Main Street, USA - Nurses call their neighbors and their elected officials to come to Main Street on September 1, even as many of the elected officials continue chiding one another about returning to DC.
Main Street is where the damage has been done and is being felt most deeply; DC is where deals are cut to protect Wall Street with breath-taking regularity. This is not a time when political posturing for some distant election cycle by those largely insulated from the harsh financial realities they helped create ought to take precedence over the real-time, real-life needs of millions.
Lives depend on it; jobs depend on it; communities depend on it. 170,000 Registered Nurse members of National Nurses United throughout America have come together to re-build Main Street. We need you on our side.
So, on Thursday, September 1, the nurses of National Nurses United will gather in more than 60 communities from Maine to Texas, and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, California and beyond to call on the nation's elected officials to chose to protect and repair Main Street and stop cow-towing to Wall Street. Find an action on a Main Street near you and join in.
More than a thousand RNs and other activists marched on Wall Street Wednesday, chanting "Wall Street got bailed out! We got sold out!"
They stood on the steps of Federal Hall across from the New York Stock Exchange and held signs - "Take it Back! Tax Wall Street" and "Heal America! Tax Wall Street" - so crowds of curious passersby got the message.
Today, it is official. Two amazing and courageous elected officials stood with nurses and patients to introduce legislation that moves beyond the current health reform effort and forward to a healthy system for all.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA, have been allies in the cause for decades. There are not young fellows in terms of legislative or life experience.
Vanna White can't help these "Public Servants" - they're the 10 worst Governors in the U.S., and they're unraveling America.
Who called Social Security a "ponzi scheme?" Which state leader wants to take almost $1 billion from state schools? Which Governor claimed Mexican immigrants were beheading Americans in the Arizona desert?
Is this the protest that wakes up America and starts the push-back to big business and their anti-human agenda?
National Nurses United, and the California Nurses Association, sure hope so, and we're doing our part to move that along. Please join our efforts by following @ProtestInTheUsa, our new national newsline of reports, notices, and videos about specific protests in the USA concerning democracy, healthcare, workers' rights, and human rights. @ProtestInTheUSA is starting as a twitter feed, and a hashtag #ProtestInTheUSA, and will be expanded from there. Find it at www.twitter.com/ProtestInTheUSA.
Already @ProtestInTheUSA is helping document our national wave of protests-the upcoming mass rally of women in New York, the workers protesting in Ohio and Indiana for their rights, indigenous protests in Alaska and nurse protests in California. We simply have got to find a way to bring all these protests together and amplify each others' voices. We're many people--but one cause.
Republican candidates from coast to coast are fond of branding their opponents the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. Maybe it's time to talk about the Joe Miller Republicans.
Miller is the Sarah Palin-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Alaska who toppled incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski because she was not conservative enough. Miller gained notoriety, in part, by proposing elimination of two of the most popular reforms in U.S. history, Social Security and Medicare, and calling unemployment insurance "unconstitutional".
Even after his primary upset, Miller did not change his tune. Asked by CNN's John King September 1 if someone born today should "grow up in an America where there is not a federal Social Security program if you got your way," Miller replied, "absolutely."
Below David Welch, an RN from Chico California, gives his first-person account of traveling to Phoenix for the historic duty of founding the nation's first union of, by, and for RNs.
This is obviously a great day for labor, as we have a progressive/rapidly-growing/important new union in a key industry and social issue. Also a great day for California nurses who will be able to take their efforts national...
On to David...
I'm writing from Phoenix Arizona where I just spent the morning with hundreds of nurses from around the country finalizing the creation of the new nurses union that will transform health care in America: National Nurses United. Nurses and leaders from The California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee, the United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Assn are meeting to create a new union that will stretch from coast to coast and unite 150,000 nurses into a powerful force for our profession and our patients.
Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?
Does it mean the end of SB 810, even once Governor Schwarzenegger has wandered off the stage?
For the nation's nurses and the many grassroots activists, the answer is clearly no. And we've got work to do.
16,000 Registered Nurses at 39 Catholic Health systems hospitals across California will strike this October 30th in an urgent bid to improve patient safety standards at their facilities, especially as the swine flu comes barreling down upon us.
This strike marks a continuation of a months-long effort by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) to raise alarms about inadequate H1N1 hospital safeguards, and patient sfety in general.
In August, CNA/NNOC releaseda major report of a survey of 190 U.S. hospitals where RNs cited widespread problems with poor segregation of patients, lack of sufficient N95 masks, numerous hospitals where nurses have been infected, inadequate training for hospital staff, and punitive sick leave policies.
In particular, the RNs say, many hospitals continue to do a poor job at isolating patients with H1N1 symptoms and other steps to limit contagion, or provide sufficient fit-tested N95 respirators and other protective gear for healthcare workers and patients.
Far and away the most exciting industry for the labor movement today is healthcare-and the air of historic change was in the San Francisco air this week as more than 1,200 registered nurses from across the country gathered to plan their coming merger...and to advance their patient advocate's agenda of guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model and of genuine labor law changes to allow every nurse to freely choose her union. The RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and their guests from United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.
The 1,200 nurses broke from their meeting to make a special house call to Dianne Feinstein, and deliver roses along with hand-written pleas for her to support the Employee Free Choice Act. She's in DC, but we're sure she'll get the message that we expect her to help nurses join unions and save lives. That change alone will significantly improve our healthcare system.
You would think that Sen. Feinstein would be a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, wouldn't you?
Representing this state, coming from her city, in light of the broken union election system we face and the heartbreak it inflicts on American workers...she should.
RNs are especially invested in the Employee Free Choice Act because unionized nurses save lives, and because hospital owners are some of the most vicious, unethical, and criminal union-busters out there.
So tomorrow, 1200 RNs will make a house call to Sen. Feinstein's house, demanding that she cosponsor this life-saving, long-overdue legislation. They'll leave a rose with a personalized note explaining their story of how being a unionized RN has changed their life...or saved someone else's.
It's time to stop talking about make believe death panels, and talk about the real ones.
Six of California's biggest insurance companies have rejected more than one in five claims the past seven years -- according to data the insurance giants, Blue Cross, PacifiCare, Kaiser Permanente, Health Net, Cigna, and Aetna report to the state Department of Managed Care.
Aug. 5 -- More than a hundred CNA/NNOC registered nurses rallied on the steps of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center today with a simple message for the public: California and the nation's hospitals are not prepared to handle the H1N1 influenza, known as swine flu, when it hits the country full force this fall, and frontline registered nurses, other healthcare workers, patients, and the public are all in serious jeopardy.
Enough already on the handwringing over the plan to start taxing employee healthcare benefits.
The tax is not a threat to the type of reform plan expected to emerge from Congress. It's a central element -- to pay for the massive public bailout of the health insurance industry and as a backdoor way to cut costs by discouraging people from seeking medical care.
Yesterday I was excited to announce that the SEIU California State Council has endorsed me in my race to represent California's 10th Congressional District, a Northern California district encompassing parts of Contra Costa, Solano, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. With 700,000 members, SEIU is the largest labor union in California, and their ranks include a broad cross-section of working Californians, including social workers, nurses, classroom aides, security officers, college professors, homecare workers, janitors, and more.
Why I'm motivated to lead on single-payer health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, and green-collar jobs over the flip...
As our favorite politicos fall all over each other to see who can further erode the healthcare package likely to emerge from Congress, it's worth recalling that there is another way.
Is the public option that some have deemed the sword we should all fall on in the healthcare debate little more than fool's gold?
In the wake of the now widely touted New York Times poll this weekend that showed 85 percent of Americans believe our health care system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt and that people are even willing to pay more in taxes to get that kind of system, the next question ought to be why are Democrats and some liberal constituency groups willing to settle for so little?
From the news pages to the blogs, some progressive activists are counting up the votes and what can be done to persuade 12 recalcitrant Senators and a number of insurance industry fans in the House to vote for a "robust" public option.
The tradition of brave and proud nurse activism for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model continued today thanks to Janice Webb, RN, and her nurse intervention at the convention of the health insurance industry in San Diego, AHIP. They're the lobbyists for the insurance giants who make money by denying care to the very patients that Janice cares for at UC-San Diego Medical Center.
