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10 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 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 M A R C H 2 0 1 4 S peaking to a National Nurs- es United conference a few years ago, Ralph Nader said he had no greater honor than to share the initials, R.N. Consumer legend, corporate gadfly, Congressional watchdog, lifelong advocate for participatory democracy—the man who has probably saved a million lives. That's Ralph Nader, who also happens to be an uncompromising friend and champion of patients, nurses, and NNU, as well as a profound influence on my own life. "This is a union that has a pulse," said Nader once of us. "The nurses have resur- rected what a union should be all about, which is fighting for con sumers, not just for your own interests." Ralph does have one unforgiving flaw. He believes in political democracy in America. The kind of democracy that says we should not accept the corrosion and corruption of our political system by wealthy corporate interests who buy and manipulate so many facets of American life. The kind of democ- racy for which he has been vilified and pillo- ried for daring to challenge that corruption with a run for the Presidency in 2000. To understand why Ralph Nader has em - braced this "flaw," it helps to step back a few decades, an especially welcome exercise on the event of his 80th birthday in February. Ralph's story is a record of achievement for which Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Americans of the 20th Century and a New York University panel of journalists identified his ground- breaking book on auto safety, Unsafe at Any Speed, as one of the 100 most influential works of journalism of the past century. Some prefer to separate Ralph's unparal- leled accomplishments as a consumer, envi- ronmental, and occupational health and safety pioneer from his entry into presidential politics. But to Ralph Nader there is no fire- wall. You can't fight the executive boardroom without also confronting its stranglehold on Congress and the Oval Office. Ralph's smack down, as a young lawyer, of General Motors' exploding cars led to man - dates for seat belts, padded dashboards, air bags, anti-lock brakes, and other auto devices that sharply reduced the plague of motor vehicle deaths so common in the 1960s. It also led to General Motors hiring a private detective agency headed by an FBI agent to hound and investigate every aspect of Ralph's life in the mid-1960s, harassing scores of his friends, calling his home at all hours, and seeking to entrap him in illegal behavior. Behavior that, as one U.S. senator declared, had "no place in a free society." It's behavior that Ralph now calls "corpo- rate espionage" and has become increasingly RoseAnn DeMoro Executive Director, National Nurses United R.N., the Man Who Saved a Million Lives Celebrating Ralph Nader's uncompromising advocacy for working people and consumers This page from top: Nader helps campaign for a 1996 CNA initiative that would have cracked down on HMO abuses and set RN-to-patient ratios; Nader testifies to Congress in 1966 about auto safety and General Motors' corpo- rate espionage against him. Opposite page: Nader speaks at a 2011 NNU rally in support of a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street.