When Kristen Hannum’s 45-year-old brother died of appendicitis in 2006 because he was afraid of the cost of going to the hospital, the Denver resident decided to get active in reforming health care in America.
And with roughly 50,000 people — including elected officials, think-tank presidents, bloggers, columnists and protesters — descending downtown in less than a month, Hannum is not wasting the opportunity to get her message of a single- payer health care system in front of as many people as she can.
“It’s up to politicians to test the winds, and it’s up to abolitionists to raise the winds,” said Hannum, the only employee at Health Care for All Colorado. “We need to inspire the public to believe in it.”
Come the last week of August, the activists will be shouting.
Using the Democratic National Convention as a megaphone and a pulpit, local advocates promulgating everything from a meat tax to in-state tuition for illegal immigrants are taking advantage of the legion of Very Important Visitors and Listeners to push their particular causes in Denver.
“It’s little moments like this that could change the course of history,” said Douglas Jackson, president of Project C.U.R.E., a Colorado organization that delivers medical supplies to poor countries around the globe.
Jackson is hosting a private dinner for Third World country ambassadors, as well as a fundraiser for Darfur, Sudan, before a Willie Nelson concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
“I want to talk about what we can all do in the developing world from Denver, Colorado,” he said.
One local immigration-rights organization plans to march along Colfax Avenue to push for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act. State Senate President Peter Groff and other local education leaders have invited the Rev. Al Sharpton to a forum on urban school reform.
The Denver project to end homelessness is hosting a breakfast with policy leaders from around the country to talk about getting people off the streets. And a coalition of left-leaning nonprofits will have four days of parties and food in a big tent within shouting distance of festivities at the Pepsi and Colorado Convention centers.
Most advocates say they want to use the convention to keep their issues burning in a fall election already crowded with voter worries of an ongoing war and a struggling economy.
“It’s theater. . . . Politics is a game because it’s about winning and losing,” said University of Colorado political scientist Michael Kanner. “Politics outside the game is theater. Who puts on a better play? Who gets their pictures taken, who gets their names out? It’s theater.”
But does it have any effect?
A NARAL Pro-Choice America spokesman said the abortion-rights organization’s membership grew by more than 4,000 people after an Internet drive during the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston.
Ashley Byrne, who works for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said during this year’s primaries people remembered the group’s meat-tax proposal — pitched in Boston four years ago — because workers dressed as pink pigs were paraded around in a convertible.
“It’s obviously a very light-hearted way to bring attention to a serious issue,” she said. “People remembered us from Boston.”
Groff said he’s pushing K-12 education reform because “it doesn’t matter what we do in health care, it doesn’t matter what we do in immigration . . . if our young people aren’t educated to the point that they can compete in a global society.”
Groff helped organize an education reform forum with Sharpton and several other civil-rights leaders the Sunday before the convention in Denver. A similar effort is being organized in Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican National Convention.
“We want to use the convention as a platform,” Groff said.
Christopher Sanchez contributed to this report.
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
