One of the things that I noticed in the rally was the a strong belief that the Democrats in Congress had to take a stronger stand for universal health care. The activists had signs advocating the public option, and several voiced their support for a single payer health care system. Brown's victory didn't seem to faze them, and I remember one lady holding a sign with a picture of a spine and the words, "Democrats: Show Some Backbone." Several signs showed gratitude for Congressman Honda for his unwavering support of a public option.

As people held signs, individuals would step in the middle of the crowd and tell their stories on why they support health care reform. Many of the stories were very sad. I heard many stories of individuals who had never been involved in any political causes before, but were hit by some illness and were subsequently overwhelmed by medical costs. Many of these people were angry at private insurance companies, and were deeply suspicious of any reform that did not include a public option.

I brought my camera to the rally to take pictures of the rally. When someone saw me with a camera, he asked if I could post the photos on the Move On Picasa site, and I happily agreed. While I took photos of the crowd and of individuals, I would try to have a short conversation with the individual and ask why they supported health care reform.

The lady speaking in this photo is a cancer survivor who is still taking chemotherapy. She described how she is struggling to pay for the chemotherapy costs, and she is worried about what will happen if a health care reform bill is not passed. She is a strong advocate of the public option. I think she mentioned that she was a nurse, but am not certain of it. When she was speaking, many people in the crowd were nodding their heads, and I had a feeling many of them shared similar experiences with high medical costs.

The man in this photo is a small business owner who said that this was his first time attending a rally on health care reform.

He shared how he worried about his employees' health care insurance and how it affects his business. Someone asked him if his business pays for coverage for his employees, and he said that his business didn't. His business was struggling because the bank was not giving him loans for his business. The crowd gave a polite applause after he spoke, and thanked him for attending his first rally.

This man is a member of the group West Valley for Change, a Democratic group based in the West Valley area of Santa Clara County. West Valley for Change originally formed to help elect Barack Obama president, and since the elections it has morphed into a strong advocacy group for various Democratic causes.

He talked to me about the use of junk insurance in his company to save money, and how these junk insurance often does not cover a wide range of medical costs. He has been in several health care reform rallies over the past couple of months, and is still hopeful for a bill to come out of Congress.

This woman has also been in many health care reform rallies. A month ago, she took the train to San Francisco to attend a rally, and was one of a few thousand who were trying to make their voices heard. She also was recently in a vigil in San Jose in Stevens Creek Road, near the popular Valley Fair Mall.

One of the things that most impressed me about this woman and about all the activists who attended is the passion that they have for this cause and the time that they were willing to spend to go to all these rallies and vigils. I went to a health care vigil last August in Stevens Creek Boulevard and recognize some people in this rally who also attended that vigil.

One of the funnest group of people in the rally were some elderly women who were a part of the group Raging Grannies. I had never heard of them before, so when I went home I looked up the group on the web and was fascinated by what I found.

The Raging Grannies started in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia, and were made up of white, middle-class, educated women between the age of 52 and 67 and they were made up of anthropologists, teachers, businesswoman, counselors, artists, homemakers, and librarians. Initially they joined peace groups to protest the visit of US Navy warships and submarines in the waters surrounding Victoria, but they became tired of the sexism of the peace groups that they were in and formed their own group.

Eventually more than 60 Raging Grannies groups have been formed and they expanded their concerns to environmental issues, gay rights issues, economic justice issues, and issues involving ageism and sexism. The Raging Grannies use humor and street theater in their protests to educate the public on important issues. In this rally, the Raging Grannies sang some humorous songs on health care reform for the activists. Below is a youtube video of the Raging Grannies.

Here I am. I came because in the past few months, as I've read and learned more about health care reform, the more I believe that it is necessary for our country. My work provides insurance for me, so I'm not worried. But I have many friends and family member who are unemployed and they are worried about the possibility of getting sick or contracting some sort of illness. Both my wife and I worry about them.

I have been inspired also by artist/activists that I admire to try to express my social concerns in my art and to participate on the street to try to get positive change for our society. I am especially inspired by the art and activism of fine artists Diego Rivera and Ralph Fasanella, writers Grace Paley and Muriel Rukeyser, and cartoonists Stephanie McMillan and Art Young.

I hope to follow their example.

In writing this blog, I just recently discovered that one of my heroes, Howard Zinn, just died. I discovered his books about two years ago, and have admired them ever since. His book A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present has been a very influential book for me and for a whole generation of activists and progressives. I had never heard of the Wobblies before reading his book, and I learned a lot about the various movements for social change in this country. Since I first read A People's History, I've bought several books of his.

My favorite book of his is You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, an autobiography that talks of his involvement with the civil rights movement in Spellman College in the early 1960s, his efforts in the antiwar movement with people like Daniel Berrigan, and his later activism.

Thank you, Howard Zinn, for teaching me of the importance of dissent and of the importance of being involved in participating to make lasting change.

I end this blog with a quote from an interview with Howard Zinn in the book Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics:

"It’s interesting because I may be speaking to a college audience or an audience of community people, fifteen hundred people, and someone gets up from the audience and says, What can I do? We’re really helpless. And I say, Look around. There are fifteen hundred people sitting here. These fifteen hundred people have just applauded me very enthusiastically for speaking out against the war or speaking out against the monopolization of power and wealth. That’s just in this small community. There are fifteen hundred people or two thousand people everywhere in the United States who feel the way you do, who feel the way I do, and in fact not only are they feeling that way but more and more of them are acting on behalf of their feelings. Very often you don’t know what they are doing because in the United States we are so fragmented. It is a very big country. The media do not report what is happening in other parts of the country. You may not even know what’s happening in your part of the country. Maybe you may know what’s happening in your neighborhood but not even in another part of our city, the newspapers, the media, do not report the activities of ordinary people. They will report what the president ate yesterday, but they will not report the gathering of a thousand or two thousand people on behalf of some important issue. So keep in mind that all over this country there are many, many people who add up to the millions of people who care about the same things you do.

Now whether their caring can have an effect is something you can’t judge immediately. Here is where history comes in handy. If you look back at the development of social movements in history, what do you find? You find that they start with hopelessness. They start with small groups of people meeting, acting in their local communities and looking at the enormous power of the government or the enormous power of corporations and thinking, we don’t have a chance- there is nothing we can do. And then what you find at certain points of history is that these small movements become larger ones, they grow, they grow. There’s a kind of electronic vibration that moves across from one to the other. This is what happened in the sit-in movements in the sixties. This is how the civil rights movement developed. It developed out of the smallest of actions taken in little communities - in Greensboro, North Carolina, or Albany, Georgia- and moved and moved and grew until it became a force that the national government had to recognize. And we’ve seen this again and again. So at any early point in the development of a movement, things look hopeless, and if you are so intimidated by this hopelessness that you don’t act, then those small groups will never become large ones."