Washington has been telling us for a long time now that the country faces huge deficits. Because of that, the politicians argue, corporations should be able to pay less in taxes in order to stimulate the economy. But Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician and full-time advocate for a single-payer healthcare system in the United States with Physicians for a National Health Program, hardly agrees with this narrative. A key organizer of an April 15 protest at a Bank of America branch in New York City’s Union Square, she spoke with The Nation about the importance of protesting corporations like Bank of America.

When she and others were pushing for real health reform in Congress, she says she learned that “corporations run our political process.” We have to take on “concentrated corporate power,” she says, or else we won’t get the solutions that this country needs.

—Kevin Gosztola