In fact, tens of thousands of people have rallied in the nation’s capital supporting the president’s health care reform plan, including the controversial public option. However, national momentum is not with them, because they are, to use Nancy Pelosi’s phrase, “Astroturf.” These demonstrations were organized by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), a new “national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people dedicated to winning quality, affordable health care.” Most of its component organizations have two things in common: they have no experience or expertise in health care, and virtually all received large, tax-exempt grants from far-Left billionaires like George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry. Like the “grassroots” movement for campaign finance reform a decade ago, the public demonstrations for health care reform are largely a Soros-financed operation.
Former Governor Howard Dean announced HCAN’s mission on the first night of the annual “America’s Future Now!” conference (formerly the “Take Back America” conference), hosted by the Campaign for America's Future in June. Dean pledged to spend up to $82 million to advance socialized medicine. HCAN rallied 15,000 people in D.C. in April, 10,000 more in June, and with state affiliates like the Maine People’s Alliance, hundreds more in state capitals in July. A searchable database of upcoming spontaneous demonstrations can be found here.
However, a closer look at its members shows it is less a “grassroots” organization than a series of interconnected left-wing pressure groups united by a collectivist ideology and, for most, a common donor.
Among the 21 members of its steering committee are ACORN, MoveOn.org, and the Center for American Progress.
Dean announced HCAN’s mobilization before the Campaign for America's Future, another institution that has received funding from George Soros and the Rockefeller Family Fund. CAF, an HCAN steering committee member, pushes for national health care as one means to transform the
Advancing the welfare state by ruse is old hat to the Children's Defense Fund (CDF). The CDF Action Council is a member of the HCAN steering committee. CDF founder Marian Wright Edelman once admitted she got nowhere pushing a left-wing message until “I got the idea that children might be a very effective way to broaden the base for change.” Hiding behind “the children,” her undisguised Sixties radicalism still shines through. In her 1987 book Families in Peril, she wrote, “We must curb the fanatical military weasel.” At the time, the CDF was chaired by one Hillary Rodham Clinton. In addition to Hillary’s patronage, the CDF received a grant of more than $700,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of
Labor unions are heavily represented on the HCAN steering committee. Members include the SEIU,
Other members, such as USAction, are more overtly radical. Its profile on DiscoverTheNetworks.org notes, “The President of USAction is longtime radical activist William McNary, who has written for and supported the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the People's Weekly World.” McNary spoke at the June 25th HCAN rally. USAction receives also funding from Soros’ Open Society Institute.
The radicalism and overlapping nature of the “coalition” is perhaps best illustrated by the Center for Community Change (CCC), an organization founded in 1968 to advance Saul Alinsky-style confrontational politics. The CCC board includes a founder of Students for a Democratic Society; former Congressman and current mayor of Oakland, California, Ron Dellums, an admirer of Fidel Castro; Marian Wright Edelman’s husband, Peter Edelman; La Raza Vice President Cecelia Munoz; and Heather Booth, who founded the Midwest Academy, where the SEIU’s Andrew Stern learned about union organizing. The CCC is financed in part by George Soros’ Open Society Institute, with OSI awarding the group $2.9 million in grants in 2007 alone. Other funding sources include the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Other members of the HCAN “grassroots” include: ....
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