She recounted how she later discovered that she had a Stage Three cancer, which exhausted her ability to pay for treatments or even to continue to pay her insurer, Alabama's dominant carrier. With no options for life-saving care in Alabama and unable to work, she moved to Pennsylvania, where the state is providing twice-weekly treatments toward her full recovery.
Noel concluded her testimony by asking those present to consider: "What would happen if you were suddenly struck by your own personal Katrina?"
Her panel ended with a powerful clip from her forthcoming film showing two Louisiana criminal justice professionals describing their continuing helplessness last month to provide crucial mental health care. Each begged for a national dialogue on whether a fundamental American right should exist for such care.
Rise and Fall of Great Nations
At the hearing's end, Fauntroy sought to provide an answer, based on his five decades experience seeking to transform civil rights concepts into policy. He'd already done so, of course, by organizing the iconic 1960s marches and by leading anti-apartheid protests in Washington in the 1980s that helped topple the white-run South African regime.
"Great nations rise and fall," Fauntroy quoted British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as saying more than a century ago. The retired pastor described his generation's inspiration from Disraeli's discourse that nations start in bondage, then move through such stages as "spiritual truth," liberty, courage and abundance, and then declineinto selfishness, complacency, apathy, dependence and then fall back to bondage.
"It remains for us to break this cycle," Fauntroy told his audience. "You can do it! We can do it " if we put our hearts and our minds to it. Let's go do it!"
