Denise Morris Hosts this Episode of the Old Mole
Nursing the Commons: Bill Resnick talks to Ted Levine a nurse in NYC, a rank and file activist and spokesperson for the nurses in NYC hospitals. They first point out that nurses have learned a great deal in the COVID crisis: For one that they are risking their lives in understaffed and under equipped hospitals because economic and political elites have cut the public health system and also cut hospital preparation. Why the cuts: to insure greater profits and greater tax cuts for themselves. Nurses also learned that the American public has come to appreciate their skills and commitments to patients, their altruism. The capacity of nurses to be heard and supported has thus greatly increased. The interview discusses what nurses can now do, in their workplaces and in politics to transform the medical system for the benefit of its workers and for its patients and the public, especially for minorities and the poor. The interview discusses that potential, what nurses will likely be doing going forward.
What is Public Health: In our new Old Mole segment on Public Health and the Pandemic, Jan Haaken and Patricia Kullberg follow the race for a coronavirus vaccine and some of the misleading claims circulating in the media, and they discuss ways of looking at infectious diseases from public health versus medical model perspectives. Patricia Kullberg is a retired primary care physician and public health official who served for two decades as the medical director of Multnomah County Health Department. She has written for both the lay and academic press about various aspects of medicine and public health.
Striking Lessons: Appearing at the Trouble Makers School in Portland before more than 200 union members, stewards and activists, Barbara Madeloni discussed the national picture for public pchool teachers organizing and how and why strikes work. Madeloni is the Education Coordinator at Labor Notes. She recently served as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and is a longtime writer and educator. Some of her work has appeared in In These Times.
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