* Has close ties to the Communist Party USA
* National Field Director of Health Care for America Now
* Former director of Americans for Health Care, a Service Employees International Union project
Closely associated with the Missouri/Kansas club of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Margarida Jorge is the National Field Director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which advocates in favor of a socialized medical system in the United States. In April 2009 Jorge was the keynote speaker at a St. Louis event sponsored by People’s Weekly World, the CPUSA newspaper.
Before joining HCAN, Jorge served as director of Americans for Health Care, a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) project that pushed, like HCAN, for the implementation of a government-run medical system. She also worked on the political campaigns of various leftist candidates, the promotion of legislation on the state level, and state ballot-initiative campaigns.
Prior to her stint with SEIU, Jorge spent nearly a decade as an organizer of low-income health-care workers in the South and the Midwest.
In the summer of 2009, Jorge published a “playbook” of tactics designed to help supporters of socialized medicine neutralize the impact made by any protesters who might attend healthcare town-hall meetings moderated by Democrat Members of Congress. This publication characterized such protesters as “angry mobs” of “far right-wing ideologues recruited by paid organizers” like insurance “industry lobbyists and public relations firms.” “Their goal,” said the handbook, “is to stop President [Barack] Obama, influence the media, and scare members of Congress into thinking that there is more [public] resistance to health care reform than really exists.” The book further accused such protesters of using “tactics and rhetoric” replete with “anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-immigration” themes that “resonate with the farthest right wing of their [Republican] party.” Moreover, the book advised supporters of socialized medicine to adopt the following specific strategies for minimizing the visibility and influence of the protesters: