You call Harman an ally on health care, though she voted against your own much-needed amendment to fast-track exorbitantly-priced drugs for patients suffering with breast cancer, brain tumors, AIDS or the dreaded Parkinson's, which confined my father to a wheelchair the last decade of his life. Not only does Harman's opposition to your amendment cost patients their lives but also taxpayers billions of dollars, for Medicaid and Medicare, both federal programs, subsidize the profits of large drug companies with monopolies on clinical trial data funded by our government.
Please also note that Harman's position on health care is revealed in her support for a bankruptcy bill that hurts those who are forced to declare medical bankruptcy and then can't find employment or obtain credit.
You praise Harman for her position on energy and the environment, never acknowledging that Harman's support of perpetual war leaves the worst carbon foot print of all a scorched earth.
Time and again my opponent has proven to be a virtual lobbyist for large corporations, big banks, and war profiteers, while voting against mortgage relief for constituents facing foreclosure. How tragic when so many California families are struggling to make ends meet. We, the People, deserve real representation in a congress too often beholden to large corporations. That is why I am running for Congress to give the people a voice in Washington.
On Capitol Hill, I hope you and I develop a productive working relationship because we share an interest in reform and good governance, both in the domestic and foreign policy arenas.
To begin that effort, I ask you to courageously join me in encouraging engagement and dialogue on conflict-resolution and world peace, and to refrain from rubber-stamping the candidacy of someone who has deeply betrayed American values.
Thank you for your time, consideration, and public service.
Sincerely,
Marcy Winograd
36th Congressional District Candidate
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
What has emerged from Waxman's strong letter and Winograd's equally strong response is the further energizing of the dialogue amongst Democratic voters on the issues of Israel, Palestine and United States' Middle East policy, which has long been slanted toward Israel. Due in large part to the flow of information on the internet, the American electorate's once blind acceptance of Israel as the perennial victim of Palestinian aggression has turned to a more factual understanding of Middle East politics and a day to day awareness of the realities on the ground. Because of access to international news services, countless Americans no longer view the world through the distorted lens of American corporations whose biased support for Israel had engineered and influenced public opinion for years.
Here's an excellent example of aware young Americans in a hip hop
video from January 2009, expressing dissatisfaction with America's bias
toward Israel and the atrocities of the Gaza War:
Who would have thought young Americans would be so knowledgeable about Middle-East policy? Only through alternative news sources is such access to information made possible.
Looking back, many Americans' romance with Israel began when American corporate media glorified the 1967 Six Day War. Their reverence for Israel persisted through four decades of American media's biased reporting of Palestinian attacks on Israel with little to no reports of Israel's attacks on Palestinians.
Today the Middle East 'take' held by many Americans mirrors that of the rest of the world in condemning Israel's unmitigated aggression that divides Palestinian families, creates illegal West Bank settlements, and imprisons, represses and even starves the people of Gaza. All across this nation, Americans are discarding years of pro-Israel propaganda and honing in on their new found awareness that their once beloved Israel is more perpetrator than victim.
Internationally respected luminaries, including former President Jimmy Carter, Jewish-American scholars Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, and South Africans Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Constitutional Court Judge (and Zionist) Richard Goldstone, along with humanitarian organizations across the globe, are vociferously decrying Israel's human rights atrocities.
Over the New Year holiday, in remembrance of the one-year anniversary of Israel's attack on Gaza that took 1,400 lives, 1,400 peace pilgrims from across the globe ventured to Egypt in an attempt to enter Gaza for the Gaza Freedom March and to bring needed supplies to its people. The Egyptian government permitted just 84 peace marchers to enter Gaza. The rest were left on the streets of Cairo, enduring daily mistreatment by Egyptian police.
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