;)
I had to deliver some photos to a client in Anchorage, so I decided to time it so that I could go straight from the drop off to the "Send Congress back to DC" event, held for those who pledge their support for health care reform to urge our Senators to vote for reform. As it happened, I hit a couple of traffic jams coming in and so had to go straight to the event, because they were going to shut the doors shortly after 6:00 PM and then no one would be allowed to enter.
Shortly after the meeting began, the host, Jonathan Teeters of Organizing for America, asked all those who had health insurance to raise their hands, then all those who had lousy insurance to raise their hands and finally, all those who had no insurance at all to do so.
This guy sitting next to me raised his hand when the "uninsured category" came up. It had been my intent to ask him a couple of questions afterward, but he got up and zipped out, just before the event ended.
He did a lot of shouting, though, all on cue, and in favor of health insurance reform.
;)
This is Jonathan Teeters himself, holding a bundle representing the 5000 petitions received so far from Alaskans who want Congress to pass a good health care reform plan. That would include me, as I have previously made known.
;)
The highlight of the event came at 7:00 o'clock when Senator Mark Begich made a planned surprise call from Indiana, where he had stopped with his son on their drive back to Washington, D.C. The surprise call was announced five minutes beforehand to give the crowd a chance to practice the response they would shout out for Begich to hear when asked a couple of different questions.
Before this happened, Begich chatted for awhile, telling folks how, as he and his daughter have been traveling, they stop here and there, to get breakfast or dinner, buy gasoline, wander around a park or something and just chat with people. He said that he does not tell them that he is a US Senator and the only Alaska politician most of them would recognize is Sarah Palin, so they don't even suspect.
Again and again, in these casual conversations, Begich said, the subject of health care comes up and people are frustrated. Some have lost jobs and with them their health care. Some are afraid to move to a new job and lose their health care. Some have health care, but get shafted by their insurance companies when the time comes. Some have no health care at all.
Anyway, when the time came, Sarah pointed to the script, and, minus a tiny sprinkling of silent nay-sayers, the crowd shouted out the very words that she points to here.
;)
Senator Lisa Murkowski did not show, nor did she call in. So Jonathan's father videoed the crowd while they shouted out this message to her.
;)
Here folks are, shouting out their message to Senator Murkowski. Mike is the guy in front and he has health insurance and had not been too politically active until the Bush versus Gore election was settled under suspicious circumstance in Florida.
That angered him, as he believes that Gore was cheated out of the victory that should have been his and America has paid a high price. Now, he wants his voice to be heard.
In some ways, it was kind of a funny moment for me. It is my training as a photojournalist that when you cover such events, you do not shout, cheer, clap, jeer or do any such thing. You shoot pictures, you gather notes and you do not display your own sentiments. You pretend that you have no sentiments.
But I had not come as a journalist. I had come as a regular citizen, frustrated and angered by a health care system that absolutely threatens to destroy him. Still, when the call came to shout out, I tried, but I could not shout. I squeaked. It just didn't feel right to shout. It goes against my grain. I'm not a shouter, anyway.
So there you go, I went to this event to make my voice heard by our Senators and then, when the time came, I didn't even make it heard. And I didn't cover the event as I would have if I had been in photojournalism mode. I just shot these few pictures pretty much from the place where I sat.
Still, I have at least made a tiny record of the event, a statement that it happened.
;)
Afterwards, I delivered the photos to my client and got together with my youngest son, Rex, who I had not seen for awhile and took him to dinner at Bombay. I had hoped that my beautiful and intelligent daugther-in-law, Stephanie, could come, too, but she had to work. The waitress, a young Philipina woman who had been terrified to eat Indian food for the first few months that she worked here, saw me taking this picture and volunteered to take one of both of us together.
;)
She did pretty good, too. So here we are, Rex and I together, in the photo taken by the waitress who finally conquered her fear and found Indian food to be quite delicious.
Rex and I had a good visit.
And, as always, being in this environment took my mind right back to India, to Sandy, Murthy, Vasanthi and all the rest of the family there, to the Indian highway, the bandit monkeys, the elephants that bless people and those that at night appear suddenly at the side of the road in the headlights of your courageous and skilled taxi driver.
It is so sad. I have so many photo stories from India that no one has ever seen, not even me, save for when I took them, because I have had no time to do anything with them.
One day.