“Tangerine Bolen: She fought for your civil rights. Now let us help her get back on her feet.”

– Debora Edholm

Tangerine Bolen is the founder and director of RevolutionTruth, a global community and organization dedicated to defending whistleblowers and legitimate democracies. Committed to using the rule of law to defend our constitutional rights, she has fought to stop section 1021 of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) which legalizes the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge or trial, which is against civil liberties.

In February of 2012, as Tangerine was sitting at her computer working on a deadline to launch a major civil liberties lawsuit – in which she functions as both the coordinator and the plaintiff – she fell suddenly and dangerously ill. In a matter of days, she was left in chronic, excruciating pain and was near total debilitation. She did not have insurance when she got sick: “I could not afford it. This fact has left me fighting for access to our healthcare system for nearly two years, to little avail.”

The symptoms of her disease are so devastating that she describes her experience as being one that is “closer to death than to life”, and she has reconciled the idea of dying prematurely due to this. On a daily basis, she has neurological pain that feels like she is being cut, stabbed, burned, stung or crushed, throughout most of her body. Some days she has the sensation of daggers or teeth inside her organs. Following an episode at the outset of this illness in which she experienced all the symptoms of a major stroke, she has dealt with short-term memory loss and several traumatic-brain-injury-type symptoms.

Although she has a Master’s degree, has done her core work for a PhD and was once able to regularly work 70 hours a week or more trying to build her organization, she now forgets the simplest of words mid-sentence.

Despite a background in integrative medicine and health policy, Tangerine has been effectively shut out of the American health care system for almost two years (one of the reasons we need reform).  This fact may cost her her life.

It has been a monumental effort for her to simply stay alive this past twenty months. Tangerine loves life.  She longs to get back to her work of helping to defend our rights. Tangerine is so worn down from this she has little left to give, and she needs help.

Although the new ACA bill will ensure she cannot be turned away for a pre-existing condition, the ACA can not help her now.  (While the ACA offers first steps in healthcare reform by not allowing insurance companies to drop patients once they’ve become sick — among other benefits — there are additional steps necessary to ensure universal coverage.)  Tangerine only qualifies for Medicaid, and so does not have access to the specialists she needs. Doctors do not have to see a Medicaid patient, and they rarely do. Like so many struggling Americans, she had to declare bankruptcy due to medical debt. She needs real access to the healthcare system. She needs to be able to see a team of doctors who are actually curious about what is happening, and she needs to be able to afford the prescriptions and treatments.

Tangerine longs to get back to her work of fighting on our behalf – ensuring we have functioning democracies and sane systems.  Please consider donating to Tangerine’s cause. Your donation will help her see the doctors she needs to see, in hopes of getting answers we have long needed.

If you wish to donate, please visit —> here. Thank you so much!

– Friends and Family of Tangerine Bolen