Health Care Law Hearing

Virginia Organizing leaders and community members Ray Scher, Larry Wilson, Kevin Wilson and Dell Erwin joined Families USA in speaking out in support of thehealth care law in front of the courthouse in Richmond where the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court heard appeals in two challenges to the law. Virginia Organizing leaders directly helped by the health care law voiced their opposition to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to block national health care reform.

Read More

Back to top

Kicked out of Coventry meeting

Virginia Organizing activists were kicked out of a shareholder meeting held at the Tyson’s Corner Ritz Carlton for Coventry Health Insurance, the sixth largest health insurer in the country.  

Several consumer shareholders, including Paula Neustatter and Joe Katz, held proxies to go inside the meeting and speak in support of a shareholder proposal to disclose political contributions used to influence elections.
 
Despite having the proper credentials, Neustatter and Katz were blocked by Coventry staff from speaking. When Neustatter attempted to speak on the transparency resolution, the microphone was promptly whisked away from her.

As the consumer shareholders were being blocked from commenting inside the room, activists were chanting outside the meeting in order to draw attention to Coventry’s abusive practices.  Eventually Coventry’s CEO paused and motioned to one of his staff to deal with the disturbance outside. Security then escorted the protesters out of the building with one of the protesters joking, “This is the nicest place I have ever been kicked out of!”
 
While the disturbance continued outside, Joe Katz sat inside the shareholder meeting and watched Coventry’s reaction, “From inside the meeting room I could see the look of fear in the eyes of Coventry’s CEO when he heard citizens just outside the room chanting. The executives realized that we plan on holding them accountable. These CEOs cannot hide in corporate boardrooms anymore. We have a right to know how our health care system operates and where our health insurance premiums go.”

Read More

Back to top

Virginia at the Showdown in Ohio

By: Johnny Hanley

Last Monday, I joined four members of Virginia Organizing to make the seven hour trip to Columbus to support Showdown in Ohio, a large scale protest organized by National People’s Action against Chase Bank at their annual stockholder meeting the following day. We met with social activists from all over the country who were united by their frustration with abusive banking policies that led to record highs of joblessness and homelessness.  Sub-prime lending and abusive foreclosures were two of the event’s main focuses. These issues are here in Virginia but cannot be solved only by actions within Virginia.

This protest certainly did not come without difficulty. The scale of this action attracted a lot of police attention. My section of the protest was broken up with unnecessary aggression from horse-mounted police and other protesters were reportedly shoved and pepper sprayed. However, I believe that the most important actions that we can do are the most daunting and that the importance of a just cause outweighs intimidating odds. We took a stand in Ohio for Virginia communities alongside communities just like ours from all over the country and that is a cause to be proud of.

Back to top