This article by Put People First! PA defines leadership and speaks to its importance in grassroots organizing. It also describes how Put People First! PA seeks to develop members as leaders.
Type: Article
Beyond Obamacare: In Many States, the Health Care Is a Human Right Movement Is Growing
This article explains why the Affordable Care Act fails to ensure the human right to health care and discusses how the HCHR campaigns are building a people’s movement to win publicly financed healthcare systems in their states to realize human rights.
Lessons from the Healthcare Fight
This article presents the responses of 6 organizers from around the country to the question: “what can left organizers learn from the fight over healthcare?”
The Vermont Workers’ Center Leads Breakthrough on Healthcare
This article discusses the history of the Vermont Workers’ Center and their movement for universal healthcare.
Economists Throw Weight Behind Universal Health Care in Vermont
This article in Common Dreams reprints the open letter from economists to Vermont legislature calling for universal, publicly financed healthcare. The article concludes that “Thursday’s letter indicates that the grassroots movement has not lost momentum.”
Can’t Afford Not to Act
In this op-ed, a Vermont nurse speaks out about how the current healthcare system fails to meet her patients’ needs.
29 Arrested After Statehouse Protest
The Burlington Free Press covers the Vermont State House sit-in. The article highlights legislators’ perspectives on the protests as well as Vermont Workers’ Center President James Haslam’s comments.
‘We Won’t Back Down’ — Vermonters Launch Sit-In At Statehouse Demanding Universal Health Care ‘Now!’
Common Dreams covers the Vermont State House sit-in demanding universal healthcare. The article highlights the protests in response to Gov. Shumlin’s abandonment of the universal healthcare agenda and gives background on the Healthcare Is a Human Right movement.
29 Arrested as Single-Payer Advocates Disrupt Vermont Gov. Shumlin’s Inauguration
Democracy Now speaks with Vermont Workers’ Center President James Haslam in their coverage of the Vermont State House sit-in demanding single-payer universal healthcare.
Vermont Workers’ Center at the Fore of Health Care Advocacy
This article provides coverage of the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign and specifically of the Vermont State House.
Sitting In for Healthcare
This op-ed was written by one of the 29 members of the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign who staged a sit-in in the Vermont State House and were arrested as a result. The author tells how he was personally affected by a healthcare system that doesn’t meet human rights standards, and calls on legislature […]
Moving Forward with Healthcare
In this op-ed Vermont Workers’ Center President James Haslam responds to Gov. Shumlin’s decision to abandon his commitment to single-payer universal healthcare.
Why Universal Health Care Is Essential for a More Equitable Society
This article explains why the current healthcare system is exacerbating inequality in our society and how public healthcare financing can help change this. It uses the equitable healthcare financing plan introduced by Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign to illustrate why healthcare is a matter of equality.
“Small Place Close to Home” — Toward a Health and Human Rights Strategy for the US
In the journal Health and Human Rights, Elizabeth Tobin Tyler explores health and human rights strategies in the US. While she mainly focuses on legal approaches, she also stresses the importance of grassroots organizing to drive policy change by highlighting the Vermont Workers’ Center’s campaign for universal publicly funded health care.
Grassroots Campaigns for Universal Health Care Are Changing What’s Politically Possible
This In These Times article covers the movements for universal, single-payer healthcare in Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
The Fight for Health Care Justice Moves to States
LaborNotes reports on the groundswell of state-by-state organizing for universal, publicly financed healthcare, citing the leadership of the Vermont Workers’ Center in building a winning model.
“Small Place Close to Home”: Toward a Health and Human Rights Strategy for the US
In the journal Health and Human Rights, Elizabeth Tobin Tyler explores health and human rights strategies in the US. While she mainly focuses on legal approaches, she also stresses the importance of grassroots organizing to drive policy change by highlighting the Vermont Workers’ Center’s campaign for universal publicly funded health care.
The Right to Health: From Concept to Action
This chapter describes the Right to Health framework and discusses how it can be used by health activists.
Op-Ed: New Solution for Universal Healthcare
This article examines how the Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) creates an opportunity to reevaluate healthcare reform — and explains how Vermont’s human rights model for healthcare reform meets people’s fundamental needs in a way that the ACA’s market-based model cannot.
Lessons from the Single-Payer State
The Vermont Workers’ Center puts forward five key lessons from its campaign to pass a universal healthcare law, which can be applied to movement building efforts more generally.
The Medicine for America’s Healthcare Headache Lies in Vermont
This Alternet article tracks the history of the movement for single-payer, universal healthcare in Vermont.
From Market Competition to Solidarity?
The human right to healthcare offers an analytical and advocacy framework for shifting the healthcare reform debate from individualist, market-based approaches to the collective responsibility for health care as a public good.
Bernie Sanders: Healthcare is a Right Not a Privilege
In this article, Senator Bernie Sanders affirms healthcare as a right and states that “at the end of the day, as difficult as it may be, the fight for a national health care program will prevail. Like the civil rights movement, the struggle for women’s rights and other grass-roots efforts, justice in this country is […]
Integrating Human Rights Principles into a County Health Reform Project
This article presents a first-person, “hands-on” account of efforts to operationalize a human rights framework in public health advocacy and action in a local setting, King County, a jurisdiction of Washington, USA, that includes the city of Seattle.
Health Systems and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health
This chapter by Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, and Gunilla Backman from the book Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 3: Realizing The Right To Health, identifies right-to-health standards for health systems.
From Private Profits to Public Goods?
This article discusses the health policy proposals of the 2008 presidential election campaign and primaries, thereby offering a historical perspective on the reform positions that have shaped health policy under the Obama administration
Huff Post: Health Reform Law Fails to Meet Human Rights
Amidst the celebrations of a ‘historical moment,’ a healthy dose of realism seems in order as we assess the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the related reconciliation measures.
Human Rights US Social Forum People’s Movement Assembly
This article lays out the human rights principles stated and agreed upon by collaborating organizations of the People’s Movement Assembly on the Right to Health at the US Social Forum in Detroit to guide the struggle for health and healthcare in the United States.
The Struggle for Healthcare at the State and National Levels: Vermont as a Catalyst for National Change
This article describes the Healthcare Is a Human Right organizing model, and explains why a campaign based on values and on grassroots organizing is necessary to achieve change.
Using Human Rights To Move Beyond the Politically Possible
This article decribes how the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign changed the rhetoric of Healthcare in Vermont and made it possible to get universal coverage passed
The Vermont Breakthrough: Grassroots Organizing Moves a State towards Healthcare for All
This article tells the story of the grassroots organizing that led to the passage of Vermont’s universal health care law by changing what is politically possible through a mass organizing campaign.
Reviving Progressive Activism: A Case Study of Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign
This case study of Vermont’ Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign presents the history of the campaign and its 2011 success, analyses the rationale, strategy and tactics of the campaign, and offers lessons learned for developing transformative grassroots campaigns.
A Rights-Based Approach to Healthcare Reform
This book article outlines the history of the human right to health in the U.S., derives principles and standards from international human rights law, and offers a human rights framework for guiding health reform efforts.
It’s Not Enough to Be Angry
This article shares lessons learned for effective organizing and focuses on the importance of uniting across issues to create a powerful movement capable of confronting the fundamental problem of economic injustice.
Vermont Must Lead the Way on Healthcare
This op-ed by James Haslam, Director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, explains why the federal healthcare reform model, which offers public options alongside private insurance coverage, is a half-measure that will not protect the people’s human rights. The article urges fundamental change that establishes healthcare as a public good, not a market commodity.