Campaign Office Location and Number:
604 S. Harbor,
Santa Ana, CA
714.839.4431
Fax: (202) 225-5859

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I like waffles on the weekend, but not this kind. Today’s vote on health reform is a nail-biter and a number of the Members of Congress are still undecided. Among them is Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat from Orange County, California. Clearly, the health reform bill is not perfect, but it’s an important start at addressing a monumental problem for California and the nation.

The need for health reform in California couldn’t be more clear. A recently released study by UCLA Center for Health Policy Research finds that nearly two million Californians lost their health insurance during 2008 and 2009, years which were characterized by a deep recession and mass layoffs bringing the total number of uninsured in the state to more than eight million. That number represents a 25 percent increase in the number of uninsured since 2007.

Today, nearly one-quarter of adult Californians lack health insurance.

This need creates heartbreak for too many families. Recently, a MomsRising member, and mother of three, wrote us to say that because she doesn’t have health insurance, she can’t afford a crucial test that would show whether her cancer is in remission. So, she has to face her children and her husband every single day, not knowing how long she has to live. She doesn’t know and they don’t know whether she’s going to be cancer-free or if her body is still fighting for its life. No family should have to deal with that kind of agony and heartbreak.

Today we have the chance to make a critical difference in the lives of Californians and so many people across the country struggling to obtain or keep health insurance.

While there are many reasons not to like the health reform bill, none are good enough to prevent an estimated 32 million people from gaining health insurance through this historic legislation; and without reform, healthcare will continue to drag our families, small businesses, and out economy down.

In fact, Representative Sanchez herself said in her tweet on March 16th at 8:39am: “1 in 4 Californians lack health insurance (including over 190,000 in Orange County). Major, major drag on state & local economy”

We urge Representative Loretta Sanchez to address this urgent need for affordable and secure healthcare in her district and throughout California that she highlighted on Twitter. We also urge her colleagues in Congress to stand with moms, children, and families by voting yes today for health reform.

You can contact the office of Representative Sanchez to tell her that families are counting on her to vote YES via fax at (202) 225-5859 or phone at (202) 225-2965. And, you can also post messages on her two Facebook pages after you click “Become a Fan” on her pages at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Loretta-Sanchez/6282804763?ref=ts and http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/LorettaSanchez?ref=ts

And, it’s not just Representative Sanchez who’s waffling today. The Washington Post top headline this morning reads, Healthcare Cliff Hanger, and the article notes: “Senior Democrats predicted a cliffhanger when the House is expected to vote Sunday night, saying they are likely to clear the 216-vote threshold for final passage by the narrowest of margins.”

With so many Congressional waffles on the table this morning, it’s not a bad idea to take a moment out of your weekend and give your Representative a call (again, if you’ve called in the past) today before the vote. Here’s a link to find the direct number to your Representative’s office, so you can make that last minute call before the healthcare vote reminding them to vote YES for families:http://bit.ly/cNse8m

Although it’s the weekend, Congressional waffles shouldn’t be on the menu today. Covering 32 million people is serious business. Too many lives are at stake with this vote.

Cross posted from the Huffington Post.

Perhaps more than any other, women need to be in this fight. Even beyond our history of pushing this nation towards a moral compass, the reality is, far too many of us fail to receive the health care we need. I remember watching in horror images from an emergency room surveillance camera that captured for the world to see, the tragic death of a 49 year-old Black woman who collapsed, convulsed, and died on the emergency room floor while waiting for the care she desperately needed. That image has haunted me. I wanted to learn more about this woman and in some way, honor her humanity even if that honor, for her, comes much too late.

Her name was Esmin Green. She was a church-going woman and a hard-working Jamaican immigrant. On that fateful day, Esmin sat alone. She waited patiently, for nearly an astounding 24 hours, in search of the health care she desperately needed—care that tragically, never came.

No one deserves the demise that Esmin faced, her last moments completely devoid of dignity. In a nation of such abundance, how could this be? Did she, like millions of others, put off seeking medical treatment until the very end because she lacked insurance that could have provided her access to preventative care? Had she been waiting for nearly an entire day to be seen by a physician due to the typical overcrowding we all have come to expect and accept in emergency rooms due to this nation’s standard practice of denying care to millions who must then utilize the ER as their only source of primary care? If that is indeed the case, do we all, to some extent, bare some level of responsibility for Esmin’s sad demise if for no other reason than our complicit acceptance of this long-standing lack of basic human rights in a nation that claims to lead the world in moral standing?

I know the health care legislation that will come up for a vote this Sunday does not include everything that many, including me, believe all those hard-working Esmins out there deserve. But I will not cross my arms, turn my back, and march away from this fight like some spoiled two-year old that didn’t get her way. While imperfect, this legislation is a substantive start. It will provide coverage for over 30 million whom would have otherwise gone without. It will end the vast injustice of barring help from those who need it the most simply because they have faced health challenges in the past. The bottom line is, we need this change. And in honor of Esmin, I will do everything in my power to make sure it comes to pass. Join me in this effort, and one day tell your children and grandchildren, that you were on the right side of history. On this day, you fought for change.

What does this really mean? It’s not just your community decision maker’s who aren’t living up to our social contract for protecting our children’s short and long-term health, communities all around the country are negligible. Without safe school siting laws, schools are being built on, near, or inside sources of pollution. And EPA can do something about it.

Coincidently, also yesterday, over a dozen activists locked down outside EPA headquarters in Washington DC. They are fighting to end mountaintop removal; a nasty practice of blowing up mountains to extract coal, while also decimating communities and putting children’s health at severe risk. The activists are asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to visit the area in West Virginia that is being torn apart by this environmental and social injustice in the hopes that seeing this destruction will help her act quickly.

Over the past year, Administrator Jackson has pledged that her agency is back at work defending children’s health by ending environmental injustices, but when it comes to ending mountaintop removal, the agency is stalled. In September of 2009, Jackson temporarily held up 79 mountaintop removal permits due to Clean Water Act violations. But there is evidence that the agency may be releasing one or two projects shortly.

What does this have to do with children’s health at school? By allowing mountaintop removal to continue, EPA is putting children directly into harms way. Because our nation has very few safe school siting policies, schools exist very close to these projects. Marsh Fork Elementary stands 400 feet from a sludge refuse dam (poisonous coal extraction leftovers). If this dam breaks, 200 children would need to run to safety in under 1 minute. This is a prime example of how a precautionary approach must be taken when considering where to build a school and how to use our natural resources.

Stand by these activists as they start their second day locked down outside EPA headquarters by writing on Lisa Jackson’s facebook wall, “Go to Appalachia and see for yourself, it’s time to end MTR!

Or better yet, call EPA and leave her a message. 202-564-4700. All you need to say is that you believe children’s health must be protected and mountaintop removal must end.

For a toxic free future,

Renee Claire

The fact is, our food safety laws have not truly been overhauled in more than a century. Back in December, in my post “A New Approach To Food Safety,” I wrote about the importance of developing a new comprehensive food safety agenda that brings these laws up to date and focuses on prevention and notification.

As I wrote then:

…we must improve public education and ensure that information about food-borne illnesses and recalls are distributed accurately and efficiently. I am authoring the Consumer Recall Notification Act – legislation that would improve communication among states, state and local health departments, food distributors and vendors to provide consumers with faster and more complete information. For example, we must post all recall notices on the very grocery store shelves and freezers where a recalled product would have been bought. This will help consumers receive vital information in a timely manner.

We need to do a better job of catching contaminated food before it ever comes close to a kitchen table, a school cafeteria or a restaurant. It’s imperative that parents throughout the country have confidence that the food they serve their kids at home and the food they’re getting at school are safe.

I am now proud to report that this week, I’ve introduced The Consumer Recall Notification Act and we’re hoping to include it as a part of Senator Durbin’s comprehensive Food Safety Modernization Act, which the Senate will take up next month.

This bill would accomplish several important goals:

Notify Consumers

Stores that track purchases through customer loyalty cards or membership programs would be required to notify consumers when they have purchased a recalled product;

Distribute Information to Restaurants and Food Retailers

Facilities that have distributed foods subject to a Class I recall would be required to notify stores and restaurants within 24 hours of the public announcement of the recall.  The FDA would also be required publish a list online of all stores and restaurants that received contaminated products, which in turn must then post notices where the contaminated product was sold so that consumers can be alerted that they may have purchased a recalled product.

Distribute Information to Health Workers

When there is a Class I recall, the FDA would be required to distribute advisories to States, local health departments and frontline health professionals, which include a list of symptoms to look out for and test for in order to diagnose food-borne illness.

We still have a lot more work to do to reform America’s century-old food safety laws. Currently these laws do not go far enough to protect our families from food-borne illnesses. As the mother of two young boys, protecting children and all Americans from such preventable tragedies is one of the reasons I went into public service. The government must do all it can to protect its citizens and I’m proud to play a part in pushing this important piece of legislation forward.

While it’s still an uphill climb to get included in the larger bill — more likely, the bill will call for a study of the value of such notification procedures — I’m proud that this bill has injected the importance of consumer notification into the conversation. I’m hopeful that — whether through my bill or another — similar consumer protections will be included in the final legislation that the Senate will take up next month.

As Good Housekeeping wrote last week, you can help by letting your Senator know that you support the Food Safety Modernization Act.

When we bought our homes, none of us knew that Hooker Chemical Corporation, a division of Occidental Petroleum, had dumped 200 tons of a toxic, dioxin-laden chemical and 21,600 tons of various other chemicals into Love Canal.  We just knew we were getting sick.  We knew there were too many miscarriages, too many birth defects, too many central nervous systems problems, too many urinary tract disorders, and too much asthma and other respiratory problems among us.

Hooker and Occidental knew the chemicals they had buried in the canal could damage the health of the people who lived in the surrounding neighborhood.  When the company sold the land to the town school board for only $1.00, the deal contained a stipulation that if anyone was harmed by the buried waste, Hooker and Occidental would not be responsible.

After we organized and won evacuation from Love Canal in 1980, I moved to Virginia to give my children a home safe from dioxin and other toxic contamination, and to start an organization that would help people fighting toxics in their neighborhoods.

Soon after, I realized that Love Canal was not the only dioxin problem. There were sites all across the country contaminated with Dioxin.  Dioxin poses a serious health risk to both children and adults. In response, more than 100 countries have signed a treaty that calls for a global phase out of dioxin. Dioxin is a powerful cancer causing agent and human carcinogen.

You don’t have to live next to Love Canal in New York or Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan, to suffer the effects of dioxin.  The average boy, girl, woman, or man in the U.S. has enough or almost enough dioxin in their bodies to damage their health.

The only way we can save our families from further exposure is to eliminate the sources of dioxin in everyone’s backyard.

We now have an opportunity to do that.

The EPA is soliciting comments on their proposed cleanup guidelines for dioxin.

EPA is proposing an interim preliminary remediation goal (PRG) for residential soil at 72 ppt TEQ and commercial/industrial soil at 950 ppt TEQ which are based on non-cancer effects.

What’s shocking is that if cancer effects were used to determine the cleanup goals, the levels would go down to 3.7 ppt and 17 ppt respectively at the generally accepted one-in-a-million cancer risk. EPA did not fully use cancer effects to determine the cleanup goals, despite dioxin’s classification as a “known carcinogen.”

Take action by joining parents and families across America in telling EPA you want stronger cleanup guidelines for Dioxin.

At the request of Dow Chemical and the American Chemistry Council, the EPA has extended the public comment period on their proposed cleanup guidelines for Dioxin to Friday April 2^nd. Now more than ever, we need your help to counteract lobbying by Dow Chemical and the chemical industry. Join thousands of Americans by telling EPA that more stringent guidelines must be developed for Dioxin cleanup.

Here’s some other ways you can help protect American families from Dioxin:

• On Twitter? Tweet this!  RT@chej Protect American Families from Dioxin – Take Action Today http://bit.ly/ac6r5H Please RT!
• On Facebook? Post this to your friends – Protect American Families from Dioxin – Take Action Today http://bit.ly/ac6r5H
• Tell your friends and family using CHEJ’s tell-a-friend form.

Remember, there is still time to take action and let your voice be heard!

Lois Marie Gibbs is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) located in the metropolitan Washington Area.  In 1978, Lois founded the Love Canal Homeowners’ Association, and CHEJ in 1981, an organization that has assisted over 10,000 grassroots groups with organizing, technical and general information nationwide.  Her vision has guided CHEJ’s efforts to provide critical organizing and technical assistance to communities engaged in their own environmental struggles.

Lois has been recognized extensively for her critical role in the grassroots environmental justice movement.  She has spoken at numerous conferences and has been featured on many television and radio shows including 60 Minutes, 20/20, Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America, and the Today Show.

But when it comes to our own problems with neighbors, co-workers or our kids’ schools, we can feel frazzled and helpless. Calling police is stressful, courts expensive, and neither guarantees resolution.  Community Mediation is a practical (and practically free) solution for community disputes in a growing number of cities nationally. This week, Statewide Mediation Week in California, is a great time to put some helpful numbers on your fridge for when it you need support working out a conflict.

·National Association for Community Mediation http://www.nafcm.org/where you can find a mediator in your area

·If you are in the Bay Area call Community Boards, San Francisco’s non-profit conflict resolution center http://www.communityboards.org 415-920-3820

I run Community Boards (http://www.communityboards.org) where we help hundreds of people every year reach mutually satisfying solutions with the help of trained neutral mediators. And it costs next to nothing. Before I became a mom and Community Boards’ director, I was a disputant, in terrible conflict with a housemate. Now, fifteen years later, that antagonist is my friend and colleague. We wouldn’t enjoy collegiality if a small claims court had forced us into a cookie-cutter resolution. Mediation builds community in the place of strife.

For Natalie, mediation saved her home: “My three kids make lots of happy kid noise and our dog barks, and my downstairs neighbor was going nuts. She complained to our landlord and even called the police one night because of the noise. I was terrified we’d get evicted. Every time my kid hollered I’d get a stomach-ache. I didn’t think mediation would work, but the mediator helped us remain calm and to come up with a solution together that everyone could live with.”

For Jenny, mediation saved her job and a friendship. “I started a small business with my good friend, but things started to sour when I had to miss work because of my son’s chronic ear aches. She wanted me to give her a larger share of the business, and I wanted all the energy I put into our start- up to matter and to get the flexibility I wanted from self-employment. We sat down with neutral mediators who really helped us air the problems, appreciate each other’s grievances and save our business and relationship.”

How I wish I could get Glenn Beck to the peace table, and I’d give my eye teeth to mediate Republicans and Democrats through the health care bill! But while we can’t use mediation for all our problems, for many quality of life issues, it can make a huge difference.

And let’s talk about being good role models for our kids. When we can show them that grown-ups also have problems and that we can get help to work out peaceable solutions, we’re showing them how to live peaceably in this world.
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Darlene Weide is the Executive Director of Community Boards, mediator and trainer. Sbe lives with her family in San Francisco.

Speaker Pelosi kicked off the event, offering specifics of why reform will benefit kids and families:

“We will extend the successful SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) initiative through 2019. Insurance companies will no longer be able to come between children and their doctors. We will support the education of nurses and social workers who care for children and their parents every day. We will guarantee affordable oral, hearing and vision care for our kids, improve reimbursements for primary care physicians, and ensure the Medicaid covers primary and specialty care.”

Marian Wright Edelman adds:

“This bill will guarantee access to coverage; not only for 31 million American people who are uninsured, but it will extend guaranteed access to health coverage to more than 95 percent of our children. No, we have not gotten all the way across the finish line but we are very close toward it, and this is a huge step forward. And millions of low-income parents and adults for whom health coverage is simply out of reach are going to benefit.”

With a special note for foster kids:

“All those parents who have older children are going to see that coverage can be extended until they are 26, and I am particularly pleased that children in foster care, our most vulnerable children, will be able to get extended health coverage until they are 26 years old.”

When I spoke, I made sure to share this zinger of a fact: “Across the country, families are seeing health insurance rate hikes of up to 39 percent. And that’s not because insurers are facing tough times. In fact, last year the five largest insurance companies earned 56 percent more in profits and they covered 2.7 million fewer people.”

And this one: “Families USA has estimated that without change, 275,000 people will die prematurely in the next 10 years because they don’t have health insurance coverage. ”

Then I got to share this personal story from a MomsRising member. With all the kids at the event, I couldn’t help tearing up as I told her story: “A few months back, we got a letter from a Moms Rising member in Florida. The mother of three young children, who told us that she didn’t have health insurance and she couldn’t afford a crucial test that would show whether her cancer was in remission or not. So she has to face her kids and her family every single day not knowing if she’s getting better or not. And she told us to stand here today for her.”

So we did.

AP Image, Gerald Herbert. DC MomsRising members, Speaker Pelosi, and me

(For a full length transcript of the event, check out http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=2190)

One thing that you can’t see in these photos is the crowd of reporters. There were tons of them there, and they were actually looking downright cheerful thanks to the babies who accompanied their moms to the event. It was a pretty special thing to have so many kids at an event like this, if talking with Capitol security is any indication– it took some time to confirm that strollers would actually be allowed in! Fortunately we got the all-clear and were glad we could include kids in the event. Their presence reminds us that since they can’t vote, they need us to be their voices in the halls of Congress.

I want to also share that Speaker Pelosi loved the diapers decorated with MomsRising members’ messages in support of health reform. Keep the comments and personal stories for health reform coming on our petition here!

This was an amazing event thanks to all of our members, both on the ground and online. The energy of all of us standing up together for our kids is what made this possible. Thank you so much for all you do.

VIDEO: MomsRising members speak up for healthcare on Capitol Hill

A report  released this morning by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research finds that 1 in 4 Californians under 65 years old – 8.2 million people – were uninsured in 2009. This represents a 19.5% increase in just two years.

In his blog, Anthony Wright rightfully warns: “The shocking increase in people losing insurance spotlights the problem that even for those of us who are insured, coverage may not be there for us when we need it.”

And, perhaps worst of all, our children are suffering disproportionately.  We now have 1.5 million children in California who are uninsured – an increase of 400,000 or 35%  in just two years.  Although it hasn’t been able to keep pace with the growing demand, California’s public programs – Medi-Cal and Healthy Families – now cover 5.6 million children who otherwise would not be insured.

In the face of this crisis, Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating the Healthy Families program entirely and reducing Medi-Cal eligibility significantly.   Leaders in the California legislature are making decisions now about the Governor’s proposed budget cuts.

Please take a moment to urge them not to make any cuts to these vital programs when our families need them most: http://action.momsrising.org/cms/letter/letter_1007

Thank you!

My friend is not alone. I attended a talk by McKinsey & Company consultants Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston on their research about top women business executives and how they accomplish things in work and life. Barsh and Cranston said that the women they interviewed for their book concurred that there is no such thing as work-life balance, only “managed disequilibrium.” The key is to find ways to cope.

Ordinary women, executive women, and even First Lady Michelle Obama are all talking about the work-life equation and the challenges it poses. And now, this week, NPR is doing a series of reports on the “revolution” taking place at work, because it’s not just women–or even parents–who want flexibility and choices in how, when, and where they work, but also Generations X and Y, people nearing retirement, and low-wage workers. People want options to work flexible schedules and remotely from home, the first NPR report explains, to reduce their time wasted commuting, increase their productivity, and spend more time with their children (one mother—now a business owner who gives her employees these options—said she had to drop off her own kids at day care at 6 a.m. every day to get to work on time).

There are other ways to make the workplace more compatible with today’s workers’ lives, including results-only work environments, taking infants to work, redesigning career tracks, and opting for contract work when that is feasible. I have co-authored a book with Joan Blades about these and other ways employers and employees can create what we name a “custom fit” between work and life demands. It will be published on Labor Day, 2010, by Jossey-Bass. We hope it inspires leaders from the boardroom to the cashier counter to invent new ways to work—so that we can end the impossible tug-of-war between on-the-job responsibilities and off-the-job commitments.