The 2023 Howard Zinn Book Fair on Sunday, December 3, will feature a panel on “Labor, Veterans, and the Fight Against Privatization of the VA and Medicare”. The free annual book fair, inspired by Zinn’s acclaimed “A People’s History of the United States”, will take place on the Mission campus of City College of San Francisco, 1125 Valencia Street, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The  healthcare session will be in Room 320 from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Click here for details and to RSVP for the afternoon healthcare session.

Chaired by author Steve Early of The News Guild-Communication Workers of America, the session includes: Suzanne Gordon, author of “Wounds of War and Our Veterans”; Marilyn Albert, RN, former organizer for the National Union of Healthcare Workers and National Nurses United; Mark Smith, VA occupational therapist and union steward; and Oscar Arbulu, Marine veteran with the vet organization Common Defense.

Read this highly informative article by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon. The authors show how privatization and profiteering inside traditional Medicare and the VA hurt patients and degrade the single payer models we depend on to promote national universal health care. Action now is needed if we hope to achieve our ultimate goal of Medicare for All.

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Howard Zinn was a WWII veteran and university professor who believed in telling “history from below”, from the perspective of workers, women, immigrants, racialized people, LGBTQ+ people, and dissidents. The theme of this year’s book fair is “Against Amnesia”. As historian Robin D. G. Kelley has observed, “How we proceed with repair depends on how we remember.”