John Kitzhaber's Blog
The Movement Continues...
I want to thank each and every one of the 390 of you who have logged onto this website and provided your contact information for the Archimedes Movement. You are the pioneers on what I believe will be a powerful and transforming journey.
The Archimedes Movement offers an opportunity for direct engagement through which the growing concern over the U.S. health care system can be channeled into effective action. Our challenge will not be an easy one. In spite of the fact that there are few people in America today who truly believe that we are on a sustainable course, we seem utterly unable to change our heading. Any suggestion of the kind of sweeping reform that is called for is met with predictable skepticism by the pundits who assure us that it cannot be done; that it is impossible; that the powerful political interests involved will never allow it. Yet to me this is deeply disturbing because of its implications.
First, it is a message of resignation – that the American people are stakeholders first, and citizens only second and that there is nothing we can do about it. It is also a message of despair, of disempowerment and of surrender. And if we accept this message we are also accepting the status quo – and we will continue to spin down the river toward the lip of the falls, struggling to keep our end of the raft upstream while deriving some perverse sense of security from the knowledge that those in the other end will go over the precipice first. And I believe we are better than that.
While there may be paralysis in our legislative institutions, there need not be paralysis in our communities. The Archimedes Movement is based on the belief that the responsibility to find a sustainable solution to this crisis does not, in fact, belong to someone else. It belongs to us – to you and me and to people in communities throughout this state and nation. We are not powerless here and should not be without hope.
William Jennings Bryant once said that “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.” And that is exactly the question before us today -- whether we will sit idly by and simply let the future happen to us or whether we will step up and shape it with our own hands. The question before us is whether we still have the will and the capacity to come together as a community. I believe that we do – and I know that those of you who have signed up share that same belief and are willing to make the same commitment to the future.
It is important to recognize that the Archimedes Movement will not start out with a detailed plan for what the new system should look like but rather with a discussion of the values we want such a system to reflect and the outcomes we want it to produce for us as a community. From this discussion will emerge a framework of principles through which the details of the system will take shape. In short, we will design the new system together, we will create a common vision – and then we will create the tension through which our vision can be realized.
Over the next few weeks I will be posting some basic assumptions and a draft vision statement for your consideration and comment. It is important that we all start from the same place and share a common goal. Toward that end I am asking you to sign up for the Archimedes Pledge – a commitment to “work in common cause with my fellow Americans to change a health care system that is not working; to put self interest aside and seek to build broad public support for a system that serves the interests of the entire community -- a system rooted in traditional and pragmatic values of fairness, inclusion, and quality that promotes health as the fundamental cornerstone of upward mobility in a democratic society.”
I ask that you take the pledge and find four of five others to do the same. Today we are only 390 strong – let’s see how fast we can build our community to 1,000 people brought together around this shared commitment.
John Kitzhaber
The Archimedes Movement offers an opportunity for direct engagement through which the growing concern over the U.S. health care system can be channeled into effective action. Our challenge will not be an easy one. In spite of the fact that there are few people in America today who truly believe that we are on a sustainable course, we seem utterly unable to change our heading. Any suggestion of the kind of sweeping reform that is called for is met with predictable skepticism by the pundits who assure us that it cannot be done; that it is impossible; that the powerful political interests involved will never allow it. Yet to me this is deeply disturbing because of its implications.
First, it is a message of resignation – that the American people are stakeholders first, and citizens only second and that there is nothing we can do about it. It is also a message of despair, of disempowerment and of surrender. And if we accept this message we are also accepting the status quo – and we will continue to spin down the river toward the lip of the falls, struggling to keep our end of the raft upstream while deriving some perverse sense of security from the knowledge that those in the other end will go over the precipice first. And I believe we are better than that.
While there may be paralysis in our legislative institutions, there need not be paralysis in our communities. The Archimedes Movement is based on the belief that the responsibility to find a sustainable solution to this crisis does not, in fact, belong to someone else. It belongs to us – to you and me and to people in communities throughout this state and nation. We are not powerless here and should not be without hope.
William Jennings Bryant once said that “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.” And that is exactly the question before us today -- whether we will sit idly by and simply let the future happen to us or whether we will step up and shape it with our own hands. The question before us is whether we still have the will and the capacity to come together as a community. I believe that we do – and I know that those of you who have signed up share that same belief and are willing to make the same commitment to the future.
It is important to recognize that the Archimedes Movement will not start out with a detailed plan for what the new system should look like but rather with a discussion of the values we want such a system to reflect and the outcomes we want it to produce for us as a community. From this discussion will emerge a framework of principles through which the details of the system will take shape. In short, we will design the new system together, we will create a common vision – and then we will create the tension through which our vision can be realized.
Over the next few weeks I will be posting some basic assumptions and a draft vision statement for your consideration and comment. It is important that we all start from the same place and share a common goal. Toward that end I am asking you to sign up for the Archimedes Pledge – a commitment to “work in common cause with my fellow Americans to change a health care system that is not working; to put self interest aside and seek to build broad public support for a system that serves the interests of the entire community -- a system rooted in traditional and pragmatic values of fairness, inclusion, and quality that promotes health as the fundamental cornerstone of upward mobility in a democratic society.”
I ask that you take the pledge and find four of five others to do the same. Today we are only 390 strong – let’s see how fast we can build our community to 1,000 people brought together around this shared commitment.
John Kitzhaber
