More than a thousand pro-health care reform advocates gathered in Washington, DC Tuesday morning to protest deadlock on the current state of the bill on Capitol Hill.
Howard Dean, the former Governor of Vermont and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, told the crowd, “We deserve a vote! Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?”
The protesters then marched to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where a large group of health insurance executives and lobbyists were meeting. Protest organizers announced over a mega-phone they planned to “surround and blockade the hotel, go inside and arrest lobbyists for their crimes against healthcare.”
Police closed streets and maintained a strong presence, blocking the protesters from entering the Ritz-Carlton.
Inside health insurance executives and lobbyists successfully conducted their meeting, some could be heard remarking about the large protest outside.
Police led a few protest leaders away in what looked like an arrest but within minutes those same people were back in the crowd. One of them was Anna Berger, the Secretary Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, “We came down here to deliver citizen arrest forms.” Berger said. “They won’t even talk to us.”