Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/820251
O ne of the most common questions National Nurses United RN members get asked by media at many events, whether it's an affordable housing rally, an anti-fracking protest, or a Black Lives Matter vigil, is why nurses care about these disparate issues. Don't nurses just concern themselves with hospital patients or, speaking even more broadly, healthcare issues? To which our nurses calmly reply that, yes, these fights—decent housing, a sustainable environment, racial justice, and more—are all at their core very much healthcare issues. And then, if you press even deeper, you'll realize that these are all fundamentally struggles which stem from the imbalance of power between those societal forces that hold and control wealth (capital), and those who must work to create that wealth (labor). "People don't realize that it's all the same issue," said Jean Ross, a Minnesota RN and a copresident of National Nurses United. "Truthfully, if you look at it, the biggest factor in a healthy society is the lowest income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest." Ross said that nurses have long recognized and understood the socioeconomic indicators of health: wages and poverty, housing, san- itation, access to educational opportunities, education about and access to birth control, and even playgrounds and public spaces for recreation. In fact, the very first public health nurses built their prac- tices upon this understanding and it would be no stretch to say that addressing the socioeconomic conditions underpinning health is inextricably woven into the modern nursing tradition. Nurses such as Lillian Wald, who founded the Henry Street settlement houses for poor immigrants in New York City's Lower East Side neighborhood, and Lavinia Dock, who was an early feminist and pioneer nursing educator, were essentially social activists who believed that being a nurse didn't just mean taking care of their patients once they became ill, but working to change the conditions, whether through labor organizing, lobbying to pass legislation and regulations, or marching in the streets, that made their patients sick in the first place. "The reason why nurses are politically involved is they under- stand that social and economic and political factors have an effect on people's health, both immediate and long term," said Bonnie Castillo, RN and associate executive director of NNU. "Nurses understand the links between health, climate crisis, and justice. The common thread is based on greed. Greed is making America sick." As a progressive RN union and association, National Nurses United 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 | A P R I L 2 0 1 7 STAFF REPORT Beyond the Bedside Nurses understand that to truly heal patients, they must heal the gross inequality and injustice in our society.