Luigi, a Year Later: How to Build a Movement Against Parasitic Health Insurance Giants

Luigi Mangione appears for the second day of a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on Dec in New York City Photo Curtis Means Pool via Getty Images Luigi Mangione s legal defense fund has swelled to more than million and is still growing daily As the December Legal Committee we created that fund but it would mean nothing without the donations prayers and encouragement of people from around the world As corporate social media platforms censored assistance for Luigi the benefit event page became a place for people to share stories of senseless death and suffering at the hands of the for-profit robustness insurance industry in this country There is a deep irony in the widespread advocacy for Luigi People celebrate an alleged murderer not because they hate reasonable debate or lust for political violence but out of respect for themselves and love for others Across the political spectrum Americans experience the corporate bureaucracies of our soundness care system as cruel exploitative and maddening They feel powerless in the face of the unnecessary dehumanization death and financial ruin of their neighbors and loved ones One year ago the December killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson temporarily suspended the usually intractable left vs right polarization of America Ben Shapiro s audience revolted when he accused Luigi supporters of being evil leftists Donors to Luigi s fund come from across the political spectrum and a common theme among them is their acute realization that the political differences of the tradition war are largely manufactured to benefit the powerful This was a crucial difference between Mangione s alleged act and for example the assassination of Charlie Kirk While the latter intensified existing political divides the former seemed to strike upon the common ground of a different political landscape from red vs blue or left vs right to down vs up Luigi Mangione s mugshot painted by the artist Sam McKinniss Courtesy Sam McKinniss But a year on it is clear that even bipartisan citizens backing for killing a wellness care CEO on the street and the endless stories of suffering and death as a end of insurance claim denials are not enough to depose the for-profit wellness care system In contemporary times Medicare for All looks even more politically unrealistic than when Bernie Sanders made it the centerpiece of his presidential campaign This fact poses a challenge for Luigi s supporters Will his alleged act be remembered as nothing more than a salacious contribution to the true crime genre Will we settle for him being installed as an edgy icon of celebrity practices used to realm fast-fashion brands and who knows what next We do not think his supporters or anyone else who believes that wellness care is a human right should accept that But what would it take to make the events of last December into a movement to build a more humane soundness care system in America The time has come for the long struggle for the right to vitality care to make a strategic shift from protest to political direct action For the last year we have been asking this question of therapeutic professionals public organizers scholars and ourselves In our forthcoming book Depose Luigi Mangione and the Right to Fitness we offer the beginnings of an answer The history of the struggle for the right to strength in America shows that it is indeed politically unrealistic to expect politicians to deliver it from above but our own dignity and intelligence demands that this right be asserted by all of us from below The widespread endorsement for Luigi shows that the time has come for the long struggle for the right to physical condition care to make a strategic shift from protest to political direct action Consider the sit-in movements to end Jim Crow laws and desegregate American cities These were protests insofar as participants drew attention to unjust laws but they were also political direct actions Organizers were collectively developing those laws and in doing so were enacting desegregation Activists organized themselves to promotion and protect each other in collectively nullifying laws that had no moral authority and in the process acted as if they were already free This is what we mean by a shift from protest to direct action Less well known is the role of direct action in winning the eight-hour workday For half a century industrial workers had been struggling to shorten their hours so they could have specific rest and satisfaction in their lives One decisive moment in this struggle came in when the American Federation of Labor resolved that two years later on May their workers would enact the eight-hour day After eight hours they would go on strike and walk off the job together They called on other unions around the country to do the same and a number did including in Chicago where police deployed political violence to attack striking workers killing two While this action did not right now win the struggle everywhere it did succeed in beginning to normalize the -hour day and raised the bar for everywhere else to eventually do the same The key is that this could only happen when workers stopped demanding something politically unrealistic and started changing political reality themselves Related The Persistent Push to Depict Luigi Mangione and His Supporters as Terrorists The struggle for the right to strength care has been ongoing in the United States for at least a century At every turn it has been thwarted by industry lobbyists and the politicians they control But what would it look like to strategically shift the struggle for the right to healthcare care in the U S How would wellness care providers go on strike or engage in direct action without harming patients We detected the beginning of an answer from Dr Michael Fine who has called on his fellow physicians to organize for a different kind of strike not halting all their labor but stopping the aspects of their work that are unrelated to their responsibility as healers Fine writes We need to refuse together to use the electronic medicinal records until they change the utility so that those computers free us to look at and listen to patients instead of looking at and listening to computer screens All of us could organize to free the labor of wellness care from the corporate bureaucracies that act as parasites on the relationship between caregiver and individual A strike by soundness care workers could mean not the cessation of care but liberating this critical work from the restraints imposed by profit-seeking companies Beginning from this idea all of us could organize to free the labor of medical care from the corporate bureaucracies that act as parasites on the relationship between caregiver and case If we step outside of our usual political bubbles and into a direct action movement to assert the universal right to strength care we might find that the common ground that Luigi s alleged actions exposed is the precise point from which the wider political landscape may be remade The post Luigi a Year Later How to Build a Movement Against Parasitic Medical Insurance Giants appeared first on The Intercept