No More Benefits
April, 2002

Something was clearly different about the March 16th No More Benefits panel at SXSW from anything I'd been a part of in the past. As has been chronicled in a number of these columns, Rock-A-Mole and Rock & Rap Confidential have repeatedly worked together to introduce the burgeoning poor people's movement to musicians. But, despite a number of very fruitful relationships sparked by each of these efforts, the overall outcome of such events has remained vague. Most participants express great enthusiasm immediately after the event but drift out of touch with one another in the time that passes between one such event and another.

When the No More Benefits forum finished two and a half hours after it started (only because SXSW staffers had to strike the room for another event), it was clear that most people in this group were going to get to know each other quite well over the following months. This event was simply a starting point. We made strong declarations to work together, some specific decisions about how we might do that, and I left with a gut-level feeling that things would develop rapidly. When we meet again next year, this will be an altogether different kind of forum.

One reason this event felt so different from others was that so little really needed to be explained. People got it. No one thought "no more benefits" was about putting an end to helping each other out. Everyone understood immediately that this was about how musicians can work together to eliminate the need to play 1000-some-odd benefits we've found take place every week in America. Everyone seemed to grasp the need for practical, ongoing work addressing peoples' immediate healthcare needs, but appreciated equally the need for a more visionary perspective to really solve the problems. When moderator Dave Marsh said, "this privatized medical insurance system has got to go," no one in a quite full house objected. That by itself is unusual.

But the quality of this discussion was distinct for so many individual reasons. It was there in the clip director Lisa Scott showed from the Rock-A-Mole documentary, The Ultimate Song, which showed musicians such as Tom Morello, Wayne Kramer and Sarah Hickman (and many just as eloquent but lesser known) grappling with just what gives music its conscience. It was there when panelist Patty Griffin echoed these sentiments as she struggled with a sore throat to explain why she had to be a part of this effort.

It was there in the dignity and good-natured humor Ray Wylie Hubbard brought to his own story of passing on and off of the welfare rolls and struggling to pay for the care needed to correct a crippling back injury.

It was there in the way the writer of the great (though largely unknown) song "Just Health," Ernie Perez explained the vision that keeps his organization Rock-A-Mole putting the pieces of the puzzle together the way they do. It was there in the way Peyton Wimmer--who helped found Austin's SIMS foundation (after a good friend took his own life) to help musicians gain access to mental health services as well as other health care needs-kept understating his abilities but underscoring his willingness to tackle any problem that came along.

It was in the way a pregnant Cheri Honkala abbreviated her heartbreaking list of examples of the costs of poor access to health care to the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and those they work with. It was there in the way Dave Marsh had to turn the mic over to his friend Stew Francke because he couldn't finish the story of how he first learned Stew had been diagnosed with leukemia. It was there in the way everyone's heart poured out at once as a young woman braved tears to tell of her little brother who has cystic fibrosis and wants to play the drums and how helpless she felt. It was there in my heart as I looked across the room at Cindy Bullens and Dave Marsh, both who lost daughters to cancer. It was there in my heart as I thought of my own daughter.

This room was different from other rooms because everyone in that room was inescapably tied to the issue, and most knew it personally. I recently learned my own connection when I left work to stay with my father in the hospital for four days as he fought off pneumonia and coped with a brand new diagnosis of cancer. Stew Francke had the exact same form of cancer as my father, and I thought about his song "Letter from Ten Green" as I stayed those four days in oncology. He got it right. The song felt like the place, both the dehumanizing horror of it all as well as the incredible radiance of the human spirit in that setting. My father and I grew closer than we've been in years in those days together, but at a terrible price.

My father turned out to be lucky. A brand new drug on the market will most likely put the cancer in remission, and he will be able to live a relatively normal life for years to come. The downside of this is the price of the drug itself, $2100 a month. I just found out this week that his insurance will only cover about two months out of the year. Barring an act of generosity on the part of the drug company, that means his retirement will have to fund a $20,000 prescription each year. My father was just about the only person in my extended family I thought might have a secure retirement. So much for that.

In contrast to a benefit mentality, Rock-A-Mole and Rock & Rap Confidential have worked with groups like the KWRU to try to get musicians and fans to see ourselves as partners fighting to solve problems that affect all of us. While poverty issues may remain abstractions to many musicians who think they have made a choice to live below the poverty line, health care issues-once they strike-leave no room for such illusions. We're all in this together. As someone pointed out at the panel, even the most financially secure among us have loved ones who are uninsured or underinsured. This issue touches all of us eventually, and even those who might have counted themselves lucky in that room at SXSW seemed to know that.

Some people have asked me if we would like to do a forum like this in the Kansas City area. "Sure," I think. "Yes!" "Definitely!" But such a forum is simply a step in a process, and, until then, there's a lot of work to be done to build on what we accomplished March 16th. Please check out www.justhealthcare.org to see the Labor Party's specific plans for tackling this issue, and keep an eye on the rapidly developing Rock-A-Mole webpage at (www.rockamole.com) to see how we can work together.

In the words of John Q, "Sick?"

"Help!"

For my daughter, for my dad, for each other.

--Danny Alexander
danny@thezone.org