New Orleans   For all of the continuing polarization in Congress over Obama’s Affordable Care Act and the “last stand in the hospital door” strategy of one Republican governor after another, there are realities in the heartland of the Republican base that some of the politicians are continuing to miss from their sky high perches as they survey the battleground. A fight in North Carolina by a Republican mayor, Adam O’Neal, in small town Bellhaven in the eastern part of the state, to save his town’s rural hospital should be sending a message about the political price the resistors will pay with their base voters, even if they are missing the life-and-death message that adequate and accessible health care represents. As the Mayor has made clear, health care is an issue that defines bipartisanship because both Republicans and Democrats get sick.

The private healthcare corporation Vident closed the local hospital, Pungo that served Bellhaven. Since the viability of so many hospitals was based on expanding health care coverage not restricting it, Pungo is just one of many early warning signs of what could become a widespread calamity. As noted in the Daily Kos, the Rural Health Association counts 283 rural hospitals as on their own kind of deathwatch to survive.

To save the hospital, Mayor O’Neal pulled pages from the history of the civil rights struggle and joined hands with contemporary activists. They hit the streets and marched to the state capitol in Raleigh to ask for a modification of the certification to allow the hospital to reopen. They also marched to Washington totaling hundreds of miles. They were joined by Rev. William Barber and his Moral Majority who have been central in recent struggles in North Carolina and beyond. They were also joined by former civil rights activists, like the legendary Bob Zellner from early SNCC and Freedom Rides fame. I can remember reaching out for Zellner in 1976 when we opened ACORN’s office in New Orleans and asking for help then. He was “retired” he said and working for an industrial plant, Godcheaux’s sugar refinery, while living in New Orleans and trying to find some calm after his years of activism. I doubt if he had really retired then, but there’s no doubt that he is back in action now. It was good to read that Zellner had joined this fight in North Carolina and walked with Mayor O’Neal every step of the 238-mile trek to Washington.

Does this kind of bipartisanship work even in the rock-ribbed rural communities of the South that have become the bastion of the Republican voting strength? Can these dusted off tactics still make a difference?

It seems so as Mayor O’Neal tweeted at the end of September:

Great news!!! NC Legislature changes Cert. Of Need law to allow our hospital to reopen. Votes..House 102-8 and Senate 44-0. #savepungo

Seems like part of the message from North Carolina is that we may need to build a movement on health care access for all to finally get the job done here.