Using Art as a Political Platform to Invoke Change

Tender - Ildikó Kalapács

Okay bear with me just a little please. This is certainly not a political forum, but this morning I was sitting in a public county office when a man engaged me in conversation. He was complaining about his property taxes going up, and so the air was thick with dissatisfaction. Then he launched into how the government shouldn't be in charge of health care. He told me that a number of people worked where he did just for the health insurance. I shared with him that I had once hung onto a very unpleasant work situation for the same reason, and most recently a friend of mine, although she is nearing retirement age, is taking a second night time job just for the health insurance. Her husband has suffered several bouts with cancer.

In a "free" capitalistic society, there is something wrong if all our good people are required to work for someone who has 50 or more employees just so they can have basic health care insurance. What about the passion and creativity it takes for people to start and keep a small business going? Shouldn't we be nurturing them rather than allowing the big health insurance companies to quash their energy at every turn as we have for decades. Would we even have half the huge corporations that exist today if they weren't small at sometime? It also seems to me that many of the people that are against health care reform are recipients of medicare, which is a government run program.

Yes, people love to rail against the government, how the post office is inefficient, the armed services wasteful, and social security a lost cause. While waste is not anything a taxpayer wants to see, it is wrong to turn our backs on the sick, the weakest segment of our society. Perhaps with email and private enterprises such as FedEx and UPS to handle our mail, the post office is outdated, but at one time a postal service run by the government was the only way to have a dependable information exchange.

I am taking a cue from all those artists who use their creativity as a platform for change, such as our own Ildikó Kalapács. If you see yourself as a thinking person and not just a "go with the crowd" sort, here is a link that will enlighten you about what the Obama administration is trying to do with health care. Be a creative consumer today and see what all the controversy is about.--Ruth Mitchell

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved