I attended the rally and march yesterday morning in Tacoma. I estimate a turnout of about 400. According to today's Seattle Times, the turnout in Seattle was even better--about 3,500.
As one speaker at the Tacoma rally said, the problem with health care in this country is more than just the 46-50 million who are uninsured. A majority of Americans, even if insured, are at risk because their insurance is inadequate or contingent upon keeping the job they currently have. A system that only works if you don't get sick or lose your job is a system that has failed, he said. Not to mention the other problems in the current American health care system--the inefficiencies, the lack of effective doctor/patient relationship, etc. As also noted at the rally, to really change the current system will take a lot of relentless work and involvement--it's not enough to assume that just because more people than ever are aware of the problem and want it to change, that it will.
My daughter made a friend during the event, a five-year-old girl who was there with her parents and baby brother. Her father did a spoken word poem during the rally, with an especially memorable line: "They call us bleeding heart liberals, as if there's something wrong with having a heart that bleeds."
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