The Registered Nurses at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward conducted a candlelight vigil today to protest management's stalling in negotiations for a first contract and refusing to address issues that are fundamental to quality patient care. In December 2012, after several years of mismanagement at St. Rose, the RNs voted to affiliate with the California Nurses Association. Since that time, RNs have actively sought to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement that preserves some of their existing standards, and also improves them so that RNs can provide the best patient care. The nurses and their bargaining team have focused on standards that also address the retention and recruitment of experienced RNs.

We are traveling on a narrow road from one barangay, or Philippine village, to the next. Along our way, we see palm trees bent in the middle, bowing their tattered heads toward our caravan, evidence of the storm. The smell of burning debris is everywhere as people burn the remnants of their lives, intact before the arrival of Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. The roadside is littered with this burning debris. The sun is hot above us. Dark smoke curls into the pale blue sky.

The Keystone project is a controversial proposal for a 1,700 mile pipeline to send 900,000 barrels every day of one of the world’s dirtiest fuels, tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas. Major oil and other fossil fuel corporations in the U.S. and Canada, joined by other Wall Street interests and the federal and state politicians they influence are promoting the plan.