By Donna Lamb

Marilyn Clement, activist and founder of Healthcare-NOW! passed away on Mon., Aug. 3. Her voice will be sorely missed, for no one worked more tirelessly than she did to spread the word about the need for meaningful healthcare reform. There is no doubt that her leadership, vision, and passion on this issue helped fortify the recognition of healthcare as a basic human right and contributed to the fact that this topic is now in the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.

Born to sharecroppers in East Texas in 1935, Marilyn’s spark for social justice ignited early. Her parents were gospel singers with the United Methodist Church, which trained her as a youth to work for the common good. This set the stage for her rich, decades-long career in social justice activism, which, along with heathcare reform, included civil rights, women's rights, human rights, and peace. She was also a supporter of reparations to descendants of slavery.

Marilyn began her career in the 1960s with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, GA, working directly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the War on Poverty and preparing for the Washington, DC civil rights protests. When Dr. King came under heavy criticism for speaking out against the war in Vietnam, it strengthened even more her conviction that one cannot stand silent in the face of any injustice.

In 1968, she and her family moved to Queens, NY, where she connected with her life-long friend and fellow activist Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr., who had just formed the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. Marilyn Clement became the associate director for the organization, the first and only national ecumenical foundation committed exclusively to the support of community organizing for oppressed communities and people of color.

Marilyn went on to serve as the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. Within it, she created the Ella Baker Student Program, which provides students with legal and other training and a background in movements for social change. She also helped found the national Anti Klan Network, combining legal cases and organizing work to counter Klan and Nazi terrorism. Furthermore, she assisted the African National Congress in organizing its largest national congress just prior to the first universal suffrage election in South Africa in 1994.

During the 1992-94 round of healthcare reform, Marilyn formed "Health Care: We Gotta Have It," an organization of women advocating for single payer healthcare. This was a forerunner to Healthcare-NOW!, a broader network formed in 2003 involving thousands of single payer activists working in local coalitions all over the country.

Healthcare organizing became Marilyn Clement’s central focus when she learned that Congressman John Conyers, Jr (To Right in photo left). would introduce far-reaching single payer legislation at the start of the 108th Congress in 2003 – even though he knew that universal healthcare legislation could not pass at that time but needed a forceful, committed national movement to grow behind it.

Marilyn Clement took that call to heart, pledging to advance the fight for guaranteed national healthcare as far as possible for as long as she was able. She served as the national coordinator for Healthcare-NOW! until her death.

In June 2008, Marilyn was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and she had to step back from her leadership role in the organization to undergo extensive and painful treatments. A tribute to her organizing skills, a group of nine committed activists responded to her call and stepped up to form a Steering Committee to assume leadership during her illness.

At a June 7, 2009 event at Judson Memorial Church, Marilyn Clement’s consistent optimism rang out loud and clear as she told the crowd, "We are on the verge of winning something that is so desperately needed for all of our people. Keep up the fight. We are going to win single-payer healthcare."

As the activist community, including the current writer, mourns her loss, we also celebrate the amazing gifts Marilyn Clement has given to us all, both in terms of making the world a better place for everyone and what we gained personally from knowing her. While she was a terrifically strong and dedicated woman, Marilyn was also one of the warmest, kindest, and most generous people around, always willing to give of herself, her knowledge and her resources. Even under the most difficult circumstances, she managed to remain gracious and positive.

Members of Healthcare-NOW! remember Marilyn’s words as she commented on her lifetime of organizing for social justice: "Being an organizer is an honorable profession. Spending my life as an organizer for change in this world has been a fantastic way to spend a life, and doing it with all of you is a great way to live. As Dr. King said, ‘The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.’"