ICE Out of Hospitals!
Striking nurses in New York City called a solidarity picket in support of the fight to abolish ICE. Left Voice member Dr. Mike Pappas spoke at the protest drawing the connections between ICE’s violence and the violence of capitalism against our healthcare system.
On Tuesday, January 27, NYSNA held a picket outside of Mount Sinai Hospital, holding space for speeches against the bosses and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Following the public execution of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse in Minneapolis, National Nurses United (NNU) — the largest union of registered nurses representing 225,000 members — put out a statement calling for the abolition of ICE.
The statement reads in part:
ICE and all related immigration enforcement agencies have repeatedly shown through their violence, terror, and lawlessness that they pose a dire public health threat to the entire country and all our communities. ICE agents have been kidnapping hard working people – mothers, fathers, and children – and now murdered a registered nurse, one of the most trusted professions in the country. Nurses demand the immediate abolition of ICE.
In New York City, nurses are already on strike for a fair contract and better patient care. They see how the healthcare system focuses on profit above all else and see ICE as a force that makes it harder for patients to get the care needed. These struggles are all connected.
Left Voice member Dr. Mike Pappas spoke, explaining how ICE directly impacts healthcare workers. “ICE violence affects our ability to care for our patients, the ability for our patients to seek the treatment they need, and we are the ones that will deal with the after-effects of their forces’ violent attacks on the streets against the community,” Pappas told the crowd. “I think every healthcare union must now join the fight against capitalist state violence demanding an immediate abolition of ICE.”
He then called for a general strike, organized by rank-and-file workers, to abolish ICE and protect our communities:
Really no work should be getting done while ICE murders people with impunity. No procedures, no clinic visits, no billing — except for emergency, lifesaving care. We shouldnt be making money so our bosses can go buy their next yacht while kids are screaming in fear in cages and our fellow healthcare workers are being executed in cold fucking blood!
There can be no business as usual when we are being murdered in the streets. It’s time to block everything and shut it all down to demand for ICE and DHS to get out of our hospitals, schools, and communities and for them to be abolished altogether.
