National Nurses United

RoseAnn DeMoro Executive Director, National Nurses United Loud and Clear Our message for a Robin Hood tax shot around the world ���These nurses showed us that they are fighters, and won���t be turned away by the 1 percent.��� ���Tom Morello, musician. ���We are watching Wall Street throw money away as people die. We pay sales tax. They need to pay sales tax. This is only the beginning. We will not turn our backs on the people of this country.��� ���Karen Higgins, NNU Copresident O n one glorious afternoon in Chicago, we proved again, that nurses, unified and in motion, can change the world. More than 1,000 NNU members, from coast to coast, joined by 5,000 of our friends, spread across downtown Chicago with a clear-cut call: It���s time to tax Wall Street to heal our communities, our nation, and our world. It was a message amplified by gaily clothed nurses in red, with our green Robin Hood hats (for the Robin Hood tax), Robin Hood flags, and a festive spirit of dance, flash mob, and skit, capped off with the populist chords and music from that great troubadour and worldwide rebel Tom Morello. ���This Land is Your Land,��� (the Woody Guthrie classic he performed, along with his own ���Worldwide Rebel Song���)���indeed. Our voices���your voices���reverberated off far more than the walls of the office buildings surrounding Daley Plaza. They boomed off the front pages of newspapers around the Midwest and spilled off the pages of major media around the country. Images of nurses toting ���Heal America, Tax Wall Street��� signs, wearing red scrubs and green hats, dancing and singing filled TV newscasts and airwaves, and delighted international media corps from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East on hand for the G-8 and NATO summit protests. ���Nurses (yes, nurses) lead charge for Wall Street ���sin��� tax,��� blared the headline across MSNBC.com. ���Nurses Out To Save The Country,��� declared another. A P R I L | M AY 2 0 1 2 Even a disapproving Lou Dobbs, defender of Wall Street on Fox Business News, hastened to display video of our march, and post a chart for his presumably horrified viewers under the headline ���Tax The Rich!��� with what he called the ���National Nurses United Plan��� of a 0.5 percent tax, ���that would amount to $500 on every $10,000 trade��� and could raise up to $350 billion. And, ���it���s not just the nurses pushing the plan,��� Dobbs somberly intoned, as he cut to the faces of world leaders who also support a financial transaction tax. Indeed, the movement to hold the banks and giant investment firms like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase accountable is worldwide, with support from 1,000 economists, major clerical figures, the world���s biggest labor and environmental organizations, and even some conservative governments. Global campaigners for the Robin Hood tax walked arm in arm with us in Chicago, represented by leaders of major organizations of nurses unions, environmental groups, and labor and public worker organizations from Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Guatemala, and South Korea. As J��rn Kalinski, Oxfam leader from Germany, said at our rally, the push for the Robin Hood tax is also a ���question of democracy. Politicians can���t afford to fail again��� in controlling the financial sector so that it helps, rather than crushes, ���the real economy,��� Kalinksi said. ���The FTT is a tax for the people that creates social justice, jobs, and growth.����� The power of our Chicago event was evident in our images, our tone, our international movement, and also in our words and the trusted messengers who brought it forward. What resonated for so many was our simple, but emphatic theme���as a Chicago Sun Times editorial succinctly summarized, ���a small surcharge on each trade of stocks, derivatives, or other financial instruments to generate revenue for things such as healthcare and schools.��� A message so straightforward an anchor for the Chicago ABC affiliate could comment, ���They were very well organized, they W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G had bullet points, they made their argument very clear.��� A message voiced over and over by nurse after nurse interviewed by any number of the hundreds of media walking through the crowd. Nurses like Linda Carter, from a VA hospital in Augusta, Ga., who told the Washington Post she came because she���s tired of seeing her veteran patients struggle. ���It makes me feel ashamed. A country of our resources, we should be able to take care of people.��� Or, as NNU Secretary Treasurer Martha Kuhl, told one newspaper, ���I want to take part in something that will heal America and not just my patients.��� In the days before we filled the news columns and airwaves, Chicago���s Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials threatened to block our event. They sought to quarantine our voices into a distant park far away from the city center and the eyes of the city. Just like the G-8 leaders had abandoned Chicago, where they originally planned to meet on the same day as our march and rally. In the face of the combined resolve of our nurse leaders, public support, and biting criticism from Morello, the city backed down. ���The money interest that tried to stop us, that tried to reroute us, that tried to shut us up are a very powerful force and the only way to confront them is to stand up against them,��� Morello told Spinner magazine. ���That���s what the nurses did, that���s what I did, that���s what the people here did today, and the result is that we won.��� ���We are here to make sure that NATO and G-8 know that their priorities are upsidedown and that they need to focus on the community,��� said NNU copresident Deborah Burger, ���and will be until we finally get a real financial transaction tax passed. Nurses are here and have your backs covered.����� We are not going away. The community knows whom they can trust and it���s not the politicians, it���s the nurses. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. N AT I O N A L N U R S E 11

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