PL’ers Challenge Anti-Immigrant Racism at Public Health Association

DENVER, CO, November 10 — Over 10,000 members of the American Public Health Association (APHA) met this year around the theme of “Social Justice.” Members and friends of PLP, with support from various groups in APHA, challenged the organization to live up to its theme. Our proposed APHA policy statement, “Opposing the Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants from Health Reform,” hit a raw nerve and triggered a small struggle in the association.
The liberals who run the APHA don’t want to take any public position critical of the Obama administration. But rank-and-file members, most of whom work with underserved populations day in and day out, have less interest in currying favor with politicians and more gut-level commitment to justice for the communities they serve. APHA bureaucrats used their control over a key committee to block our anti-racist resolution.
Anticipating resistance from the association full-timers, the APHA members who wrote the resolution (“the troublemakers”) started circulating drafts in the weeks leading up to the annual meeting to all APHA sections (Epidemiology, Medical Care, Maternal and Child Health, etc.) The Black Caucus was specifically targeted through the friends we have made there fighting against racism in previous years. They gave their support as soon as they read it.
A key part of our strategy was to oppose Obama’s attempt to win African Americans to scapegoat Latinos for the failures of capitalist medicine. After all, it is no small thing that the country’s first black president signed a racist health care bill that doesn’t let undocumented immigrants even BUY health insurance through the exchanges! In the end the “troublemakers” were also able to join forces with the Latino Caucus to keep the policy statement alive.
This activity, along with open sales of CHALLENGE and raising different anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist ideas in presentations,  scientific sessions and one-on-one conversations with our friends, made for a productive five days of meetings. Healthcare social policy clearly has life-and-death implications. The stress of life under an oppressive wage-slavery system leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, premature labor and infant deaths. 
For black and Latino workers, who suffer the additional layer of racism-caused stress, this disease burden is higher, for some diseases over twice as high. Capitalist poverty breeds diseases and denying access to life-saving healthcare because a person lacks money or is the “wrong race” compounds this murderous injustice.
This fight has helped to illuminate the way APHA actually works, especially for our younger friends who were a little surprised at the dishonesty of the “progressive” professionals who control key positions in the organization. Small struggles like this can provide important lessons in the “school for communism.” To be most effective, though, the struggles need the context of on-going personal relationships. One friend who always seemed pretty conservative, a federal employee from a section where we have worked for years, heard about the trick to sideline our version of the resolution. “They are starting to run this association like a dictatorship!” he commented.
At the annual “Troublemaker’s Breakfast,” a number of new friends in attendance were interested in helping us organize more “trouble” at next year’s APHA meeting in Washington, D.C.  Several of our new friends live in cities with PLP clubs, giving us a much better opportunity for more conversations with them.
Some are ready to connect health problems to social causes and will be open to revolutionary solutions. A central component of our approach will be developing a multiracial group, including both Black and Latino Caucus members, to manage the resubmission of the resolution for permanent policy-statement status next year. Long-term friendships based on the shared need to fight racism will strengthen this work in the years to come.