Public Demonstration: “Healthcare is a Human Right”

What: Constituent gathering to address Sen. Thom Tillis (who refuses admittance to office)

When: Tuesday, January 21, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Where: Federal Building, 310 New Bern Avenue, Raleigh NC 27601

Who: Tuesdays with Tillis; Healthcare for All, Y’all; NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina

Visuals: Invigorated, diverse crowd; March with signs; Speakers; Sing-a-longs with acoustic guitar

Karen Ziegler | Tuesdays with Tillis | 919-819-2073

Rebecca Cerese | Healthcare for All, Y’all | 919-824-0811

Tara Romano | NARAL | tara.romano@gmail.com

RALEIGH, NC— During the week we celebrate Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birth, we remember that the civil rights icon said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhuman because because it often results in physical death.” Because of this Administration’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured people has risen sharply over the past few years, leaving 500,000 additional people uninsured in 2018.

With almost 30 million uninsured and tens of millions more who cannot afford to use the insurance they have, people are faced with choices like draining their life savings to pay for cancer care, rationing insulin, and skipping or delaying care or medications due to the cost. When uninsured and underinsured rates go up, so do deaths!

In light of the moral imperative to act while people are suffering and healthcare protections in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) remain under attack, dozens of advocates and activists will hold an energetic protest Tuesday, Jan. 21 at Senator Tillis’s Raleigh office, protesting his multiple votes to repeal the ACA, his “yes” vote on the 2018 budget resolution which sought to cut Medicare by $473 billion and Medicaid by $1.3 trillion. We demand Senator Tillis reverse course from the votes he’s made to dismantle healthcare protections and finally start voting to protect the ehealth and save the lives of North Carolinians.

Healthcare justice is also a women’s rights issue. Senators Tillis and Richard Burr recently signed a resolution with 37 other GOP Senators to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v Wade, which healthcare and women’s rights advocates vehemently oppose.

“We must stand strongly in defending the women’s reproductive dignity and our right to self-determination over our own bodies and futures,” said Tara Romano, the director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina. “We’ll stand together to say abortion must remain a safe and legal procedure that is a choice a woman makes in consultation with her doctor. Abortion is health care.”

Speakers include members of Healthcare for All, Y’all, a local organization dedicated to building grassroots power to pass Improved Medicare for All, and the director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina.

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