By: Donna Smith
Learn more about the Chicago actions

Learn more about the Nurses Campaign to Heal America

What in the world?  The registered nurses of National Nurses United cannot wait to welcome one of the world’s leading defenders of common people to their uncommon May 18th march and rally in Chicago.  It’s time for Robin Hood to lend his legendary fame of days gone by to help with the nurses’ campaign to heal the modern-day financial traumas faced by real people at the hands of Wall Street.

It won’t be Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood and the nurses will be marching and rallying but through the streets of downtown Chicago, from the Sheraton Downtown at 11 a.m., to Daley Plaza a little after noon.  With a sense of festive political messaging but also with the courageous clarity nurses bring to their advocacy for doing what is best for their patients, their communities and nation, and the world, the eyes of the world will turn to Chicago to learn what a Robin Hood Tax is and why such a tax is the right way to heal so many of the fiscal problems we face.

Grammy-award winning musician Tom Morello will be there making sure the nurses have all the music needed to rock the Plaza and infuse the day with sound and passion.

A Robin Hood Tax is a small tax levied on financial transactions – stocks, bonds, derivatives and other speculative financial activity – that raises revenue from Wall Street for the needs of Main Street.  Just a small tax – a half-a-cent on a dollar of sales of those Wall Street transactions – could raise more than $350 billion per year to fund those things now being targeted for cuts or even elimination.  Access to good jobs at a living wage, guaranteed healthcare for all, a quality public education, a clean and safe environment, retirement with dignity, adequate housing and food – all of these things that are the marks of a civilized society belong not on the chopping block labeled as austerity measures but held up for protections to be available for generations to come.

Nurses often see their patients at their weakest, most vulnerable moments when they provide honest assessments and needed care without hesitation and for the good of the patient.  Now, as registered nurses see so many of society’s ills, and they cannot escape the realities in their own lives and communities, they offer a simple assessment and a clear path for healing.  A Robin Hood Tax is the right way forward, and an idea whose time has come all over the world.

It’s simple.  Heal America:  Tax Wall Street.  In Chicago, Robin Hood will join the nurses’ call.  Will you?