For Immediate Release
September 15, 2011

Some 1,000 registered nurses from across the U.S. will rally in San Francisco Thursday across from the Federal Reserve Bank to step up the campaign to tax Wall Street financial speculation to fund a recovery program for the economic crisis slamming Main Street communities.

National Nurses United, which will sponsor the rally, says a tax on major Wall Street trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, currencies and other transactions would raise hundreds of billions of needed revenue for jobs at living wages, healthcare for all, quality education, and freedom from hunger and homelessness.

What: RNs to Rally for Tax on Wall Street, Main Street Recovery
When: Thursday, September 15
Time: 1 p.m. (note earlier release listed start time as 12:45 p.m.)
Where: Main at Market, downtown San Francisco

The rally will feature real stories from people enduring the economic storm, and street theater with Lady Liberty in distress.

Nurses are in San Francisco for the national convention of NNU, the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses representing 170,000 RNs.
 
NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro and California Gov. Jerry Brown at NNU Convention Sept. 14

At the convention’s opening Wednesday night, delegates heard from California Gov. Jerry Brown who praised the nurses as “a very powerful force to communicate the truth to the people.”

Brown said the “big problems we face are the direct result of the mortgage banks meltdown. It was not created by nurses, or teachers or firefighters or police. It was created by the bankers and mortgage lenders,” adding the problem is “not too much regulation, but too little. Canadian banks did better because they had more regulation.”

NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro said nurses are increasingly alarmed at what they see happening with patients and families, including reports of suicide by people in economic distress. Too many people blame themselves, not Wall Street, for the economic crisis, she said, adding, that may be “the most extreme coup of Wall Street.”

NNU Presidents and Vice Presidents at NNU Convention Wednesday night, (from left)
Jean Ross, Zenei Cortez, Malinda Markowitz, Deborah Burger, Karen Higgins, DeAnn McEwen

Convention delegates will also hear from California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom Thursday morning, and acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore on Friday night.