OntheWilderSide

The Green Party of Monmouth County and the Green Party of New Jersey (GPNJ) will host a conference addressing healthcare and labor issues on Sunday, February 27,2011 from 12:30 – 4:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, 1401 Ocean Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ. The event, which will be held at the Dauphin Grille within the hotel, includes a full buffet lunch and live music by singer-songwriters Jeff Saxon and special guest Tom Neilson.

Registration is $50 per person.A buffet luncheon will be served. The event home page can be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/6x848w6. Admission subsidies have recently become available. Contact the event organizer, David Petrovich, if a discounted ticket would enable you to attend: njdgreen@aol. com<mailto:njdgreen@aol. com> – 732.571.9464

Keynote speakers include Baltimore pediatrician Margaret Flowers, M.D., Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program; Howie  Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor of New York State in 2010; and Hugh Giordano, a labor organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 152, in Philadelphia; .

“Sooner or later the country is going to have to reduce the wastefully  high cost of corporate for-profit health insurance,” said Steve Welzer, a member of the Green Party’s state executive committee. “A single-payer system (Medicare for All) would eliminate the corporate insurance middle-man, cut the price of coverage, and assure that every American enjoys guaranteed quality health care. A goal of the Feb. 27 conference will be to educate the public about the real issues in order to counter the propaganda that dominated the debate last year.”

“The Green Party message on healthcare is eminently reasonable,” added Lynn Petrovich, C.P.A., who will present a “Rip-off Report” on hospital accounting at the event. “Our “sick” care system, which places profits before people can no longer be tolerated and it is up to Americans to demand change.”

Synergy and mutual support among labor activists, healthcare reformers, and those committed to the building of a green economy will be a common theme throughout the conference presentations.

“The Green Party is no longer the alternative, the Green Party is the imperative”

Keynote speakers:

Howie Hawkins has been a Green Party activist for over twenty years. He was the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in New York State in 2006. In 2009 he received 41 percent of the vote running for a City Council district seat in Syracuse. Last year Howie ran for Governor of New York and restored ballot status for the Green Party by garnering almost 60,000 votes.

“Politicians from both major parties have given hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to their corporate campaign contributors while CEO’s have awarded themselves obscene compensation packages as they slash jobs for Americans workers through mergers, runaway investments, subcontracting, and outsourcing abroad to countries where labor is repressed and cheap. What we need to do instead is to win labor law reform, fair trade rules, and a policy of full employment. This would create millions of new living-wage jobs directly and indirectly through public investment in a sustainable green economy featuring infrastructure restoration, public works and services, and conversion from nuclear and fossil fuels to solar-based renewable energy.”

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Maryland pediatrician, is currently the Congressional Fellow of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). In addition to her activity with PNHP, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance, she is a member of Healthcare-Now! of Maryland and a co-founder of the Conversation Coalition for Health Care Reform.

“The solution to our economic crisis is to jettison the costly failed market model of health care and adopt a publicly financed and independently delivered national improved Medicare for All. This is commonly known as Single Payer. In the United States, we have the finest nurses, physicians and technology in the world. Our for-profit healthcare delivery system, however, is far from the finest. Each year in the United States, the system drives 700,000 families to bankruptcy from medical bills (the majority of whom have medical insurance). Every year, the system leaves 50 million people uninsured. Every year, the system allows 45,000 people to die from lack of access to basic medical care.”

Entertainment

Jeff Saxon is a diversely talented singer/songwriter/ guitarist whose songs have earned him over 30 awards from various national and international songwriting contests. While it’s difficult to attach a simple word or phrase to describe Jeff’s sound, one can easily detect its jazz, blues and old-school R&B leanings. He’s been compared with artists such as Keb’ Mo’, Bill Withers, Kenny Loggins, Marc Cohn, Paul Carrack, and Don Henley. www.JeffSaxonMusic. com<http://www.jeffsaxo nmusic.com/>

Tom Neilson has been a classical vocal soloist since childhood and now has ten folk recordings. He has opened for Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Amy Goodman, Cesar Chavez, Noam Chomsky and Dennis Kucinich, and has played at the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, Cuba. Folksinger, songwriter, activist, historian, and educator, Tom provides a voice for all who believe in the power of music to effect change. At the Kerrville Folk Festival he was referred to as the “Jon Stewart of folk music.” www.tomneilsonmusic .com<http://www.tomneils onmusic.com/>

Event proceeds to benefit: NJ One Plan/One Nation Coalition, Lakewood Outreach Ministry, and the Green Party.

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Filed under: 3rd party, Action Alert!, activism, Calendar, events, grassroots democracy, Green Party, health, health care, Healthcare, Labor, News, third party Tagged: | Asbury Park New Jersey, cynthia mckinney, Deficit, green, howie hawkins, JEFF SAXON, Margaret Flowers, new jersey, parties, politics, Single-payer health care, Tom Neilson, united states