On a crisp October Saturday at the corner of Corinth and Washington Streets, activists clad in red gathered for a most urgent cause. The Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA), a politically independent, grassroots organizing network, held a meeting on Medicaid at the Roslindale branch of the Boston Public Library (BPL).

The NVMA claims to be modeled after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a "nonviolent army of the poor" emphasized before his assassination in 1968 and is led by individuals who are currently enrolled in or excluded from Medicaid. The organization views healthcare as a human right and pushes for a decommodified healthcare system and "Medicare for All" free from administrative burdens or cuts – https://gvimes.link/mdcdarmy

One of the group’s local chapters is based in Boston's Roslindale neighborhood and has been meeting regularly for approximately one year. The chapter recently had a rally in Adams Park, just across the street from the library, during their "National Day of Action" on Sept. 19. The group’s Oct. 10 meeting at the BPL Roslindale branch was focused on recent cuts and work requirements due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in July 2025. The bill introduced spending cuts totaling over $900 billion – the largest in the program's history – and could result in as many as 11 million people by 2034 – https://gvimes.link/bbbcuts

Griffin Shumway is one of the group's organizers. Originally from Vermont, he moved to Boston in 2024 due to his partner's job. He has been involved in the NVMA since 2012, and according to him, has had many negative experiences navigating the American healthcare system. This was crystallized when he lost his health insurance in 2014, a mere two days after the passing of his stepfather. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he took advantage of expanded federal Medicaid benefits and was able to regularly see a physician for the first time in his life.

Shumway noted that healthcare is a very lucrative and rapidly expanding industry, but ordinary planholders often voice frustrations about stubbornly high premium costs, denied coverage requests, and related issues despite soaring profits for healthcare companies.

At the meeting, the Massachusetts NVMA hosted a “Meeting for MassHealth” at the Roslindale Branch of the BPL. Following months of community outreach and the September rally at neighboring Adams Park, the event united ordinary Massachusetts residents to share their personal stories of struggling with healthcare and organizing against ongoing coverage losses.

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Shumway, along with fellow activists Stacy Zhang and Karim Sariahmed, examined both historical and new threats to public healthcare. They mentioned Massachusetts’s 2023 “great Medicaid purge,” which stripped coverage from approximately 600,000 Bay State residents through bureaucratic redetermination paperwork – https://gvimes.link/mdcdprg

Additionally, the group highlighted damaging new policy changes under the OBBBA, including mandatory six-month reapplication cycles and strict work requirements. These changes could remove an estimated 300,000 additional people from MassHealth, primarily to finance tax cuts on high earners and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – https://gvimes.link/bbbice

The meeting concluded by rallying the attendees to resist what they called “bipartisan attacks” on healthcare as a human right.