By Bill Mefford
When I worked for a national agency of the United Methodist Church my job was to build up movements among United Methodists who were passionate about defending and protecting the rights of immigrants, ending mass incarceration, and ending gun violence. I loved my job as I got to connect with United Methodists across the United States who were doing amazing ministries and who were themselves directly impacted by injustice, or who were incarnated among those directly impacted by injustice.
Together, local churches across the country would coordinate public witness events for the most effective advocacy on state and federal bills before Congress. We achieved a lot success and created real and lasting change, but to be fully honest, there were challenges too. The biggest challenges were located at the national level of the church: institutional lethargy or blatant bureaucratic obstruction were most common.
The biggest challenge at the local level was simply a lack of leadership. Far too many times I heard from pastors or conference-level staff who were genuinely concerned about injustices in their local context, but when I offered various ways for them to take meaningful action I would hear a long litany of reasons why they could not take action until their bishop took action. I would take time to urge them to do all they could now; that their leadership could likely prod their bishop into faithfulness. But I quickly learned that all of the urging and cajoling rarely made any difference. There were some pastors who simply refused to get out in front of their institutional superiors. And so the injustices would continue and the church would do nothing because too many in the church were waiting for someone higher up to act.
Nothing kills the building of movements more than this kind of weakness of leadership; an institutional focus to our vision that blots out the urgency of the suffering around us.
Refusing to do the hard work of building support for a goal of concrete change and opting to wait until others acquire the courage to create that change is not just something that plagues churches; I see that in the larger progressive movement even now.
When I hear Democratic candidates for President like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren - who I believe is running the best campaign of all the candidates - state their support for universal healthcare I find myself disbelieving that it can really happen. I just do not see universal healthcare happening. I have voiced this often over the years - even when President Obama was proposing the then-controversial public option - and always gotten the same replies. People tell me how universal healthcare can be paid for and how smart it is to do it.
Let me say what I have always said - I sincerely believe that universal healthcare makes the most sense in terms of protecting everyone’s right to healthcare and to keeping costs down in the long run. I totally get that the United States should have universal healthcare - and should have had it when President Truman first suggested it. My challenge/question about whether this is doable is not one based on policy or in the policy’s cost effectiveness. I am fully on board with that. My concern is based more in the progressive movement’s lack of organizational muster.
Support for universal healthcare among many progressives seems limited to voting for candidates who support this policy. I believe what everyone on the Left HAS to realize, especially when we look back at the endless, gut-wrenching drama of the passage of Obamacare, is that conservatives will consider expanding healthcare to be an act of war. I have no understanding of how those who profess to be “pro-life” also seem so vehemently opposed to people having healthcare, but it is reality. And the Left does not seem prepared to fight and organize to make universal healthcare happen. I could be wrong of course, but I am increasingly skeptical.
I remember when the fight for Obamacare was happening in real time. I was working in a national church office on other issues and I kept asking my colleagues what they were doing in the field to support their advocacy goals on healthcare and I was getting the sense that passing the ACA was, to most faith offices in DC, a case of “inside baseball.” The fight, for far too many advocates based in DC, was about policies and not really about field mobilization. Oh, how wrong they were.
It did not take long to see that conservative dark money was being funneled to supposedly grassroots groups that came to be called Tea Parties (and which were quickly organized into a DC operation) and they waged a literal holy war to keep people from having affordable healthcare. They ended up losing, but they devastated Dems in the mid-terms and brought into office some of the most shameless trump supporters we have now.
So, yes, universal healthcare is the best option, the most cost-efficient in the long-term, and the most humane policy, but, I am not sure it is good politics because I am not convinced that progressives and left-of-center moderates will be able to fight with the same passion as those who hate affordable healthcare.
So, talk me off the ledge. Tell me I am wrong, but more importantly, tell me about the organizing infrastructure that I am not seeing that will be utilized to build a movement to ensure that universal healthcare becomes a reality and not just another campaign promise.
In the end, there is no shame in incrementalism. Incrementalism is how most big things are done when it comes to policy and or any kind of life-change really. Until we have a solid infrastructure and until we have made universal healthcare a social and cultural expectation, then I refuse to we have something that right now is mainly a good applause line. Better to vote in a moderate than a progressive without an accompanying movement for political power.