Thousands of nurses rally for personal protective gear amidst pandemic

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Nurses demonstrate outside of Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center.

Seven months into a pandemic and nurses are still fighting for the personal protective equipment (PPE) that they need to care and comfort victims of COVID-19.

As frontline workers and actual victims during this COVID-19 crisis of a health care and economic system that prioritizes money over people, registered nurse members of National Nurses United (NNU) held on Aug. 5 at more than 200 actions inside and outside hospital facilities in at least 16 states and the District of Columbia to demand that elected leaders, government, and hospital employers take immediate action to save lives.

“COVID has exposed everything that has been wrong with our system,” said NNU president Zenei Cortez, a Filipino American RN who works at a Kaiser facility in South San Francisco, Calif. “The old way was a huge failure. Now is the time to reenvision a world based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community.”

“Nurses know that this country’s rampant social, economic, and racial injustice has been killing our patients all along. COVID-19 is just forcing us as a society to face these problems,” said NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, a Filipino American.  

Nurses want employers to protect nurses, other health care workers, and patients by following proper infection control practices, which include providing optimal PPE and a safe workload of patients.

The NNU is also advocating the passage of the HEROES Act which includes a provision giving another stimulus check to low-income individuals. It would be the second stimulus check received by Americans. The first check, provided by the CARES Act, expired July 31.

The House has passed a version of the HEROES Act but the Senate has yet to vote on it as Republicans try to trim the amount.

NNU

NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo.

The House has passed a version of the HEROES Act but the Senate has yet to vote on it as Republicans try to trim the amount.

“These recent COVID surges and uncontrolled infections and deaths, the failure of employers to protect our nurses and other workers, the outrageously high rates of unemployment and hunger, the totalitarian crackdown on protesters -- every crisis we are seeing now can be traced back to our failure to value human lives over profit,” said Castillo.

National Nurses United, headquartered in Oakland, Calif., is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the country, with more than 155,000 members nationwide.