President Barack Obama

NEW YORK—A massive campaign aimed at saving President Barack Obama's Presidency, as well as ObamaCare, is planned for the fall in Harlem.

The formal campaign will be launched at a meeting at the State Office Building on 125th St. and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., in New York City, at 6 p.m., Sept. 6.

“The Presidency of Barack Obama is not perfect,” declared Clyde Anderson, executive director of Clergy and Providers for Racial Healthcare Equality (CPRHE). “He must become more vocal and effectively address the needs of African Americans and other people or color.

“Still, he is a great leader and we must take steps to protect both him and his presidency if we are to get through these tough racial and economic times,” he added.

Last month, CPRHE held a series of meetings and telephone conference calls with its members as well as other clergy, doctors, nurses, social workers and community activists to plan a strategy for the campaign. The issues are:

• To recruit more voters through the help of churches.

• To confront the insurance industry, tea partiers, Republicans and others who are intent on destroying Obama, primarily because he is black rather than on the true merits of the issues.

• To establish Medicaid clinics in churches and to reduce the number of (middlemen) health insurance companies in minority communities- the latter of which earn billions of dollars in annual profits that could be used to offset massive future budget cuts. The reductions have virtually crippled minority communities.

• To create more and new clinical trials of people of color, as well as remove the experimental dangerous methods used during the Tuskegee and other previous incidents that unnecessarily killed and harmed thousands of African Americans.

• To establish new pharmaceutical plants in minority communities to create jobs, along with producing safer, more effective medications tailored to the needs of people of color.

• To win contracts for small minority businesses, including churches, which would, in turn, not only increase the huge number of unemployed minorities, but also help to stabilize minority communities that are on the brink of economic collapse.

“There can be no doubt that the reckless Tea Party movement and a captive Republican rank-and-file are determined to destroy a sitting president and control the government and our lives," declared Anderson. “In brazen lock-step without a single wayward vote, they have blindly opposed every idea of the President and the people, destroyed Public Option health care, would clamp down trillions in entitlement cuts, and backed by the insurance industry and special interests, would kill Medicaid and Medicare,” he told The Spiritual Herald.

Empowered by an ideological wave of 87 new agenda-driven Tea Partiers, many Republican leaders are bent on privatizing America and condemning average working Americans to an impoverished Third World standard of living, he said, noting:

“Our purpose is to prevent the insurance industry and an unchecked business rampage from destroying our president, to remove the obstacles to equality, to fight the all too obvious disparities that oppress our people.

“We see millions of working people and the middle class struggling to stay afloat in a cruel recession, unable to afford to see the doctor, while health care insurance companies raise their rates,” he pointed out.

Anderson went on to say that many major health insurance companies are awash with unprecedented profits but demand double-digit increases in premiums, racing to get even more before the Affordable Care Act goes into effect in 2014.

“A callous Republican propaganda barrage has cowed the people, already struggling to make ends meet, to believe Medicare and Medicaid must be destroyed to save the profits of Wall Street and billionaires,” he said.

Critics assert that United Health Care, Cigna, Regent BlueCross BlueShield, and others push for increases of 10 to 20 percent or more despite overflowing coffers of cash. Members of Congress, such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) back them with proposed laws to privatize health care with “vouchers” and no government interference.

“They want Block Grants to the states of set amounts, indifferent to how many of the sick will be left out,” said the Dr. Rev, Luonne Rouse, vice president of CPRHE and pastor of the United Methodist Church in Huntington, Long Island.

“The naked, violent attacks on President Obama and anything and everything he stands for began even before he was elected and has not abated no matter what he proposes.” he added. “It is not merely the rough-and-tumble of traditional political opposition as it has been practiced, but a form of political conspiracy.

“The President was falsely branded a socialist and even his birth was challenged. Tea Partiers campaigned to protect Medicare and the American people and rein in the trillions national deficit, but their goal was to destroy Medicaid for the poor to pay for it while allowing the rich and super-rich to keep billion of dollars in tax cuts.” Rouse asserted.

More and more polls show that the American people want Medicare and Medicaid, oppose the greed of billionaires, and are falling out-of-step with the Republican onslaught.

Congressman Ryan's House bill to trash Medicaid, critics charge, rammed through by a lock-step vote by Tea Partiers, has hit a wall in the Senate and looks like a dead duck.

Anderson said the Republicans' drive to privatize America, however, still continues at full throttle, and Obama has stepped up to order the states not to cut Medicaid services to the poor. Even new GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has chided Republicans for their Medicare raid.

Anderson observed that many Americans of all colors are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors of a bold conspiracy to reconstruct America by conservatives and others.

He said the “privateers” cry for 'a free market' and a hands-off government, which has already monopolized health care and many businesses and industries, has sent millions of jobs overseas for cheap labor, depriving Americans of decent jobs.

Hugh Wyatt, chairman of the board of CPRHE, who is also editor and publisher of The Spiritual Herald, called the fall campaign by CPRHE a “rescue” mission and one of the most important civil rights initiatives ever undertaken.

“Many conservatives believe that Obama, who has been too silent on many important civil rights issues, and may finally stand up during his next term, provided he is reelected," he explained.

Wyatt said that one of the greatest fears of conservatives is the reintroduction of the Public Option, a public insurance plan that failed to win the approval of the Congress two years ago.

“We must protect President Obama and help him to introduce the Option and other important proposals to get through the Congress,” Wyatt said, noting: “His loss would also be the loss of millions of disenfranchised people.”