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The UnitedHealth Group’s 2024 Investor Conference which was slated to begin at 8am on December 4th in New York City with remarks from the company’s CEO Brian Thompson was called off this year. Just before sunrise Thompson was shot and later pronounced dead. The suspect, 26-year old Luigi Mangioni, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania 5 days later on the 9th of December after an employee tipped off police after Mangioni was spotted in the fast food restaurant. The case has pulled the bandaid off of the gaping wound that is impacting millions of Americans—-dissatisfaction with the American healthcare system. 

 

As national, state and federal resources were deployed to find the alleged killer of Thompson, the case has further illuminated the discussion over which lives are deemed valuable and who is and isn’t protected in the country as a 17 year old boy named Yeremi Colino was fatally stabbed the same week and Daniel Penny, a 26 year old former US Marine was acquitted from charges of negligent homicide after holding Jordon Neely in a chokehold for 6 minutes.

 

With this as the socio-political backdrop, today I’ll talk with LaTanya Richard, a mental health advocate who struggles with chronic illness and has become all-too-familiar with the navigation of the American healthcare system and Dr. Hank Abrans, a retired physician who is now a member of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program.  

Behind every good place is a story. Inside every woman is a story. Priya Shah’s path to becoming a one-woman show as the owner, inn keeper, cleaner, groundskeeper, and hospitality manager at this charming inn, that I stumbled into by chance, is a nonlinear one paved with bravery and inspiration. 

Nearly five dozen people came together to support and stand in solidarity with Omari Fullchange on the one year anniversary of the day he was stopped and frisked, after a neighbor called the police on him while he ate his lunch in the sun. 

Halloween is a bitter-sweet time for Omari Fullchange. It’s a time he looks forward to spending with his nearly 2 year old daughter and other families in the neighborhood. It’s also the one year anniversary of the day he was stopped and frisked in front of his home and the beginning of what he hopes can be a new chapter in his healing.

From East Oakland to the South Yuba River, we'll hear from folks who are at the center of people-led movements for change.