Die-In for Healthcare Planned for Woodstock Square Saturday

A Die-In for Healthcare will be held in Woodstock Square this Saturday, May 20 from 4:45 to 5:45 pm. Local residents will join people mobilized from across Northern Illinois by Indivisible Freeport to bear public witness to the life threatening damage of recent Congressional action to scrap the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA).

Participants are asked to bring tombstones or signs describing the pre-existing conditions that may prevent access to health insurance coverage for themselves or loved ones and to be prepared to share their personal medical issues. Grim reapers, skeletons, and ghouls will illustrate the life threatening consequences of being unable to access medical care because it is unaffordable.

Jody Coss, an Indivisible volunteer organizer says “We need access to health care, not medical insurance barriers to essential treatment.”

Since the House of Representatives vote to scrap the ACA, known to its detractors as Obama Care, and replace it with a hodge-podge with worse coverage, higher costs, and accessibility restriction, public outrage has boiled over in Town Hall meetings and in demonstrations across the country. Die-Ins have been a popular and dramatic way of demonstrating the harm with which this action threatens millions of Americans. Regionally Congressmen Peter Roskam (R-IL6) and Randy Hultrgren (R-IL14) have had Die-Ins at their District offices and other public locations. So has Adam Kinzinger of the neighboring 16th District.

Die-In participants will clear the Square in time for the annual Vesakha Day parade around the Square and many will go to the Blue Lotus Temple at Dean and South Streets to participate in the celebration.

Then to make an evening of it many will stay for the Spoken Word Café at the Stage Left at 7 pm. After Jim May and Tom Kastle share “Stories of Land and Sea” in the first part of the program people are invited to share their healthcare stories in the “Conversation Café from 8:30 to 11 pm.

“How’s Medicare working for you? Did Obama Care raise your rates? Would you prefer vouchers to buy your insurance? Single Payer? Medicare for all? Do you oppose tax increases so that everyone can have health insurance? Why taxes at all? Does the recent GOP health care bill amount to redistribution of wealth? Is there a collective responsibility to care?” are some of the likely topics of discussion according to Cross. “All stories and opinions will be received with calm attention. We do not come to argue. We come to celebrate thinking . . . to be together . . . to celebrate free speech in a free society . . . to learn to listen with patience, interest, and acceptance.”

For more information visit the Die-In for Healthcare Facebook Page.