“What’s at stake here is humanity,” said Shuniya Cooper, a college student from Milwaukee and Citizen Action of Wisconsin (CAWI) member, speaking in the Senate parlor of Wisconsin’s State Capitol on May 27. “If we do nothing, we allow these cuts to happen, we are silently endorsing the neglect and slow death of those who cannot afford prime insurance. That is not a civil society. That is not justice.”
This was Cooper’s second visit to Wisconsin’s Capitol this season to speak with state legislators. She is one of the more than a hundred CAWI members and allies who packed the Capitol to present a letter to Governor Tony Evers, a Democratic demanding he veto any budget which concedes to GOP efforts to reject federal Medicaid expansion funds while it slashes funding for child care and special education, a trickle-down version of the GOP’s federal budget priorities.
“The whole democratic grassroots is now demanding that national leaders stand and fight,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of CAWI, who helped organize the dozens of grassroots groups who signed the letter, and invited others to do the same. “I think that spirit is now being translated to the state level.”
CAWI has tirelessly sought to draw attention to the harm the GOP’s proposed cuts to Medicaid and other essential services will have in Wisconsin, holding “Hands Off Medicaid” town halls across the state.
Shuniya has lupus, and is one of the more than a million Wisconsinites who rely on BadgerCare, the state’s Medicaid program, for the care she needs to live. The state’s GOP-controlled legislature has for more than a decade sought to block an expansion of the program mandated by President Obama, refusing $1.5 billion in federal funds and leaving 90,000 in the state without care.
“To me, this is life or death,” said Cooper. It’s about waking up each day with fear that the care I might need might be gone tomorrow.”
Cooper also spoke at a No Kings Rally in Milwaukee on June 14th, about how President Trump’s efforts to slash $880 billion from Medicaid to fund tax breaks for billionaires wil impact the lives of millions of Americans like her.