I’ll be 79 next month, and I participated in my first protest march on July 24 in Seattle. The Medicare for All march was held in Seattle and 55 other cities across our country, and I have to say I was very proud to have taken part.

We have a good friend of many years who is very involved in this and other causes to try to make our country better for all of our citizens and not just the super rich. She contacted us several weeks ago and alerted us to this cause, and my wife, my son, his friend and myself decided it was time to step up and not just talk about the problems but actually participate in trying to do something about them.

I don’t know what the participation was like in all of the other cities, but I would anticipate we were joined by at least 200 committed people who marched a mile or so from Westlake Center to the Seattle Center. It was not a huge distance by any means but shortly after I got home my Fitbit logged 10,000 steps, and I don’t get that many steps that often anymore.

Medicare for All makes so much sense for our country, and I can’t understand why more of our politicians aren’t 100 percent behind it. After all, every other major industrialized country in the world provides it for their people. We can spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined but we can’t find the money to properly care for our own population. We can’t even seem to find the money to properly care for our veterans of all of these unnecessary and undeclared wars. What does it say about our leaders when they authorize huge amounts of money to kill people but won’t authorize money to care for us?

I think they all need to read the preamble to the Constitution — you know, the part that says, “promote the general Welfare.” Just sayin’.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw