Margaret Flowers (born November 8, 1962) is an American pediatrician, public health advocate and

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

. After 17 years of practicing medicine, she became an advocate for a single-payer insurance system. Flowers is an adviser to the board of

Physicians for a National Health Program Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is an advocacy organization of more than 20,000 American physicians, medical students, and health professionals that supports a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance program. ...

, serving as a Congressional Fellow during the health reform process in 2009-10 and is co-chair of the Maryland chapter. She was co-chair of the

Green Party of the United States The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) is a federation of Green party, Green state political parties in the United States. The party promotes green politics, specifically environmentalism; nonviolence; social justice; participatory democra ...

until 2020.

Early life

Flowers was born in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

in 1962. She received her Bachelors degree in Biology in 1986 at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

. In 1990 she received her Doctorate in Medicine from

University of Maryland School of Medicine The University of Maryland School of Medicine (abbreviated UMSOM), located in Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S., is the medical school of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Me ...

and completed her residency in pediatrics from

Johns Hopkins Hospital The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. It was founded in 1889 using money from a bequest of over $7 million (1873 mo ...

Career

Pediatrics

From 1990 to 2007, Flowers practiced medicine first as director of pediatrics at a rural hospital and then in private practice. Flowers left her practice to advocate full time for single payer

Medicare for All Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from p ...

healthcare.

Activism

Flowers joined Physicians for a National Health Program, serving as a Congressional Fellow, advocating for a single payer insurance system to expand Medicare to cover everyone. In 2009, she was arrested at a Senate Roundtable on Health Insurance for standing and speaking up on behalf of the single payer option, as no representative for that type of insurance was invited to the roundtable discussion. She said in an interview on being arrested, "Our first goal was to have a seat at the table….If we couldn't get a seat, at least we could expose the insincerity of the current attempt at healthcare reform and show that single payer was actively being excluded." In 2010, Flowers wrote a letter to President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

explaining her position on healthcare and offering Medicare as a model for a better system. After multiple attempts by Flowers and her colleagues to deliver the letter directly to the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

, they were arrested for their refusal to leave the premises. In 2011, Flowers organized with the

Occupy Movement The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, which evolved into her work at Popular Resistance in 2013, which she co-directed with

Kevin Zeese Kevin Bruce Zeese (October 28, 1955 – September 6, 2020) was an American lawyer, U.S. Senate candidate and political activist. He worked to end the war on drugs and mass incarceration, and was instrumental in organizing the 2011 Occupy encam ...

Media

In 2012, Flowers launched the show Clearing the FOG with her partner

on We Act Radio in Anacostia, and today is presented on Pacifica Radio as a podcast.

Senate campaign

Flowers ran for

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

for the

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

election, where she received over 3% of the vote or approximately 90,000 votes.

Green Party

From 2018 to 2020, Flowers served on the national Green Party's

Steering Committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

as one of its seven co-chairs, leading the party.

Awards and recognition

Flowers received the 2020 Women and Media Award, alongside five other women, by the

Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase media democracy and strengthen independent media. Mo Basic infor ...

for her contributions to media democracy.

Electoral history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flowers, Margaret 1962 births Living people People from Kansas City, Missouri American activists