Experimental Filmaker

     My niece, Jennifer Reeves, was visiting the Bay area recently to show some of her movies.  Her work is very well known and acclaimed and she has shown her films in many festivals, especially in Europe. 
Visit her web site: http://www.jenniferreevesfilm.com/.

Republicans for small Health Care

     That's right, I meant to spell it that way.  It would make a good slogan for them.  Isn't it shocking the quality of potential leadership the Republicans have come up with.  I can think of many honest, principled, peaceful people I know that would do a good job--and I'm sure you can too.
     Coming back to health care, I heard a presentation on the radio today by Steffi Woolhandler MD about the problems with Obamacare and why we need a Single Payer Health Plan.  If the Supreme Court allows Obamacare to go forward, 23 million people will be uninsured.  Many of the policies will have high deductibles and co pays: after all, the big private insurance companies helped write the bill, why shouldn't they benefit.
     Steffi Woolhandler, by the way, got her start here in Oakland at Highland Hospital, our public hospital.  One of the things she was first involved in was opposing the practice of dumping.  When private hospitals had emergency room patients who couldn't pay, they would send them to Highland in an ambulance, even if they had appendicitis or pneumonia or some other medical conditions.  It was young doctors  like Steffi in Oakland and other cities that led the campaign that stopped dumping.
     When I was in Chicago at Northwestern Medical School, almost all of the patients in the hospital where white.  The few black people who came to the medical center were brought in because they had unusual diseases and were "good teaching cases."   The vast number of black people went to Chicago's Cook County Hospital.  When we we're learning physical diagnosis, there were certain things we couldn't do with white patients, such as breast, vaginal, and rectal exams.  Guess where we went to do those:  Cook County.  It was degrading to the patients and to us as well--to be forced to participate in that.
     Back to our current time, Steffi is one of the leaders of Physicians for a National Health Plan.   I highly recommend their web site PNHP.org.  There's a lot of good information about how the insurance industry benefits from Obamacare, and how Single Payer is both a great improvement and highly feasible.

Asombrado

Asombrado is a word in spanish that means amazed.   I often feel amazed, almost overwhelmed at the fullness of life energy in children .   Just today one of my patients came in, a girl of 9, spirited and comfortable in herself, direct with me, full of plans--truly something beautiful to see.  It reminded me of  a book I read years ago called The Girl Within, and the notion was this: that girls are especially free and full of ideals around 9-12 year old--and when women face difficulties in their adult years, they draw on the strengths of this period to carry on.   Ever since I read this book, I've have a special appreciation for girls of this age--girls who are free to feel their strengths, before they get hit with becoming sexualized and concerned with looks.

Oakland General Strike

   I went to Downtown Oakland before work on November 4th.  It was the day of the general strike, and the sight of all the people clamoring for the human rights brought tears to my eyes.  People have awakened and are connecting with their anger and feeling their strength.  The big media, despite themselves, seem to be giving a lot of attention, because deep down, they, too, know that something is deeply wrong.

   I'm going to quote the some stanzas of a poem written by Langston Hughes:

 Let America be America Again:

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he is free.

(America was never free to me).

***

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--And finding only the same old plan

Of dog eat dog, of might crush the weak.  

***

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--
The land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--
The poor man's, Indian's, Negro's ME--
who made America,
Whose seet and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From theose who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again, America!

O, yes, I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

and yet I swear this oath--

America will be!
An ever-living seed,
Its dream
Lies deep in the heart of me.

We the people, must redeem
Our land, the mines, the plants, the rivers,
the mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again.

I want her to have what I didn't have

     Back in February I spoke about walking into exam rooms and intuiting that some children had special family support, from both parents or weved siblings who had love to share.  Just last week I entered a room to see a 1 year old girl who was with her father that day.  Many young persons of this age are upset at being in a doctors office given all the shots they have had already, but this little girl was pretty relaxed and it made examining her a lot easier.   After a while it occurred to me that this father was giving his daughter a lot of special attention.  I told him so and added that fathers play such an especially important role in the lives of their daughters. Asked him how it was that was so involved.  Then his story came out.
     His childhood was rough.  His mother left when he was three, and he hung out with his father, and then had a stepmother who was abusive.  Then he said to me: "I want her to have what I didn't have."   I told him he was doing very well and wished him a good day.   It's true: every parent at heart wants their children to have it better than they did.

Credit cards and economic justice

      My girlfriend has an eye for economic justice.  She was buyng some some supplies at a green builder's store in Berkeley, and learned this about credit cards.  For VISA and Mastercard, the merchant pays around 0.5% of each transaction to the acquirer, the bank that forwards the transaction to the cardholder's bank and routes the money back to them from the cardholder's bank.  The cardholder's bank also charges a fee to the acquirer which is passed on the merchant.  Fees can be 2% or more.  If the card is a rewards card, the merchant fees are even higher.  BUT!   If you use a debit card and enter the PIN on a keypad, the charge is much less, because the card-issuing bank is out of the loop.
     So, if you're dealing with a local merchant, a small business for example, use your debit card.  Not only will you lower their expenses, less money will be headed to those nasty banks back east.  And consider where you buy things, too, although Big Box and on-line discounts are tempting: buy local and the taxes stay local.

Immigrant Life Number 19

     It was 5 AM when a group of  heavily armed,  uniformed men broke down the front door to raid a house.  A ten year old boy who was sleeping on the couch awoke to see 15 men with guns drawn.  The men searched and ransacked the house and then handcuffed  the boy's father and 15 year old brother.   The paramilitaries did not speak the language spanish, so they made the boy and his sister translate.  The girl began to have an asthma attack but they wouldn't let her use her medicine.    
     This wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan and these weren't US soldiers.  They were a SWAT team in Oakland, California,  looking for a drug dealer, but unfortunately for this family, they broke in to the wrong apartment.   The suspect was actually in a neighboring apartment.  There was no apology by the SWAT team, nor was any compensation for the damage, nor any offer of emotional counseling.   There were given a form to ask for restitution of their broken door, but 4 months later they have not received anything. 

     I learned about this when the family came to my medical office 3 days later because the younger children of 10 and 12 years old were having anxiety attacks and insomnia.  Worst of all, the children had been afraid that their father would be deported.  A year ago a five year old boy was brought in for aggressive behavior.  His mother, a Salvadoran immigrant, said that the SWAT team that burst into their apartment were looking for her younger brother, perhaps a low level drug dealer, and in that raid the little boy's grandmother was pushed down.   I asked that mother a while later how things where, and her brother was back at home--I guess he was not such a dangerous figure after all.

     That morning in my office I felt  both sad and angry.  As a doctor and as a human being I care deeply for my families.   I've worked in East Oakland as a doctor for 35 years; the working class, immigrant families I know endure great hardships: poverty, violent crime, work accidents, deportation.  It's an outrage that these raids are added to their quota of suffering. 

     I've done some research about SWAT and what I learned is alarming.  Since the 1980s, when Congress mandated that the military make equipment available to civilian police as part of the War on Drugs,  as many of 70% of the police departments in cities of over 50,000 have formed  heavily armed SWAT units--and really, they are paramilitaries. 

     According to a report  by the Conservative CATO Institute, paramilitary units are essentially soldiers, and soldiers are supposed to use lethal force and initiate violence on command.  This contrasts with the police,  whose role is to apprehend suspected law breakers, with minimum force, and adhere to constitutional procedures.       

     Albuquerque  had to dismantle its SWAT unit after losing  several wrongful death lawsuits.  An outside evaluator said that, "They had an organizational culture that led them to escalate rather than de-escalate violence."   In 1997 a SWAT team in Dinuba California--population 15,000--killed an innocent man during a raid.  A jury awarded the family $12.5 million, and Dinuba, too, disbanded its SWAT unit.  Dallas and Seattle no longer send  SWAT teams on suicide calls or drug raids.  

     I made some calls to to the police review commission, the local city councilman's office, and a community organization dealing with police brutality.   The family, although they are un documented and risk deportation, decided to press their case with the police.  Maybe at least they'll get compensation for the damages to the apartment.   Meanwhile the children are anxious and have trouble sleeping.