F
GHTON
2025
A Panoply of Weapons to Fight For Medicaid For All
Dr. Ivan Douglas Hicks • Dr. David M. Craig • Dr. Elaine M. Hernandez
This mobile edition of Fight On For Medicaid: A Panoply of Weapons Used to Fight for Medicaid for All is offered as scholarship with a Purpose & Soul.The AfricaLogical Institute consists of scholar activists that conduct research with intentionality. Our work is designed to amplify community voice, challenge injustice, and support those who who cannot easily fight for themselves. This offering defines an approach to research we are actively developing called Community Valued Research, CVR. Central to CVR is our belief that the community is the expert, and that research should serve people, not simply institutions.
This offering tells the story of how a diverse coalition of community members, advocates, faith leaders, researchers, and public health champions came together to defend Medicaid in Indiana in 2025. Although rooted in a specific struggle at the Indiana Statehouse, this work is offered more broadly to anyone seeking to advance hope, equity, and human dignity. Whether the issue is health care, housing, education, or economic opportunity, we hope this deminsional product provides both insight and inspiration for our work ahead. Research should not merely describe the world. It should be tasked with transforming it.
"WE WANT ALL
THE SMOKE"
On August 5th, I received several text messages wishing me a "Happy Chairteenth." The texts were accompanied by pictures and video clips from the "Rumble at the River" — or the "Fade in the Water" — that took place on August 5, 2023, at the Montgomery River in Montgomery, Alabama. GMac Cash captured the clash in his rap lyrics: "Bro told y'all to move, just doing his job, but you had to jump him, now we've got a prob?"
Cash was lyrically celebrating how Black men fought back in response to an unprovoked attack on a Black crew member, Dameion Pickett, of the city-owned riverboat, Harriott II. The riverboat was completing a dinner cruise and attempting to dock; however, a privately owned pontoon boat blocked its slot. Pickett disembarked to move the pontoon and was met with physical assault by several white occupants of the raft.
Pickett threw his cap into the air, and the Black bystanders descended on the dock. One young man swam from the boat to defend Pickett. Another grabbed a chair and began swinging it at the attackers. The melee went viral. The confrontation that took place in a city with a violent, yet victorious civil rights history — at a river where enslaved Africans disembarked to be sold — inspired a new African American hymn: "Lift Every Chair and Swing."
In this era of weaponizing politics to crush the vulnerable and crown the powerful and privileged, Pickett, "Blackquaman," the "Chairman of the Board," and the "Black Avengers" at the Montgomery River inspire us. Even if the odds are stacked against us, we should affirm that "we want all the smoke." We should be motivated to fight back so that all have access to quality healthcare, especially the poor who depend on Medicaid.
The phrase "I want all the smoke" conveys readiness to fight back. One is committed to standing "ten toes down" against all opponents or attackers — frequently called "opps" — to fight back. Pickett was celebrated as a symbol of resistance to vicious attacks when the odds are stacked against you.
Emergency Rooms must not serve as the sole healthcare in this country. We want all the smoke and should demand healthcare justice so that every citizen receives the same access to quality healthcare as the elected officials in Washington, D.C. The fight has started that no one really asked for. The "least of these" have been jumped on by mean-spirited policies that will be death-dealing. Medicaid and Medicare may well be murdered unless we are willing to fight back while declaring we "want all the smoke."
FIGHT ON
In core streets where silence breaks
Where broken hearts and systems ache
We gather faith from age and dawn
Not just to collect data and move on
But to
Fight On.
From pulpits strong to prayer mats spread
Bells must now toll for justice roll — God be found now!
People are dying… so…
WE RISE
Each creed, each voice, each song, all plans
We hold the line and fight for change
Not for applause or temporary gain
But for others who cry in pain
For sage warriors too tired to march alone
We raise our hands and still
Fight On
So Right On to the dreamers past
So we Fight On for Truth so sure to last
With love as shield and hope as fuel
That which is right — an intentional tool
Together now, we
Fight On.
Don't Give Up the Fight
RIGHT ON —
FIGHT ON
The phrase "Right On" rose from the front lines of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. It was more than a slogan. It was a spiritual affirmation, a rhythmic nod of shared struggle and sacred resistance. Spoken by freedom fighters, mothers, preachers, teachers, artists, and youth on the front lines of protest and possibility, it marked a moment of recognition: that dignity had not been stripped, that courage still bloomed, and that hope was not lost.
"Right On" echoed across pulpits and street corners. It blared from radios. It acknowledged humanity and served as a final blessing shared by friends — a spoken embrace, a cultural drumbeat affirming worth, agency, and divine presence amid socio-political storms, personal vulnerability, and collective strife. It was language woven from resistance, pride, and transcendent Black agapeism and genuine joy — in the midst of it all. A short hymn of identity and collective determination.
Today, we say "Fight On" — not in place of "Right On" but as its descendant. This new charge emerges from the same ancestral well, shaped by the terrain of our time. We speak it in the face of legislative callousness, economic abandonment, and medical neglect. Where the earlier call affirmed our presence, this call ignites our purpose. It declares that despite the apparent greed and evil-driven wickedness we witness and endure, our response must be real and righteous resistance.
This modern call draws from the passion and power of the old freedom songs, from the wisdom of our elders, from the blood memory of ancestors, and from the fierce moral urgency of our time. It is a cry drawn from the marrow of the movement, forged in fire and carried forward in profound faith.
Discover The Soul
Medicine is only for the moment,
Can we fix the soul…given by God?
Can we turn these illnesses into enlightenment,
listen to the next door opened,
the heart,
the Stress?
Listen to the story before you hear the cause,
Listen to the effect, removing barriers safely,
How come these picket fences make us fragments, defensive
Can we safely LEAN INTO THE MYSTERY…
Of being who we are
While trusting the aid,
Believing the joy
Sharing the freedom…
Inhale and Exhale…
The breath is poetry of the soul.
September 21, 2024 — HealthResource Fair
Interdisciplinary Research Leaders, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Health Equity Study, The AfricaLogical Institute
First Baptist Church North Indianapolis — The Bradley Education Building
THE STAKES
ARE LIFE
AND DEATH
Laws were mandated and passed that are now killing people. Poor people in rural and urban America will see hospitals close, access to life-saving care decrease. People are actively dying now because they have been kicked off or kept away from Medicaid.
Our panoply of weapons to fight for Medicaid for all is based on data received, stories told, and the belief that truth will unwaveringly lead to liberation.
COMMUNITY
VALUED
RESEARCH
CVR, as developed by Ivan Douglas Hicks is not extractive — it is emancipatory. Rooted in the early defined Afrocentric concept of agency, CVR seeks to pursue scholarship based, informed, and strengthened through the lived experience and with gleaned wisdom from the people, who become architects of the right next steps for change.
Community members are not merely subjects of study — they are sought-after sages whose organic wisdom is needed to bring real change to the community. Our community insists, "Nothing About Us Without Us!" The community is not the object of investigation, but a partner in the quest for knowledge, understanding, and the release of a new creative imagination for our common future. As Dr. Zinzi Bailey reminds us, "The communities most impacted by injustice are those best positioned to explain it."
Our Community Leadership Board (CLB) shaped interview tools, guided outreach, challenged analysis, and sharpened developing recommendations for systemic change. They co-designed from the front lines — hosting organic, community-specific education and galvanization events across Indiana. The CLB did not just compile names but formed and strengthened relationships that allowed us to inform, engage, learn, and mobilize. CLB leadership has been instrumental not only in regional and state-level advocacy, but now in contributing directly to the growing support for an Amicus Curiae Brief destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.
The expressed goal of Community Valued Research is to bring about documented change in laws, policies, procedures, rules, and regulations — and to steer resources to the community being researched. We remember Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe v. Wade, and Brown v. Board of Education not because hope was stirred, but because laws were fought for and subsequently the change was written into case law. Research that does not move money does not move enough. CVR must result in resource redirection, program development, and the creation of opportunity.
THE AMICUS
CURIAE
BRIEF
The battle for Medicaid is part of a modern-day civil war — one not being fought with muskets, but with policy clashing with poverty, in a war started by design of the powerful. We knew that to defend Medicaid, we had to bring our voices and our research into the heart of the legal process.
That opportunity came in 2025 when the Africological Institute joined the Amicus Curiae Brief in the case Rose vs Robert F. Kennedy Jr, currently being heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. An amicus curiae brief allows those who are not direct parties to a case to offer insights that may inform the court's decision. In this moment, silence was not an option. We were called to be Friends of the People.
Our journey toward that brief began with our 5th Faith Community Consultation — a coordinated effort to uplift the voices of those most impacted by Medicaid changes. Our contention was that new policy and law surrounding Medicaid in 2025 are not just unjust, but they are presented and enacted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner. They lack data support, ignore the community, have intended consequences, and they are not just harmful — but in fact lethal.
Our 2019 study, Health Equity, Urban Congregations & HIP, served as a foundational data source for the brief. Our current Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study expands on that work, incorporating insights from residents, professionals, and advocates across six cities in Indiana. Because our research is both IRB-approved and rooted in Community Valued Research, its inclusion in the Amicus Curiae Brief represents a double affirmation: that our work is both academically sound and morally imperative.
Amicus Curiae Brief — United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Being named Amici was not simply an academic gesture; it is an act of scholar activism. We stand as friend of the court, offering advice from the authentic voice of the people — asserting the moral urgency of equitable health policy.
THE WEAPONS
OF OUR
WARFARE
Ancient spears, swords, and shields have been replaced by hard scholarship drawn intentionally to voice the concerns and needs of our community. We fight with an array of instruments — not in one way but many.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
"Service is the rent we pay for taking up space on this earth."
"The communities most impacted by injustice are those best positioned to explain it."
"Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community."
"Complexity hinders equity."
"I have my skill set, but I have a toolbox only with other people."
"Community cannot be authentically built if people are not in relationship with one another."
"There are too many laws that are good ideas that would help those who need help most, if only there were dollars attached."
BY ALL
MEANS
AVAILABLE
SHARE YOUR STORY
Your lived experience is data. Let the court, the legislature, and the community hear your truth. Stories change policy — and policy changes lives.
Share Your Story →REQUEST A BRIEFING
Our scholar-activist team will walk you through IRB-approved findings, economic impact analysis, and community testimony from six Indiana cities.
Request Briefing →JOIN THE NETWORK
The Community Leadership Board is not symbolic — it is a strategically aligned partnership. Join us to bring the advocacy panoply to your city.
Join the Network →LINKS TO AN
ADVOCACY
PANOPLY
- CLB Summary Report
- CLB Selected Advocacy Trainings
- CLB Advocacy Training by Tracey Hutchings-Goetz
- Adam Mueller — CLB Litigative Update
- Faith Community Consultation Executive Summary
- Introduction to the Health Discussion — Dr. David Craig
- "Fight On!" Mini-Movie Documentary by Ira Mallory, Emmy Nominated Filmmaker
- Dr. Ivan Douglas Hicks - Transcript & Dr. Ivan Douglas Hicks - Video
- Tracey Hutchings-Goetz — Transcript (CLB member)
- Dr. David Craig — IRL Principal Investigator - Transcript & Dr. David Craig - Video
- Robin Nichols (SB2) — Transcript of Testimony — CLB Member
- Good Trouble Podcast — Dr. Ivan Douglas Hicks & Dr. David Craig
- IU Health Fairbanks Ethics Grand Rounds — ABCs of Medicaid and the Healthy Indiana Plan
- Deziree Jackson et al., "Evaluating Race-Ethnicity Concordance and Discordance between Self-Reported and Administrative Enrollment"
- David M. Craig and Ivan Douglas Hicks, "Advancing Health Agency Versus Autonomy: Community-Valued Research and Ethical Advocacy in Medicaid Policy"
- "Heightened Hurdles: Using the COVID Public Health Emergency Pause in Medicaid Administrative Burdens to Examine Racialized Experiences Accessing Health Care"
- Ivan Douglas Hicks and David M. Craig, "Methodology in Motion: A Dance with Community Valued Research."
THE BETWEEN
AND THE
CONNECT
By David M. Craig, Ph.D.
Our Team Indiana co-leads have participated in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program since November 2022. Connections are the lifeblood of community-engaged, action-oriented research. That health depends on connections to people and resources is central to both the notion of "social determinants of health" and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's vision of "achieving health equity — faster and together."
My journey to grasping the power of health connections began while I was conducting interviews at Catholic and Jewish hospital systems. A nun, who was the mission director at a major Catholic health system, shared memorable words that altered the trajectory of my scholarship. She described a typical case: "You bring a kid into our emergency room with pneumonia. Not a problem. We can have that kid back on her feet, all fixed up, and she goes back to an apartment with no heat. Are we health care providers? No. I mean who's responsible?"
"Discerning how to support better health starts with paying close attention, in the nun's words, to 'the between and the connect.' So much of a person's health depends on what happens between visits to the doctor or pharmacy. So much of health depends on how connected a person is to community resources."
David M. Craig, Ph.D. — Team IndianaTo address this question of responsibility, each of the hospitals in that Catholic system invested in building a local coalition of residents along with staff and leaders of nonprofit organizations, schools, congregations, and businesses. To facilitate participation in coalition meetings, organizers fed the attendees and offered transportation and childcare to anyone who requested them. Their goal was building trust and relationships so, over time, people became comfortable sharing their knowledge of community health priorities, assets, and needs.
The Faith Community Consultation, held in Indianapolis in February 2025, further extended the quest for "whole-community" accountability. Leaders from Concerned Clergy, Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, and The Ministerium engaged panelists who are community experts on the topics of Health, Education, and Welfare. US Representative Andre Carson and Indiana State Senator Fady Qaddoura book-ended the dialogue. Talk led to action. Resources and action steps were provided to everyone for advocacy on pending legislation.
Civil Rights leader and US Representative John Lewis named the task at hand in his final published words: "Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community… Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble."
In that spirit, this Medicaid Advocacy Panoply offers a variety of products and strategies that we used in the struggle for Medicaid for All. We offer this open-source Medicaid Advocacy Panoply as you and your partners dream your visions and craft your advocacy strategies and tools with and for the communities and coalitions where you are fighting on for Medicaid for All.
BY ANY STRETCH
By any stretch of the imagination our involvement resulted in some positive navigation and community collaboration.
Every benchmark was met or exceeded, and thankfully our appeals for participation did not go unheeded.
As expected, the involvement of Health Visions Midwest was critical to this undertaking, and was more than some measure of surface handshaking.
We were given access to the mailing list of the Allen County Health Equity Coalition, nearly 300 people and/or organizations strong, who have a documented interest in addressing inequities that are systematically wrong.
The two sessions with the team were beneficial rather than superficial, and one included the participation of the county health administrator who agreed the research could prove helpful and serve as a reform cultivator.
Again, to have more than 20 people in-person and another dozen on zoom, was a clear and concise indication that our community sees no need for HIP to be swept away by some bureaucratic broom.
Like some other communities, there is a need to include more African American and Latino men in the interview pool, but we believe going to the local transit hub to recruit will be a valuable tool.
We certainly look forward to providing ongoing support in the days ahead, as we seek to demonstrate the need to strengthen the health access thread.
WE
MUST
DIE
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
SIGN YOUR
ORGANIZATION
ON
Add your organization's name to the growing coalition fighting for Medicaid for all. Your sign-on becomes part of the public record — a documented declaration that the community demands healthcare justice.
For more information visit africalogical.com
TEAM INDIANA
& THE
AfricaLogical INSTITUTE
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program, Cohort 7. Over 30 research partners in total — including community leaders, faculty, students, and staff who brought this panoply into being.
Scholar-activist, President of the Morehouse Class of 1991 and author and editor of the FightOn 2025 Panoply, Dr. Hicks is the Founder of The AfricaLogical Institute and leads as staff dedicated to advancing his methodology - Community Valued Research.
Author of Health Care as a Social Good: Religious Values and American Democracy (Georgetown, 2014). Brings expertise in public ethics, community-engaged scholarship, and the moral dimensions of healthcare policy. Co-led Faith Community Consultations and testified before the Indiana General Assembly.
Brings sociological expertise in health disparities, structural inequities, and quantitative analysis to the Community Valued Research framework. Team Indiana co-lead since the program's launch in November 2022.
CLB Leadership: Dr. Gwendolyn Kelley (Project Manager) • Lora Henderson (Community Connector)
TERMS
ENDNOTE
REFERENCES
Al Jazeera. (2014). Fault Lines: Ferguson – City Under Siege [Video]. aljazeera.com
Asante, M. K. (1980). Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Amulefi Publishing.
Asante, M. K. (1998). The Afrocentric Idea (Rev. ed.). Temple University Press.
Asante, M. K. (2003). Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. African American Images.
Bailey, Z. D. (2024). Personal communication, quote retrieved from expert panel on structural racism in health equity.
Brueggemann, W. (1987). Hope Within History. Westminster John Knox Press.
Craig, David M. (2014). Health Care as a Social Good: Religious Values and American Democracy. Georgetown University Press.
Craig, David M., Hicks, Ivan Douglas, Green, Andrew, Meschi, Maria, Napier, Pamela (2019). Health Equity, Urban Congregations & HIP. Indiana Minority Health Coalition.
Dawes, D. E. (2020). The Political Determinants of Health. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Douglass, Frederick (1857). If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress [Speech]. Canandaigua, NY.
Douglass, Frederick (1857). West India Emancipation Speech.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ginwright, S.A. (2022). The Four Pivots: Reimaging Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. North Atlantic Books.
Gunderson, G. and Cochrane, J. (2012). Religion and the Health of the Public: Shifting the Paradigm. Palgrave MacMillan.
Helman, H. J., and Artiga, S. (2015). Beyond Health Care: The Role of Social Determinants in Promoting Health and Equity. Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Herd, P., and Moynihan, D.P. (2018). Administrative Burden: Policymaking By Other Means. Russell Sage Foundation.
Hicks, H. Beecher, Jr. (1987). Preaching Through a Storm: Confirming the Power of Preaching in the Tempest of Church Conflict. Zondervan.
Hicks, Ivan Douglas (2003). Centering African American Religion: Toward an Afrocentric Analysis (Doctoral dissertation). Temple University.
Hicks, Ivan Douglas (2024). Community Valued Research and Budget Justice: A Flint Case Study. The AfricaLogical Institute. africalogical.com
Hicks, Ivan Douglas (2024). Flint Genesee County Quality of Life Report. The AfricaLogical Institute.
Hicks, Ivan Douglas (2024). Community Valued Research: A Pragmatic Ethic for Action-Oriented Scholarship. The Fulcrum.
Hicks, Ivan Douglas (2025). Fight On [Poem].
Kelley, Gwendolyn (2023). NAACP Black Academic Excellence Plan. Indiana State Conference NAACP.
Lewis, John (2020). Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation. New York Times, July 30, A23.
Obenga, T. (1995). La philosophie africaine de la période pharaonique: 2780–330 avant notre ère. L'Harmattan.
Ofari, E. (1972). Let Your Motto Be Resistance: The Life and Thought of Henry Highland Garnet, 1815–1882. Beacon Press.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2023–2025). Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program Overview. rwjf.org
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Rose v. Becerra, Civil Action No. 19-2848 (JEB), 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113207 (D.D.C. 2024).
Rose v. Kennedy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (2025). Amicus Curiae Brief.
Sugar, S., Peter, C., De Lew, N., Sommers, B. (2021). Medicaid Churning and Continuity of Care. Office of Health Policy, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
The AfricaLogical Institute. (2023–2025). Community Leadership Board (CLB) Summary Reports. africalogical.com
The AfricaLogical Institute. (2025). Positive Financial Impact Statement on Medicaid. africalogical.com
The AfricaLogical Institute. (2025). Healthy Indiana 2025: The Economic Benefits of Medicaid.
The Indiana Ministerium. (2025). Legislative Testimony Archive. africalogical.com
Tolbert, J., Cervantes, S., Rudowitz, R, and Burns, A. (2025). "Understanding the Intersection of Medicaid and Work: An Update." Kaiser Family Foundation (May 30).
Ture, K. (Carmichael, S.), & Hamilton, C. V. (1967). Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. Vintage Books.
Wheeler, Edward Lorenza (1986). Uplifting the Race: Black Minister in The New South, 1865–1902. University Press.
MARVELOUS
APPENDIX
This appendix is more than a supplement; it is a living archive. It documents the collaborative spirit and strategic insight of those who participated in the Faith Community Consultation (FCC) 2025: Health, Education & Welfare.
- Rev. David W. Greene Sr., M. Div.
- Aleesia Johnson (SB518)
- Rabbi Aaron Spiegel (HB1662)
- Dr. Gwendolyn Kelley — NAACP Indiana State Conference Education Chair & Vice-President of The AfricaLogical Institute & CLB Leader
- Dr. Gwen Kelley — hard copy (SB289)
- Dr. Gwen Kelley — hard copy (SB 285 and 289)