'We Won't Back Down': Vermonters Launch Sit-In At Statehouse Demanding Universal Health Care 'Now!'

After holding the floor of the Vermont legislature in Montpelier for several hours, 29 protesters demanding universal health care were arrested Thursday night. James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, appeared on Democracy Now! Friday morning to recap the day of action:

Protesters occupied the chambers of the Vermont statehouse on Thursday afternoon, saying they refuse to leave until legislators meet their demands to respect the first-ever U.S. law for universal, publicly-funded health care, won by grassroots movements nearly four years ago yet stymied by the governor last month.

The demonstration is a response to the mid-December announcement by Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin that he seeks to unilaterally abandon the universal health care plan, passed into law in 2011 under Act 48 and named Green Mountain Care, even though the governor used the groundbreaking legislation to bolster his candidacy.

Timed to coincide with Shumlin’s “state of the state” address, Thursday’s sit-in—still ongoing at the time of publication—was staged by approximately 30 people, with “many supporters” rallying nearby, Keith Brunner of the Vermont Workers’ Center, the organization that coordinates the state-wide “Health Care Is A Human Right” campaign, told Common Dreams over the phone.

“I am here because it is a human right to have health care,” Skyler Wind, a member volunteer of the Vermont Workers’ Center, told Common Dreams over the phone from the protest. “We all deserve to be treated the same way.”

Wind explained she is a single mom living with disability, with a disabled child, in extreme poverty. “Too many poor people like myself, we’re the ones whose teeth are falling out, whose cancers are discovered too late,” she said. “Those like me, who are so-called ‘welfare queens,’ can’t afford co-pays and have to mess around with medication. Why can’t my son—why can’t I—get care when we need it?”

Immediately preceding the occupation, nearly 200 protesters had filled the halls of the statehouse, singing, “We have come too far, we won’t back down. We’ll flood these halls with justice, the time is Now!”