Moore lobbies Sacramento for healing
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14 June 2007
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Wednesday, June 13, 2007
(06-13) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- As Michael Moore stood on the west steps of the Capitol on Tuesday and led 1,000 activists in chanting "It's time for them to go" -- health insurance companies, that is -- he looked less like a Hollywood director promoting his new takedown of the health care industry and more like the frontman of a national political campaign.
That's because he is both.
In the days before {tag Michael Moore}'s film "{tag Sicko}" opens June 29 in 3,000 theaters nationwide, the director will be the centerpiece of a campaign that melds activism, policy, politics and Hollywood into a media force like no other widely released film. The campaign premiered Tuesday in Sacramento -- complete with nurses wearing red surgical scrubs and chanting "Hey-hey! Ho- ho! Private health care is sick-o!"
Moore's day started with a closed-door tete-a- tete with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, followed by a joint news conference before 15 TV cameras, where Núñez was flanked by posters for the movie and Moore diplomatically praised their "excellent meeting," even though Núñez supports a plan that doesn't immediately offer universal coverage, as Moore wants.
Then it was off to an "unofficial" public briefing led by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica -- whose single-payer plan Moore supports -- followed by a Capitol rally and march anchored by 1,000 members of the California Nurses Association, whose anecdotes over the years helped to inspire Moore to make the film. Then Moore screened the movie.
The word echoing around the Capitol building Tuesday wasn't "movie." It was "movement." Funny, Moore said, "how they both have the same root word: 'movie,' 'movement.' "
Read full report here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/c/a/2007/06/13/MNG88QE4UJ1.DTL
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