Demonstrations at CEO Mansions? Ho Hum

[kpete]

Demonstrations at CEO Mansions? Ho Hum

Can the media cover a movement that plays nice?

By Peter Dreier and Todd Gitlin

No one packed heat, no one screamed at a member of Congress, no one called anybody a Nazi, no fistfights broke out. So—no story.

All that happened was that on Thursday, Oct. 1, a moving van pulled up in front of the largest house in a Main Line neighborhood just outside Philadelphia—the home of H. Edward Hanway, CEO of CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies—and eight demonstrators from Health Care for America Now (HCAN) got out. One was Stacie Ritter, a former CIGNA customer whose twin girls were afflicted with cancer at the age of four. Their treatment left permanent damage. CIGNA refused to pay for the human growth hormones that her doctor prescribed to help her daughters grow properly. When her husband was briefly unemployed, they were bankrupted.

No one was home at Hanway’s mansion. Ritter left a note to explain that the van symbolized a request: “Can I stay in your carriage house until we get back on our feet financially?”

The same day, in Indianapolis, HCAN organized a house call on Angela Braly, CEO of WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance company. And in Wayzata, Minn., fifty protesters, holding umbrellas and candles, stood outside the lakeside mansion of UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley, in the rain, and screened a video that was unkind to the company. (HCAN has tried to buy time to broadcast the video on CNN, but the network refuses to air it.)

Total number of print and broadcast reporters who showed up at any of the three events: Zero.

more:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/demonstrations_at_ceo_mansions.php?page=all

[Hannah Bell]

1. giving air time to behavior encourages it. can't have that.

better to give time to stories about murder, baby-rape & teabaggers. *that's* the kind of america *we* want!!!

[malaise]

4. Ding ding

Next thing these 'disgusting nonentities' will show up at the homes of CEOs whose stations push lies and propaganda as news.

People are waking up!! It won't only be teabaggers in a short while.

[fascisthunter]

6. ...

[dhpgetsit]

2. This would be a good demonstration.

We could demonstrate the usefulness of government programs by blocking a sewer line in an affluent neighborhood, turning it into an effluent neighborhood.

[bertman]

3. That would be a shitty job for somebody, but you might get a volunteer or two.

[asdjrocky]

8. Did I just raise my hand?

Is that my hand in the air?

[AuntPatsy]

5. k

[fascisthunter]

7. Off to the Greatest!

THIS is what people should do...

[omega minimo]

9. .

[leftstreet]

10. K&R