Minnesota COACT

(Citizens Organized ACting Together):

 

Minnesota COACT is a statewide, direct action, citizens organization of 10,000 members which educates and organizes people to empower themselves to take action in the democratic process on social justice issues, which are single-payer universal health care and family farm survival.      

Incorporated in 1979 as a 501c4, membership-run non-profit, COACT is the state’s oldest direct action, citizens’ organization.  It is led by a board of directors elected by members at the annual membership meeting in October.  Board directors represent members in Metro, Central, and Northern Minnesota.  The sustainable membership level is $20.  Our year-round phone canvass informs people on our issues work and encourages them to become members or to renew their member contributions.   

To accomplish systemic change, COACT works in community organizing and the legislative process, which includes lobbying.  However, our COACT Education Foundation (CEF) is a non-lobbying, 501c3 organization that educates the public on social justice issues to which citizens and foundations can make tax deductible donations and grants.     

 Our universal health care and family farm work includes the following projects:  

 (1) enactment of the Minnesota Health Plan for single-payer universal health care in our state; 

 (2) protecting state statutes and policies that maintain the right of local government to permit livestock feedlots based on what the citizens decide is best for their local economy and environment;    

 (3) protecting property owners’ rights when power companies use the power of eminent domain to force property owners to sign utility easements. 

HMOs hold unaccounted

billions of our tax dollars! 

COACT informs Main Street

of the unaccounted $3.2 billion in annual taxpayer dollars paid to HMO contractors of state’s public health programs.   

With a state budget deficit of $5 billion, can we afford unaccounted billions in tax dollars going to the HMOs?  Other state contractors are audited, why aren’t the HMOs?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COACT Pres. Charlie Quick informs Pierz Automotive owner Jim Gruber of the pro-business-taxpayer HMO Oversight Bill

COACT members visited 200 Central Minnesota  business owners during the summer on the HMO Oversight Bill (SF457, Senator John Marty) that requires HMO contractors to be audited like other state contractors.  (See Fall 2011 Newsletter for the rest of the story.)

Farm Picnic  August 22, 2010

District 12B Rep. Al Doty recalls how “COACT has always

been with us, from stopping hazardous waste disposal in

Morrison County in the early 1980s to today’s Minnesota Health

Plan for single-payer health care.”  (See Fall 2010 Newsletter.)

 

 

COACT’s all-seasons organizing for social justice.

 COACT and MUHCC members rally for the Minnesota Health Plan with chief author  Senator John Marty in January at the Martin Luther King Day Parade in St. Paul.

 

  COACT and MUHCC members rally in June at a St. Paul movie theater for the   Minnesota Health Plan at the premier of SiCKO, the acclaimed documentary on the  nation’s failed health insurance system.

 Latest COACT newsletter headlines:

  • House health committee grills HMOs on unaccounted billions in tax dollars

  • New Deal legacy of Social Security and Medicare addressed at COACT Farm Picnic

  • Social Security is pro-business

  • Social Security keeps 40 percent of all Americans age 65 and older out of poverty

 Newsletters can be viewed by clicking the links in the left column of the home page.

 Here’s how you can help with a donation. 
To donate, write your check to Minnesota COACT and send to

Minnesota COACT
2469 University Avenue West
Suite W150
St. Paul, MN 55114
 

For a tax deduction, write your check to the COACT Education Foundation and send to the same address. 

There are no high-paid lobbyists at COACT, only members like you.  Over 90% of our funding comes from individual donations.