“Delay, Deny, Depose”: solidarity protest planned for Christmas Day
At 11:00 am this Christmas Day, protesters will gather for a short peaceful demonstration near the Blue Cross Blue Shield building at Aksarben in solidarity with Briana Boston, who was arrested this week for lashing out at her health insurance provider on the phone.
Briana Boston of Florida was on the phone this week with her health insurance provider, Blue Cross Blue Shield, when they denied her claim. She lashed out in anger and said “Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next” to a customer service representative. She had no plans or intent to do anything, she was simply angry. Charged with threatening to commit a mass shooting or act of terrorism, Boston could be put in jail for up to 15 years.
The charges are designed to be harsh; they want to make an example out of her so other working and middle class people don’t get any ideas and speak out about our collective exploitation by health insurance companies. American oligarchs are eager to paint any criticism of our horrific healthcare system as extremism because that makes it more difficult to criticize. If making angry statements about current events is the same thing as threatening political violence or terrorism, then our First Amendment rights to the Freedom of Speech and Public Assembly simply no longer exist. The government can prosecute and jail us for anything we say, based on its own dishonest legal definitions. The government and our corporate oligarchs want to discourage us from standing up for ourselves and organizing for a better healthcare system. This is a relationship with our government and a claim to power that cannot be tolerated by people who value freedom and democracy. The only reasonable response to behavior like this from the government is to peacefully exercise our constitutional rights to the Freedom of Speech and Public Assembly.
On Christmas Day, protesters will gather near the Blue Cross Blue Shield building in Aksarben at 11 o’clock, and will use water-soluble chalk to write messages of their choosing on the public sidewalks near the building. No profanity will be used and no one will call for violence. Protesters will circle the block and write messages in solidarity with Briana Boston, demand Congress pass universal healthcare, and their own personal messages about their frustrations with private health insurance companies. The protest will be short so that participants can exercise their first amendment rights to freedom of speech and public assembly, and then return to holiday activities as soon as possible.
In the summer of 2020, the Omaha Police Department wrongly declared writing in chalk at protests to be “graffiti” and therefore illegal. So a protest was organized in defiance of the Police — they told a lie and we called their bluff. We wrote in chalk all around their building and no one was arrested.
Today, our leaders want us to believe that being angry at your health insurance provider and saying or doing anything about that anger is the same as calling for or committing political violence, even terrorism. Our response must be determined, organized, peaceful demonstrations for what we want: to end the exploitation of health insurance companies in the United States and establish universal healthcare for everyone. Corporations sow division and fear and we must respond with working and middle class solidarity and action. We need to call their bluff.
This moment will not be defined by a corrupt government and a dishonest corporate media narrative about working class people “leaning towards the potential of getting violent”. It will be defined by working class and middle class people across the political spectrum coming together and exercising our constitutional rights to demand universal healthcare.
Please join us in Aksarben on Christmas Day at 11am, for any questions.
Joyce Vondrasek
