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Single-Payer Health Care and the Case Against Clicktivism

Mokhiber, Russell
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/30/single-payer-health-care-and-the-case-against-clicktivism/

Publisher:  CounterPunch
Date Written:  30/09/2015
Year Published:  2015  
Resource Type:  Article

What’s the next step in the campaign for single-payer universal health care in the United States? Single Payer Now's Don Bechler says we have to hit the streets.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Bechler says that online, it's primarily single-payer activists talking with single payer activists.
In the streets, you're getting a good cross section of America.

"If you want the same slice of the pie, stay online," Bechler says. "If you want to a bigger slice of the pie, you go out on the streets and find new people."

Bechler also questions the time activists spend talking about "framing" the single payer issue.
"You go to a national single payer conference, everyone goes to the media or framing workshops," Bechler says. "You get on these phone calls, they are always talking about the best way to say things. There is the illusion that they have will access to a microphone where if they say something this way or that, they will breakthrough. But where's the microphone? The press hates our guts. It's the corporate media, the only place you get a hearing is on Amy Goodman."

"The whole framing argument is useless. There is no perfect sound bite for single payer. You can't say something in four sentences. When you are out on the streets, talking with human beings, they ask questions about single payer and you answer. That's it. No sound bite is going to win this thing."
Bechler says there is a fundamental difference between communicating online and communicating face to face.

"If I'm your neighbor, I can't lie to your face," Bechler says. "Face to face has more legitimacy to it."

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