Contributed by Beatrice Adler
I am writing in response to the article in the April issue of the Peoples’ Paper submitted by Larry Wood titled “Health Foundation has Woke Agenda” which states that the CEO of the Mat-Su Health Foundation should be fired and that the Foundation be investigated for promoting Marxist doctrine in the guise of supporting a healthy Mat-Su community. The article contains too many inaccuracies to let stand without comment.
First, I urge anyone with an interest in this topic to visit the Mat-Su Health Foundation’s website at www.healthymatsu.org. If you click on Who We Are, you can read for yourself the actual purpose of the Foundation and it’s partner, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.
The relationship between the two organizations was established when the old Valley Hospital Association split into management of the for-profit Mat-Su Regional Medical Center (MSRMC) and its non-profit arm the Mat-Su Health Foundation (MSHF). The Foundation was formed specifically to invest a percentage of the hospital’s profit into community projects to improve the health and well-being of all Mat Valley residents.
Reading the Health Foundation's 2020 Annual Report referenced by Mr. Wood reveals the nature and source of the thousands (no, not millions) of dollars in assets (no, not expenses). Taking the time to read through the Annual Reports, a picture emerges of how hospital profits remaining after the needs of patients are met, have been returned to the community. While you’re at the MSHF website, take a look at the list of local grant recipients and visit their websites to learn the truth of how the Foundation’s funds have been invested into the health of our community.
Elizabeth Ripley, CEO of the Foundation sits on the board of Directors of MSRMC. That is by design and is not a conflict of interest as Mr. Woods insists. She is doing an excellent job supporting the mission of the Valley Hospital Association by investing funds provided by MSRMC to MSHF into tangible projects that are helping to improve the health of our community. She provides a direct line of communication between the boards and is part of the Hospital's mission and connection through the Foundation.
Mr. Wood singles out MSHF’s support of ROCK Mat-Su as an example of wrong-doing, though he admits to knowing nothing about the organization. ROCK stands for Raising our Children with Kindness. ROCK Mat-Su’s goal is to end child abuse by providing access to counseling, peer support and related services, not as Mr. Woods assumes, to indoctrinate our children in Marxist belief.
I’d like to thank Larry Wood for motivating me to educate myself about the meaning of concepts I thought I understood. In the article Mr. Wood appears to have conflated equity and equality with Marxism and Critical Race Theory. Not knowing what to make of Mr. Wood’s comments, I looked up the definitions of those specific terms.
The American Heritage College Dictionary, third edition contains the following definitions:
Equity: The state, quality, or ideal of being just, impartial, and fair.
Equal: Having the same quantity, measure or value as another.
Marxism: An ideology in which the concept of class struggle plays a primary role in analyzing society, which is seen as inevitably progressing from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist society and thence to Communism.
Finding no definition of Critical Race Theory in my dictionary, I turned to the Internet. Here’s what I learned: Critical Race Theory (CRT) grew out of its predecessor Critical Legal Studies (CLT). CLT emerged at Harvard Law School in the 1960’s. It assumed as a fact and put forward as a basis of argument that race and racism are social constructs and that the American legal system was structured to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the poor and marginalized, primarily those of black or brown skin. As such it is an adaptation of Marxist theory which calls the monarchy and ruling class to account. Lacking a monarchy to blame for the disparity in application of the law, CLT pointed at socially-based racial inequality as the culprit.
When Marx & Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848 they were critiquing the centuries old social hierarchy controlled by the ruling class in Europe. They envisioned an economic and social revolution with each citizen, regardless of class, deserving of the basics of life: food, shelter, and useful work all contributing to a society wherein there was an equitable distribution of wealth. The rise of the European bourgeoisie, a merchant-based middle class, would lead, they posited from capitalism, to socialism on the way to the ultimate perfection of economic and social expression in Communism.
The American rebellion against the British monarchy had declared equality as its cornerstone. In 1776 the concept of equality applied only to white land-owning males; a tacit understanding that informed much of the jurisprudence that followed. It took Americans nearly 200 years to realize how entrenched and pervasive that attitude was and that it was important to make meaningful, moral change.
The civil rights movement of the 1960’s called for racial equality, echoing the words of the Declaration of Independence. The harsh reality is that all men (and women) are not created equal. Equal means the same as, and that’s just not true. We each have different interests, strengths, weaknesses and abilities. We’ll never be equal, but we can all strive to live in an equitable society where everyone is treated with equality of justice and fairness under the law.
I believe Mr. Wood’s assertion that equity means taking from one person to give to another in the interests of creating equality is based in this co-mingling of Marxist theory and CRT. The question is: how does Marx’s theory of the (presumed) natural progression from bourgeois capitalism through socialism to Communism have anything to do with teaching children to be just and fair?
The MSRMC website defines equity as follows: when every person has the opportunity to attain his or her full human potential (physically, intellectually, socially and spiritually) and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances or systemic and institutional barriers.
We shouldn’t need indoctrination to motivate us to treat our fellow human beings with fairness and compassion. Well, actually something we can all agree upon does exist. Commonly known as the Golden Rule, it says: “Do not do unto others what you would not want to have done unto you.” That language comes dangerously close to the Marxist tenets of legally enforced fairness, compassion, and equity. At least as Mr. Woods would have us believe.