{"id":12752,"date":"2023-11-12T03:49:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T03:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/ady-barkan-american-healthcare-activist-1983-2023\/"},"modified":"2023-11-12T03:49:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T03:49:19","slug":"ady-barkan-american-healthcare-activist-1983-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=12752","title":{"rendered":"Ady Barkan, American healthcare activist, 1983-2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=088a5b91-ad93-4052-95b1-0d222e9dea3f\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Ady Barkan used his diagnosis with a fatal neurodegenerative disease to make the personal political and campaign for better healthcare in the US, his final fight after years of advocacy for progressive causes.<\/p>\n<p>Barkan, who was 39, died of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The activist was diagnosed seven years ago, shortly after the birth of his first child. He fought Republican efforts to gut funding for Medicare, the US government health insurance programme for seniors, and argued to expand healthcare access under the plan known as Medicare for All. With his campaigning, \u201che knew he was building something that would outlast him\u201d, said Jamila Headley, co-executive director of Barkan\u2019s Be a Hero organisation. <\/p>\n<p>In an interview last year, he said that \u201cthe paradox of my situation has been that as ALS has made my voice weaker, more people have heard my message\u201d, adding: \u201cAs I\u2019ve lost the ability to walk, more people have followed in my footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The son of Israeli immigrants to the US, Barkan was born in Massachusetts in 1983, before his parents moved to California. He moved to New York for college and then graduated from Yale Law School, but was increasingly drawn towards activism, participating in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests against economic inequality. At a recent remembrance ceremony in his hometown of Santa Barbara, California, one attendee recalled Barkan joking that law was his fallback career if activism failed to pan out.<\/p>\n<p>In September, Senator Elizabeth Warren said that over the years she had seen Barkan \u201cpick a lot of really good fights\u201d. He worked on a campaign to win sick days for workers in New York City, including a risky procedural move to bring the bill before the city council without the speaker\u2019s support. He helped to launch Local Progress, a network of municipal officials supporting economic and social reform.<\/p>\n<p>A smart, tenacious organiser, Barkan sought \u201cto transform the playing field to change what\u2019s winnable\u201d, wrote friends Sarah Johnson and Brad Lander in The Nation. That approach was particularly apparent in \u201cFed Up\u201d, his campaign to pressure the US Federal Reserve to live up to an oft-forgotten part of its mandate: striving for full employment.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\"  width=\"2289\" height=\"1526\"><\/source><source media=\"(max-width: 490px)\"  width=\"1526\" height=\"1526\"><\/source><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/https:\/\/d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net\/production\/69971c56-b431-4a4b-9890-b600d1213161.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-image-type=\"image\" width=\"2289\" height=\"1526\"><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption\"><span>Barkan, second from left, at a 2014 protest outside the Jackson Hole economic symposium in Moran, Wyoming. He was said to have picked \u2018a lot of really good fights\u2019<\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 Bradly Boner\/Bloomberg<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A tight labour market forces employers to hire black and Latino workers who otherwise face discrimination and brings real wage gains to employees, wrote economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research. After Barkan\u2019s lobbying, \u201ccurrent chair Jerome Powell often sounded like he was reading from Fed Up\u2019s hymn book when he touted the praises of low unemployment. This shift in Fed policy\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009improved the lives of tens of millions of workers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barkan\u2019s profile grew in 2017 after he confronted Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake on a flight to Phoenix that, by chance, both men were on. In a filmed exchange, Barkan asked Flake to vote against his party\u2019s tax-cut bill, which Barkan said would trigger cuts to spending on social services \u2014 including Medicare disability payments for the sick, like him.<\/p>\n<p>Though the activist urged Flake to \u201cbe an American hero\u201d and \u201csave my life\u201d, ultimately the senator voted in favour of the bill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had a deep understanding of power,\u201d said Johnson, the former executive director of Local Progress. \u201cHe always saw for any person, for any moment, the things they could do to make things better, and was totally unafraid to say it out loud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barkan was an easy person to befriend, Johnson recalled, with an organiser\u2019s persuasiveness and a sarcastic sense of humor. At his wedding to Rachael Scarborough King, a literature professor and Barkan\u2019s college sweetheart, he told assembled friends and family, \u201cShe\u2019s an amazing partner. She laughs at my jokes even when they\u2019re stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The couple had two children. King wrote on social media this week that she was \u201cholding tight to the wonderful year we had. He got to travel again \u2014 to Disneyland with the kids, to Barbados for a dear friend\u2019s wedding, to New York for an award and catching up with friends. He said, \u2018It\u2019s amazing that life can still get better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barkan was the subject of a 2021 documentary, <em>Not Going Quietly<\/em>, detailing his continued activism even as ALS paralysed his body.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur time on this Earth is the most precious resource we have,\u201d he said. \u201cMovement building allows me to transcend my body, and that\u2019s the beauty of democracy, that together we can be more than our individual selves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/088a5b91-ad93-4052-95b1-0d222e9dea3f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Ady Barkan&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ady Barkan, American healthcare activist, 1983-2023 | inFundPros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ady Barkan used his diagnosis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=12752\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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