“After the Storm”

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Americans United For Change

TV  (:30)

SCRIPT

FACTS

ANNCR:   A great American once said that you can’t have the rain without the thunder and lightning.

Video:  Thunderstorm

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass, “West India Emancipation,” speech, August 4, 1857.

ANNCR:   Social Security… Child Labor Laws…. Medicare….Even the creation of the national parks…

They were all born in controversy.

Social Security. Opponents of the Social Security Act fought it bitterly in 1935 and then, after it passed, continued to try to undermine it before it was implemented. [The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble, Altman, Nancy, 2005,p. 5]

Child Labor Laws. As a bill moved through Congress in 1937, the House used the Rules Committee to block legislation while it adjourned. President Roosevelt had to call a special session of Congress to try to move the bill. “Despite White House and business pressure, the conservative alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats that controlled the House Rules Committee refused to discharge the bill as it stood.” By December of 1937, the bill was out of the Rules Committee, but referred back to the Labor Committee where it languished. A revised bill was sent to Congress in February 1938 and after many battles, was passed in June and signed into law. [“Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage,” Jonathan Weissman, originally published in 1978]

Medicare. Medicare did not just come about after President Johnson was reelected. According to Larry DeWitt (as summarized by Matthew Yglesias), there were several starts and stops: “In 1960, as a Senator and Presidential candidate, John F Kennedy backs a Medicare legislative proposal that falls four votes short in the Senate.  In 1962, now-President Kennedy backs Medicare in a State of the Union address and a 20,000 mass rally in Madison Square Garden simulcast on three television networks; the bills falls short by two votes. The bill is reintroduced in 1963 after the midterms and dies again. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was able to ride the sympathy wave to pass the Civil Rights Act, but Medicare still couldn’t pass. In 1965, Medicare finally passes following a landslide election.” [Matthew Yglesias, The Secret History of Medicare, 9/3/09; Larry DeWitt, The Medicare Program as a Capstone to the Great Society-Recent Revelations in the LBJ White House Tapes, May 2003]

Although Yellowstone, the first national park, was founded in 1872, it took strong advocacy from people like John Muir to make the idea of a national park system a reality. “Muir threw himself into what became a pitched battle to preserve the high country. He once again wrote articles describing both the region's beauty and its vulnerability and soon Congress was flooded with public petitions. Muir endured attacks on his integrity by opposing politicians, but finally, on October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into law a bill creating Yosemite National Park” and the national park system.  [Ken Burns, “The National Parks”]

ANNCR:  But after the storm they all became essential parts of the American landscape.

ANNCR:   Ask your members of Congress to take a vote they will be proud of for generations to come.

Ask them to vote yes to make health care a right for every American.

CG: Tell Congress to Vote Yes on Health Reform

Call Congress at (202) 225-3121

Paid for by Americans United for Change.

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