2009
Guaranteed Health Care for All
got
healthcare?
The objectives of our got healthcare? program were to keep health
care reform at the top of the public agenda in Wisconsin during the
battle for comprehensive national reform, shape the public debate with
message frames and messengers that would make reform more likely, build
the breadth and depth of the grassroots health care coalitions we lead,
and to use incremental reform at the state level to increase pressure
for federal action.
In 2009 Citizen Action further developed its national reputation as one
of the leading state-based groups promoting comprehensive health care
reform. Citizen Action won two national awards for its got healthcare?
program. Robert Kraig, Citizen Action's Executive Director, won the 2009
Consumer Health Care Advocate of the Year award from Families USA. In
June 2009 Citizen Action won the State Progressive Leader award from the
Progressive States Network for our health care work.
Health Care for
America Now!
In 2009 Citizen Action of Wisconsin continued to lead the Health Care
for America Now campaign in Wisconsin, a national grassroots effort to
pass comprehensive federal health care legislation. The Wisconsin Health
Care for America Now coalition has organized major town hall forums
around the state with Members of Congress, organized constituents to
make thousands of phone calls and send hundreds of email messages to
their Representatives and Senators in support of specific elements of
reform, organized delegation visits to local and Washington D.C. offices
of Members of Congress, and helped organize or participate in dozens of
public forums, house parties, educational events, webinars, and earned
media activities, including vigils and direct action events targeting
insurance companies.
Citizen Action's leading achievement in 2009 was the integration of our got
healthcare? program with the nationally coordinated Health Care for
America Now campaign, and the tremendous escalation of our organizing
around health care reform to match the elevation of the issue to the top
of the national agenda.
We achieved this result through a focused and integrated issue program
that combined the leadership of a vibrant state-wide coalition with
multiple credible voices for reform, field organizing around public
forums and congressional listening sessions, message trainings that
disseminated the most effective message frames to activists throughout
the state, the development and release of timely research reports, and a
robust earned media operation that effectively positioned Citizen
Action as the leading advocate of national reform in Wisconsin. We also
had a great deal of success developing a state-wide health care story
project, and integrating our state and federal health care reform
advocacy.
The intensity of our health care work reached unprecedented levels. Our
health care coalition work was much broader and more intensive than ever
before. Our regular coordinating calls, for example, draw leaders from a
broad range of constituencies, and coalition partners were highly
involved in dozens of public events throughout the state. There are
over 50 organizational members in the state-wide health care coalition
that Citizen Action leads. In addition, Citizen Action played leading
roles in 53 health care forums, 8 large scale (150-250 person) town hall
meetings, conducted 21 message trainings, sent 51 email action alerts
to our 21,000 person email list, released 12 highly newsworthy research
reports which drew state-wide attention, and delivered over 64,000
signed petitions and post cards in support of reform to Wisconsin’s
Senators and Members of Congress. We expanded our social media program,
which provides daily updates on Facebook and Twitter on new health care
debate developments and action items.
Citizen Action generated 367 media stories in 2009, with a large
proportion of them focused on the positive message frames and personal
stories that are needed to promote comprehensive reform. Citizen Action
spokespersons are frequent guests on state-wide public radio and on
local commercial radio stations. We also launched our “No Sacred Cows”
health care blog to keep activists and opinion leaders up to date on the
latest national health care developments.
Our research reports also played a major role in generated media
coverage. One example was our health insurance cost ranking report which
we released in December. The report, which was researched in-house,
ranks cities across Wisconsin on health insurance costs and quality. We
released the report on state-wide media call which included U.S.
Congressman Ron Kind, and 3 state legislators, including the Chairs of
the State Senate and State Assembly Health Committees. The report
generated state-wide media focus on skyrocketing health insurance costs
in Wisconsin and the low quality of for-profit insurance (23 media
stories) just at the U.S. Senate was preparing to vote on its final
health care reform package. The report can be downloaded here.
One of the high points of our work in 2009 was the coalition response to
the fierce conservative organizing against health care reform during
the August 2009 Congressional recess, which threatened to undermine the
entire national reform effort. Citizen Action organized around dozens
of Congressional listening sessions, providing a strong counterbalance
to extreme conservative protesters. The most notable was an event
organized by our coalition in Green Bay in late August with Congressman
Steve Kagen, one of the targets of anti-reform groups, which drew
national attention. The 400 person event drew wall-to-wall media
coverage and helped turn the tide back in favor of reform in Northeast
Wisconsin.
Story Project
The development of our health care story project, which now has over 200
stories from across the state, added another critical dimension to the
effort. The story project helped us shape the public debate with the
voices of average people facing health care challenges and was also a
very effective leadership development tool, empowering average citizens
to make a difference in the debate by meeting with members of Congress,
speaking at public events, and becoming the subjects of media stories.
The Citizen Action story project was highlighted as a model for other
states at Families USA’s Health Action Conference in January 2009 and
January 2010, the largest annual gathering of health care reform
advocates.
State Health Care Reform
Citizen Action also effectively integrated the push for national reform
with the promotion of state-level reform. Citizen Action initiated in
2009 a series of state level insurance regulation bills which prohibited
some of the worst industry practices. Our education program resulted
in both the passage of valuable incremental reforms (limiting
preexisting condition abuses, greater access to affordable private
insurance, and the right for children to stay on their parent’s policies
until 27 years of age) and broader public attention to insurance
industry practices which helped build deeper support for national
reform. We also successfully advocated for an expansion of BadgerCare
Plus (Wisconsin’s Medicaid and Child Health Insurance Program) to
include childless adults, which made Wisconsin’s public health insurance
programs among the most expansive in the nation.
Economic Justice
Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods Project
In July of 2009 Citizen Action merged with a previously independent
non-profit organization, Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods (GJLN).
GJLN is the Wisconsin affiliate of Partnership for Working Families, and
is nationally recognized for landmark community benefits legislation in
Milwaukee, notably the historic passage of the Milwaukee Opportunities
for Restored Employment (MORE) Ordinance in early 2009. The project will
be rewarded with grantee of the year honors by the Wisconsin Community
Fund in April of 2010 for its groundbreaking responsible development
work.
National Economic Recovery
In late 2009 our work to expand collaborative efforts to guide stimulus
investment and shape positive outcomes for disadvantaged communities was
significantly boosted when a consortium of nine organizations in
Wisconsin was awarded nearly half a million dollars by the Open Society
Institute. In 2010 Citizen Action and our coalition partners are
continuing to organize around advocacy for and monitoring of federal
recovery dollars.
Community Centered Redevelopment
Citizen Action, in collaboration with Midwest Environment Advocates and
Making Milwaukee Green Coalition, a project of the League of Young
Voters affiliate in Milwaukee, also made substantial progress on a
community-centered redevelopment plan for the former A.O. Smith/Tower
Automotive site in Milwaukee’s central city.
Responding to community pressure and engagement from the GJLN coalition,
the Department of City Development proposed in late July 2009 that the
City purchase the land for redevelopment. In September 2009, the
Milwaukee Common Council approved this proposal and established a $35
million redevelopment plan including a $15 million tax incremental
financing (TIF) district, and will include full application of the MORE
Ordinance. Citizen Action strongly advocated for adoption of this plan.
The City closed on this property acquisition of 84 acres in December
2009, and is moving forward on implementation of their plan to remediate
the contamination on the site and prepare it for redevelopment as the
“Century City” development project. This is a significant victory in our
efforts to focus attention on this site. Our work has helped to steer
the investment of significant public resources for the purpose of
fostering business development and creating jobs in this impoverished
neighborhood, and has been acknowledged publicly by Department of City
Development officials.
2008
In 2008 Citizen Action combined issue organizing with civic
engagement to create a mandate for bold health care reform in the state,
and solidified a link between state activism and national action.
Communications: Citizen Action generated 585 distinct
media stories in 2008. These stories were positive, and were
overwhelmingly focused on the progressive value frames we seek to
advance. Of these stories, 379 were written specifically on health care
reform. Other topics covered included our work for fair elections and
civic participation, worker justice, ending the war in Iraq, and at the
end of the year, economic recovery.
In 2008 our web site had over 20,000 visitors. Citizen Action sent 98
statewide and regional email alerts to activists with subjects ranging
from invitations to attend issue forums to appeals for calls to Congress
to requests for letters-to-the-editor. Thousands of activists responded
to these appeals to take action.
Research Reports: Citizen Action released or co-released
eight research reports in 2008. Five of these reports were produced in
house by Citizen Action’s staff. The reports released were accompanied
with events in one or more of our organizing regions or on state-wide
media calls that included key state legislators and members of Congress.
These reports were newsworthy because they provided compelling
Wisconsin specific information that helped shape the health care
discussion during the election.
Civic Engagement: In both the spring and fall of 2008,
Citizen Action engaged in significant non-partisan Get Out The Vote
(GOTV) operations, primarily focused in Milwaukee. In the Spring,
Citizen Action deployed 230 canvassers who focused on 58 wards with the
goal of activating citizens to go to the polls. The GOTV phone canvass
in Milwaukee, working in coalition with the Service Employees
International Union and the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees facilitated over 9,500 conversations with voters in
100 city wards.
Through the early summer and into fall of 2008, Citizen Action engaged
in a voter registration program, in conjunction with our work through
the Wisconsin Civic Engagement Program and coalition partners, and
registered 5,331 new voters in the City of Milwaukee. Citizen Action
deployed 80 canvassers that engaged in more than 20,000 discussions
about the importance of voting.
One-on-One Organizing: Citizen Action continues to recruit
and train progressive activists and leaders in all regions of the state
through face to face communication at a grassroots level. In 2008 our
Western and Northeastern organizing staff built networks of 401
individual activists, held a variety of events that drew nearly 750
people, and held over 296 one-on-one meetings. The Community Outreach
Program Organizer, focused primarily in the Milwaukee area, held 411
one-on-one meetings, hosted 13 workshops which trained 499 people in
organizing and activism, and has identified 42 adults and youths to
participate in our “Leadership Pathway,” an 18 month leadership
development program.
Health Care Reform: Citizen Action played a leading role in
making health care the top issue in Wisconsin in 2008 by educating and
mobilizing people, releasing newsworthy reports, developing compelling
messages, and building a state-wide coalition to support major coverage
expansions. In doing so, Citizen Action has built a solid reputation
statewide and nationally as a leading advocate for health care reform in
Wisconsin.
Launched in May of 2008, Citizen Action began a visibility campaign
called got healthcare? that was designed to make health care the
top issue for voters in Wisconsin. A distinctly Wisconsin-branded bird
dogging ("cow-dogging") project targeted candidates for elective
office. Parodying commercials urging people to drink milk, prototypical
Wisconsin Holstein cows (actually Citizen Action members dressed in a
cow suits) carried signs that asked state and federal candidates: got
healthcare? The cow traveled to state legislative forums,
Presidential campaign events, local fairs, marched in parades, supported
rallies and protests, and made special “guest” appearances at coalition
partner events. The got healthcare? cows were reported in major
news outlets across the state as a staple at events.
- Local health care advisory referenda
Building on an award winning national model for agenda setting
developed by Citizen Action and its coalition partners in 2006, local
health care advisory referenda were added to local ballots in 22 cities
and counties in 2008. The health care advisory referenda were widely
credited with creating an issue environment that played a pivotal role
creating a mandate for the state Senate and the newly elected state
Assembly to take legislative action to solve the health care crisis.
The local referenda led to an intense local focus among the public and
in the media on the failure of the Legislature to act on the health care
crisis.
More than 588,000 voters had the opportunity to vote on a health care
referenda in their municipality in 2008. The referenda passed
overwhelmingly, garnering over 411,000 "Yes" votes. Support ranged from
66% to 85% of the vote. The referendums were especially strong in
traditionally moderate and conservative areas of the state. In fact, in
17 of 22 communities the referendum ran even or ahead of Dane County,
traditionally the most liberal area of the state. The highest vote
totals where in Menasha (85%), Tomah (83%), River Falls (83%); Douglas
County (81%), Menomonie (80%), Black River Falls (79%), New Richmond
(79%), Washburn County (79%), Oshkosh (78%), and River Falls (78%).
2007 * Took the lead in organizing the Wisconsin Health Care
Reform Campaign, an unprecedented coalition of 30 state-wide
organizations, including unions, faith based organizations, and
advocates for seniors, farmers, the disabled, children and families. The
new coalition is working intensively to secure comprehensive health
care reform this Legislative session.
2006 * Secured the gubernatorial veto of legislation that
would have made it impossible for lead paint manufacturers to be held
liable for their product an important follow-up to our winning our
year-long fight to get the City ofSeniorcare bill signing in 2001
Milwaukee to sue the lead paint industry to pay its fair share of lead
clean-up costs in Milwaukee.
* Successfully sued pharmaceutical companies, in coalition with
other consumer groups nationwide, to stop them from engaging in fraud
and illegal price manipulation.
* Created a mandate for health care reform in the 2007-2008
Legislative session. Through massive state-wide issue work in 2006,
including the initiation of universal health care referendums across the
state which garnered 83% of the vote, took the lead in making
comprehensive health care reform the top issue in state elections.
2005 * Successfully pushed for a change to Wisconsin
consumer lending law to prohibit auto lenders from discriminating
against consumers on the basis on race, age, creed, religion, color,
disability, marital status, sex, national origin, ancestry, sexual
orientation, membership in the military or receiving public assistance.
* Won passage and implementation of Badger Rx, a state buying pool
that is expected to save individuals between 25% - 75% on their
prescription drug purchases. One in every six Wisconsin residents is
expected to be eligible to participate.
* Helped push back the effort to privatize Social Security. We
targeted the position of U.S. Representative and gubernatorial candidate
Mark Green in a six-month campaign generating 9 media stories and over
1,000 handwritten letters on the issue (2005).
2004 * Helped residents fight off Wal-Mart in Franklin and
Sheboygan.
2003 * Succcessfully fought to restore $60 million of public
health money that the medical school was planning to use to fund a new
medical school building.
2002 * Succcessfully organized central city parents to
secure $1.8 million in state funding for afterschool programs in
Community Learning Centers serving 12,000 children and their families.
Seniorcare bill signing in 20012001
* Won our 18-month battle to pass a real prescription drug benefits
bill in Wisconsin.? SeniorCare is the second most generous prescription
drug benefit in the nation.
1999 * Won the passage of the landmark Community Lead Safe
Zones ordinance that alleviates Milwaukee's severe lead-poisoning
problem among thousands of young children in the central city.
1998 * Passed the "Citizen's Right to Know" Bill, which
requires electronic disclosure of campaign contributions, making it
easier for citizens to trace special-interest influence on state policy.
* Helped win passage of the Mining Moratorium Law which raises the
bar protecting Wisconsin from unsafe metallic sulfide mining.
* Assisted in winning passage of "Justin and Lindsey Bill" repealing
restrictive caps on what families of wrongful death may sue for.
1996 * Helped win passage of the Food Safety Act of 1996,
which strengthens federal pesticide standards to better protect
children.
1994 * Won the right for farmers who refuse to use rBGH to
label their products accordingly.
1990 * Won the first public disclosure of insurance
companies auto rates by forcing the State Insurance Commissioner to
publish the Auto Rate Guide (for a free copy call 1-800-236-8517). 1989:
Won an expansion of the voluntary program for Medicare assignment.
1987-88 * Co-sponsored and won the Toxics Information Act,
giving citizens the right to know about toxins they may be exposed to at
home and at work.
1985-86 * Helped pass the federal Superfund to clean up
toxic waste dumps.
1982-84 * Prevented the accelerated decontrol of natural gas
prices, saving gas users hundreds of dollars a year in heating costs.
1980-81 * Eliminated tax loopholes used by oil companies to
avoid taxes in Wisconsin.
1979 * Helped make it illegal for the gas company to shut
off heat in the middle of winter.
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