Nonviolent Medicaid Army

What is the Nonviolent Medicaid Army?

The Nonviolent Medicaid Army of the poor is a growing, politically independent force of the poor and dispossessed, united across identities, regions, races and issues, modeled after MLK's 'nonviolent army of the poor' from the first Poor People's Campaign of 1968. We are currently active in states like Wyoming, Wisconsin, Texas, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Maryland and Vermont. We are not a coalition or a campaign, but a network of organizations and committees that understand healthcare to be a strategic front of struggle to unite the working class. Find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nonviolentmedicaidarmy.

Who makes up the Nonviolent Medicaid Army?

There are currently over 90 million people in the U.S. who get their healthcare through Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program). These 90 million, as well as those unfairly excluded from Medicaid - due to such reasons as arbitrary income cutoffs, or documentation status - represent the diversity of the entire working class. We are impacted by every single front of struggle - be it the fight for housing, a healthy environment, living wages, food, education, freedom from debt, freedom of migration, or freedom from criminalization and incarceration. The fight for Medicaid is common to the North and the South of the U.S. and the fight for healthcare broadly unites the global working class.

Why the Nonviolent Medicaid Army?

As millions more in this country are thrown into the ranks of the unemployed or underemployed, the need for Medicaid steadily increases and healthcare will continue to be one of the top concerns on the minds of the everyday people. We call for "Medicaid for All" - expanding Medicaid to every resident alongside the abolition of Managed Care Organizations and de-commodification of the healthcare system overall. The Nonviolent Medicaid Army centers the leading social force - the poor and dispossessed - in the fight for healthcare as a human right, a transformative demand in the context of a system that seeks to profit off of our pain, sickness and death.

Who can Join the Nonviolent Medicaid Army?

Any organization of the poor and dispossessed whose members are directly impacted by the fight for healthcare as a human right or any of the fronts of struggle faced by those who are on Medicaid or who need it, can and should join the Nonviolent Medicaid Army. The Nonviolent Medicaid Army is a vehicle through which we can cohere leaders to assess the terrain and take strategic action together to grow “the new and unsettling force” into an unstoppable nonviolent army commensurate with the times we are living in.