National Nurses United

J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6 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 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 19 South Carolina Though Martese Chism, RN and a CNA/NNOC board member, now lives and works in Chicago, she hails from the South and considers her family roots to be in Alabama. She jumped at the chance to get on board the #BernieBus and continue the family legacy of voting rights work that her great-grand- mother, Birdia Keglar, started back in the 1960s. Kegler was killed in 1966 by Ku Klux Klansmen after she and others testified about voting rights violations against African Ameri- cans in Mississippi. "I knew that her death was not in vain and I knew that we would have the right to vote," said Chism. "I made sure that my family voted and when I turned 18 I voted and I've been voting ever since. When I found out that Bernie Sanders participated in the sit-ins, that he was one of those students that believed in the same dreams that my great-grand- mother believed in and that he was out there fighting and he had the courage when a lot of people didn't to step out to help… He was there for us in the sixties and I want to be there for him." In South Carolina, Chism and the other RNs aboard the #BernieBus saw first hand the devastating health impacts of the social and racial inequality Sanders is committed to healing with Medicare for All and living-wage jobs. South Carolina is one of 17 states that still refuse to implement Medicaid expansion since passage of the Affordable Care Act and currently nearly a quarter million adults in the state are unin- sured. The nurses visited rural areas and small towns like Bamberg, with a population of 3,700 and a median income of $2,100. Bam- berg's only hospital closed its doors in 2012 due to bankruptcy, cut- ting off local access to acute and emergency care as well as jobs, since the hospital had been the major employer in town. While visiting Clarendon County, the nurses met Curtis Dixon, a man who just barely supports his four children by picking and boxing collard greens at a rate of $1.50 a box. Dixon says that though South Carolina's minimum wage is one of the lowest in the nation at $7.75 per hour, he sometimes doesn't even make that hourly rate though he's working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the fields. "When you come out here you are trying to pay your water bill, your light bill, and you are out here pulling up boxes of collards just to make sure that your household is fed and you have to freeze up some of these and eat them just to make sure that you eat because we're not making enough," said Dixon, who wants Bernie Sanders to win because Sanders supports a $15 per hour minimum wage. "That's why I'm going to make sure that I get everyone and anyone to vote for Bernie Sanders." It's stories like Dixon's that the nurses are hearing and sharing with voters across America.

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