Each of these individuals have had personal struggles with
getting health care coverage (or know friends and family that have had personal
struggles). Each of them are willing to make huge sacrifices to win health care for all Americans.
This issue is the civil rights issue of today and Thompson directly connected current direct actions being organized by the Mobilization for Healthcare for All to the same steps for action which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
"Number one, we know that there are injustices that still exist. Number two, there have been negotiations on a national level," said Thompson. "Our government has tried to negotiate. We too have tried to negotiate when we have the sit-ins. First thing we try to do is get them to agree to our demands, which are more than reasonable."
Thompson said number three is "spiritual" and health gets right down to the spiritual and number four is direct action.
"When negotiation has failed, we have no choice but to seriously consider employing the practice of nonviolent civil disobedience," explained Thompson. "Until [insurance companies and politicians] get the message, until they understand we mean business about changing the relationship between private insurers and public citizens, I think we're going to have to employ all those steps and employ those principles," which MLK Jr. wrote about decades ago.
