in the Forward newspaper.

I stood, legs apart and face to the wall, in the Capitol Police Vehicle Maintenance Division. In other words, a garage. And I thought: I want to shake the hand of the person who invented plastic zip ties. They’re probably doing extremely well for themselves.

But let’s start from the beginning. How did I get here, hands cuffed behind my back, and why did I still feel, all in all, pretty good?

I’m a doctor who’s been in practice almost 10 years. During my training I wasn’t that involved in politics, and after 2009 even less involved. I was complacent after Obamacare passed.

In the following years it became evident that more and more patients were able to seek me out and start seeing me as their new doctor because of the insurance available through the Affordable Care Act. Sure the legislation wasn’t perfect.

Everything can always be improved. I even rolled my eyes and acted supercilious at those who wouldn’t shut up about single payer. Why rock the boat? Then Trump happened. During the run-up to the election I understood the abstract possibility that he could win. Though I’m certainly no prophet and I didn’t come near to predicting what eventually happened, I was really worried that a President Trump would wipe out the progress of the past few years: the millions more Americans with insurance; the decrease in the rise of healthcare costs, the improvements in population health.

I was shocked in November, and after the inauguration it was as if I had woken up from a long nap. With mounting fear and panic I understood that the priorities of Trump and his Congress collaborators are different from mine, and those of my doctor and nurse colleagues — and certainly different than what my patients think is important. Many Republicans believe that government should not help the sick, because being ill is a moral failing. The sick need freedom to cure themselves.

As a response, I founded a social media group called Doctors Against Trump which later, with the help of expert friends, I converted to a political action committee to support candidates who believe in progressive health policies. I started calling my Congressmen and Senators regularly,  and I made use of various on-line tools that connect blue-state voters with red-state constituents, urging them in their turn to call their elected officials.

This was something, but it didn’t feel like enough to me. I wanted to physically and concretely demonstrate support for my patients (sick, weak, old, marginalized), that I wasn’t sitting doing nothing while people were trying to take away their insurance. Once or twice I went and had a polite discussion with a senator’s health aide. That didn’t hit the spot either.

I saw that two separate groups were collaborating in a Senate protest action: those from various faith traditions (priests and ministers, rabbis, ordinary Jews and Christians; probably others too), on the one hand, joined also by health professionals: doctors, nurses, dentists; together with patients ready to tell moving stories for an audience and media. I joined them on a sunny morning in Washington, DC, at a Lutheran church not far from the Capitol and Union Station.

First we joined in prayer (as a Jew, I was happy that specific Christian expressions were deliberately avoided, and no one invoked Jesus’ name). I put on tefillin as a sign of serious piety in the public sphere defending the principle in the Biblical verse “you shall surely heal.” I was also thrilled to meet doctors and others who I had met before only on social media.

After a press conference at which we forcefully articulated our belief, as religious people and doctors, that health is a human right, we started off in a long, stately procession, slow and steady, to the Capitol building, two by two.

Good things come to those who wait, and protesting is no exception. They let the tourists up to the Senate galleries quite quickly, but apparently it was obvious to everyone that we were planning something different.

We finally got to the gallery, looking down at the Senate. It was like a Kabuki theater, Democratic and Republican statues frozen in their feigned gravity while true realities of life and death play out on the other side of the Capitol walls. When the number of the bill was called, we stood up and shouted, “Kill the Bill! Shame!”

Though we don’t yet know, while I write these words, if the terrible bill is truly dead, I am very happy with our work. We used our privilege as doctors and bearers of faith to march against the greed and cruelty of an unfeeling administration. As part of a group of activists I felt the collective frisson that many Jews have experienced in a minyan that davens with intention: the surety that all is not lost even when the hour is very dark. We are powerful precisely because we maintain, even under attack, our beliefs in healthcare and the needs of patients.

So maybe that’s why, when I stood feet apart in the police garage, the zip ties didn’t bite as much as I thought they would.

Read more: http://forward.com/writing-trumps-america/378864/faith-leaders-and-doctors-disrupt-the-senate-for-the-sake-of-health-insuran/

New transcript published

TURNBULL

With great respect, Mr. President, this is a banana. You have to remove the outer —

TRUMP

I don’t understand what the hell this yellow part on the outside of this is. Is it an umbrella? A condom? Where is it from?

TURNBULL

Mr. President, you are correct that it is yellow. But it is actually part of the banana.

TRUMP

You’re worse than I am! You are removing it because you know that the fruit will explode if you do not. Is this a fruit? Are we real?

TURNBULL

It’s a banana.

TRUMP

But where is it from? Could it be a terrorist?

The call with Putin was much pleasanter. I felt relaxed and in control. I am so. done.

TURNBULL

Enjoy your lunch, Mr. President.

Song for the Cosmopolites

Stephen was a Jew

-ish boy.

He was a racist too.

Trump’s toy.

He thought, “I’m so white.

Like a goy.”

Maybe. They might

Be annoyed.

Protestors on the floor of the Senate

“Don’t kill us, kill the bill!”: GOP Senate health care vote interrupted by protests https://t.co/inXzaVUFHZ pic.twitter.com/l53GlFqrWK

— Vox (@voxdotcom) July 25, 2017

Protestors in DC

BREAKING: Protestors chanting “Kill the bill” in the Senate gallery as voting began. Being escorted out here –> pic.twitter.com/qn78fqZOYc

— Will Drabold (@WillDrabold) July 25, 2017

Don’t set the car on fire!

We’re all sick of the health care debate. But those who are sick, trying not to get sick, or taking care of others who are sick don’t have the luxury of absenting themselves from this debate.

They (we) are looking on in horrified fascination as the GOP makes its plan known: dismantling Obamacare and leaving millions without insurance — replacing it with stopgap subpar underfunded skimpycare.

The so-called “skinny plan” is chockfull of real harm. 15 million more uninsured. 20% premium increases. And that’s before the skinny bill is stuffed even more full with add-ons designed to pacify the elements in the GOP who take moral exception to Medicaid. (The poor should refrain from getting sick, you see. Government should not be involved in healthcare. We should go back to the good old days, whenever and wherever those were.)

It’s as if the check-engine light was blinking on your dashboard, and in response your mechanic doused the car with gasoline and set it on fire.

If you have a Republican senator, call them and tell them your healthcare story. Ask them if they came to Washington to harm the sick. If you have a Democratic senator (or if your senator is Collins or Murkowski!) call and thank them for standing up for what’s right. You can also go to the Indivisible website to be patched through to those in red states, whom you can connect directly with their senators. (I’ve done it. It’s addictive.) https://www.indivisibleguide.com/hubdialer-signup/

Yes, life is full of complications. Things are hard. There’s plenty to do besides this sort of advocacy. You have work to go to, kids to raise, doorknobs and toilets to fix. If you are involved in whatever else you have to do, no one should criticize. But if you can just take a moment to speak up, you’ll feel good, and we’ll all thank you.

Each lawyer has a lawyer

Each lawyer has a lawyer

And they’re all hunting witches

Megyn’s no Diane Sawyer

White House full of snitches

Each lawyer’s lawyer’s lawyer

Reads their Lawfare daily

Lawyers’ lawyers’ lawyers’ brawlers

Get ready for the melee

When a lawyer’s lawyer’s lawyer

Memoranding through the rye

Meets a lawyer’s lawyer’s lawyer,

May a lawyer testify?

How many lawyers’ lawyers

Can file a meta-brief?

And how many judges’ judges

Confer injunctive relief?

Jews call on one true Judge.

(Be they a Mother or Father.)

But even heaven needs a hedge.

God should get God a lawyer.

This Is Just The AHCA

I have taken

the insurance

that covered

your children

with which

you were probably

buying

medicine

Forgive me

I think suffering

is so sweet

and so cold

Night Sonnet

Jeff Beauregard Sessions, whatever he thought,

Disavows rememberance of things past.

He is insulted by accusations and distraught

That erstwhile colleagues think his claims a waste.

Selma’s colored fountains are no more.

While every hash is tagged with healing rights,

The South may rise again, or sip in woe

And moan the insult of many a darkened sight:

Thus he swivels neck at meetings unrecalled

With forgotten Russian type at the Mayflower,

Citing decades’ policies long installed

In justificatory — or exculpatory — power.

But if the while he starts to think on Trump,

He sips once more, and tastes a brackish swamp.

Goodnight Comey

Goodnight Comey

Good night President who doesn’t think.

Good night Navy stewards with food and drink.

Good night door and grandfather clock.

Good night Lawfare’s nonpartisan shock.

Good night, big hooks of Rus.

Good night, Comey hearing fuss.

Good night, director (ex) of FBI.

Good night, Ivanka’s madeup sigh.

Good night, coffee.

Good night, tea.

Good night, honest loyalty.