Viral Campaign for Universal Healthcare

Dear IMA Students, Faculty, Staff:

I don't know whether you've heard about this yet, but we are encouraging artists, designers, media visionaries, citizens of the world, outraged pitchmen and women, armchair academics, and frustrated couch potatoes to contribute to a mounting "Viral Campaign for Universal Healthcare."

Choose the surface. medium and occasion for your intervention, but please intervene.

This is an attempt to bring the discussion of healthcare in line with the all-embracing network of life of which we are a part, and emancipate it from the individualistic, free market claptrap that has held the issue hostage in the United States since the late 1940s.

Built around the theme "Healthcare: Not a Private Matter," it's an attempt to remove the issue of universal healthcare from the ideological stereotypes that have crippled it for more fifty years (socialist, tax and spend, we can't afford it, unfair competition to private insurers, Harry and Louise) and remind people that while we may experience illness personally, we are all part of a vast human organism.

As long as some are at risk, all are at risk. The nature of illness and prevention needs to be reframed by the unavoidable biological connectedness of an extended ecosystem, and this is an attempt in that direction. Current news about the swine flu simultaneously avoids and dramatizes this fact of life.

Some of the early work is posted below, but the idea is to move the ball way beyond that. Post it whereever you think it will turn the buzz into a roar. Spread the word. Let no social network go untouched. For submissions to Stereotype & Society, send file to archiebishop@mac.com. But don't stop here. Let no stone go unturned.

Let the great rumpus begin. And continue until the medical-industrial complex and its legislative toadies tremble, and healthcare is organized for the common well being of humanity.

Some of the early work is up at http://stereotypeandsociety.typepad.com, but the idea is to move the ball way beyond that. That's up to you.

Best,

Stuart Ewen