Today I marched in Portland, OR for the public plan health care reform option. We had approximately 200 people walking in unison on a pleasant autumn day. People carried signs, echoed slogans out loud,and clapped their hands. Everyone participating looked like they were enjoying themselves; I could see it on their faces. It felt good to take action, to walk side-by-side.

Later, we met at a local high school football field and sat in the bleachers as the event organizers gave speeches to inspire action. Some speeches were better than others. As I sat in the football stands, I wondered how inspiration trickles through the American psyche and then as President Obama’s quote states above– “change comes to Washington.”

Wayne Dyer, inspirational and spiritual author, would call the trickle effect a cultural “meme” which is a mind-virus that spreads through society. Some of these memes can be good, like no longer allowing smoking on airline flights. Dyer says when enough people began to think that smoking on planes was unacceptable that it finally became unacceptable—the meme had spread.

Some cultural memes could go the other way and be presumed to take on a negative effect on society. But if we stay with a positive mind-virus meme that could influence a public health care option for Americans that need it—then let’s not get a virus shot for this particular virus! Let’s see if this public plan health care option meme-virus can spread…all the way to Washington.

When will it be thought acceptable by most Americans that a public plan health care option should be a right, not a privilege for their fellow countrymen? It has to spread one meme at a time by the majority of Americans.

So your call to action is…cough on your neighbor, cough in the subway, at school, in the street. Let this meme-virus spread. And if the swine flu scare prevents you from coughing then a simple alternative would be to think of a public plan for health care actually working in America, talk about it with your friends, family and neighbors and then believe it can happen and should happen now. And believe in this change coming to Washington…minus the coughing.

Cheers,
Megan

www.MeganClareJohnson.com