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Union Healthcare Workers Strike Across Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN – On Tuesday, July 8 around 300 registered nurses working at clinics for Essentia Health In Northern Minnesota began an open-ended strike. The nurses are represented by the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and have filed unfair labor practice charges against their boss Essentia Health. Management is refusing to bargain in good faith with the unionized workers. Two days into the nurses’ strike, on July 10, around 430 MNA members, advanced practice providers (APP), also walked off the job in dozens of locations. These workers began an open-ended strike of their own against Essentia Health.

Health-Care Workers Mobilize Against Massive Medicaid Cuts

“Medicaid! “Saves Lives!” health-care workers chanted in call-and- response outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights June 23. The overhead passageway between two buildings provided a bit of shade but no protection from the 93-degree heat. “Keep the hospitals open,” called out a woman with “Healthcare Hero” on the back of her shirt, despite the oppressive temps. The rally, a rotating cast of dozens of people in purple 1199SEIU T-shirts, maroon scrubs, and navy-blue mechanics’ gear, and environmental-services workers in sky-blue hair coverings, was one of 11 street actions the union organized in New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley to protest congressional plans to cut close to $1 trillion from Medicaid in next year’s federal budget.

Long Strike Yields Big Gains For Kaiser Mental Health Workers

The 196-day strike of Kaiser Southern California mental healthcare workers is over. The 2,400 therapists, psychiatric nurses, social workers and psychologists won significant gains not just for themselves but for their patients in a time of an acute national mental healthcare crisis. They are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. They outlasted Kaiser, the huge California-based health maintenance organization, with six and a half months of picket lines from Modesto to San Diego. They held rallies at Kaiser’s Southern California medical centers. They blockaded the Sunset Strip. They held a hunger strike, putting their own health on the line to improve care for patients and reverse Kaiser’s record of misconduct.

Medics On Hunger Strike Against Gaza Genocide Reach European Parliament

On April 23, medics on hunger strike against the genocide in Gaza joined a meeting with European parliamentarians, delivering testimonies inside an institution complicit in the crimes perpetrated by Israel to this day. Speaking to MEPs, doctors, paramedics, and other health workers described the “hell” they witnessed during volunteer rotations in the Gaza Strip and explained their decision to undertake such a radical act of protest. The health workers reasserted their demands, including the lifting of the medical blockade imposed by the occupation, the prevention of further attacks on Palestinian health workers, and, significantly, an end to European support and complicity in the genocide.

Health Workers, Patients, Activists Unite Against Milei’s Healthcare Cuts

Over 100 workers’ collectives, health groups, and organizations mobilized across Argentina on Thursday, February 27, in protest against President Javier Milei’s devastating policies. A central march took place in Buenos Aires, denouncing the purposeful underfunding of the health system, deteriorating working conditions, and pressures on public hospitals. Among the demonstrators were health workers, patients, and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. “Health is a fundamental human right, and defending it is the responsibility of all society,” organizers declared ahead of the protest.

How Healthcare Workers Are Defending Transgender Patients

In the five years Quinn has worked as a licensed counselor, they have seen the astonishing positive impact that gender-affirming care can have on young patients’ lives. “You talk to these kids, and they can have such complicated experiences with depression and social anxiety, and then you start providing hormones and gender-affirming care, and you see this dramatic difference in how they are able to engage with the world,” explained Quinn, who is going by a pseudonym. “It’s so clear that this is what helps our trans young people to be contributing to society and fully themselves, to meet expected life milestones in ways that are healthy, and connect with community in good ways.”

Over 160 Gaza Health Workers Remain Trapped In Israeli Torture Camps

At least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza, including more than 20 doctors, are believed to still be inside Israeli detention facilities where torture and rape are routine, The Guardian reported on 25 February. According to Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical NGO, 162 medical staff remain in Israeli detention, including some of Gaza’s most senior physicians, while 24 others remain missing after being abducted by Israeli forces from hospitals during the war. Another 179 were previously detained but have been released.

Healthcare Workers Must Organize Collectively To Fight Trump’s Attacks

We are a little over a week into the second Trump presidency, and it is clear: his administration’s policies are a direct assault on health and well-being. From freezing critical research funding and blocking access to Medicaid, to expanding ICE’s reach into hospitals and rolling back environmental protections, these attacks will cost lives. As we have discussed, trans and nonbinary people will face increased barriers to care, immigrants will be deterred from seeking medical attention, and entire communities will be left at risk of untreated illnesses and potentially preventable outbreaks.

Nurses And Doctors Are On Strike At Eight Oregon Hospitals

Declaring that understaffing had them “running on empty,” 5,000 nurses, doctors, midwives, and nurse practitioners walked off the job January 10 in an open-ended strike at Providence Health and Services, the dominant hospital chain in the Pacific Northwest. The strikers work at eight hospitals plus women’s health clinics across Oregon. They’re demanding proper staffing, affordable health insurance, and competitive pay that can attract and retain seasoned workers. “I’ve been with Providence for over 30 years, and I have seen what’s changed,” said medical-surgical nurse Kim Martin at Providence Portland Medical Center.

Healthcare Workers Tell Congress To Halt Military Aid To Israel

Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) has called for the US to halt aid to Israel after their colleagues were detained last month by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. DAG, a global coalition of health care workers, mobilized more than 50 medical professionals on Capitol Hill to advocate for the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who was detained by Israeli forces along with others during a Dec. 27 raid on the health facility. The delegation visited members of the House of Representatives and Senate on Wednesday to advocate for urgent congressional action on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Hospitals Are Understaffed; Could Co-Ops Be An Answer?

America’s healthcare workforce has been the subject of renewed attention and anxiety since the Covid pandemic began. The crisis only deepened projected shortages that were already set to plague the sector as the country will need hundreds of thousands more physicians and nurses in the decade ahead to meet demand. But that’s only part of the problem. Roughly 60% of America’s healthcare workforce is employed in what the industry calls ​“allied health” roles: medical assistants, technicians, physical therapists and others who make up much of the background infrastructure of American medicine.

Kamal Adwan Hospital Chief Taken To Notorious Israeli Torture Camp

Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital Dr Hussam Abu Safia has been taken to Israel's notorious torture camp, Sde Teiman, following his abduction by Israeli forces at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza, CNN reported on 30 December. Dr Abu Safia has not been seen publicly since his abduction from the hospital during an Israeli raid on 27 December that caused the hospital to cease functioning. Medical staff told CNN that Israeli forces started a fire in the hospital and that they were all rounded up outside and ordered to remove their clothes over the course of several hours before being forced to leave.

The Defiant Last Stand Of The Doctors Of Kamal Adwan Hospital

Patients are trying to sleep inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. But just outside, they can see a remote-controlled robot carrying explosives sent by the Israeli army. It’s only a matter of time before the bomb is detonated. Tanks and bulldozers move around the hospital and in front of its entrances all day long. The sounds of explosions and bullets do not stop. Inside the hospital, there is a constant state of panic. With each new explosion or round of fire, patients flee from one wing of the hospital to another, crowding in the narrow hospital corridors to sleep like sardines, hoping that they will be safe.

She Was Brutally Killed Before She Could Write Her Story

On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible violence. Since Indian law forbids revealing the names of victims of sexual crimes, her name will not appear in this newsletter. This young doctor’s story is by no means an isolated incident: every fifteen minutes, a woman in India reports a rape. In 2022, at least 31,000 rapes were reported, a 12% increase from 2020.

Healthcare Workers Need To Defend Gaza Solidarity Encampments

As the genocide in Gaza continues, people throughout the U.S. have mobilized in their workplaces and on the streets in solidarity with Palestine. Healthcare workers have organized, among other sectors, as it became more and more evident how there’s always money for war and genocide, but never for things like healthcare. But even as Israel’s onslaught has continued and sectors of vanguard are still in the streets, the larger sectors of the masses mobilizing had begun to wane. Now, though, students mobilizing to form encampments on campuses around the world represents a shift in the movement.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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