Media Advisory

October 3, 2011



National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of nurses in the US – with 170,000 members, will be represented at the Wall Street March on October 5 by contingents including from Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, D.C., Illinois and New York. NNU is joining other unions, organizations and community groups in support of Occupy Wall Street. The Wall Street March begins at 5p.



NNU is pressing for a financial transaction tax (FTT) which was in effect in the US from 1914 to 1966. Proponents, including NNU, say hundreds of billions of dollars could be raised annually through even a modest tax rate on financial market trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, credit default swaps, and similar financial transactions and used to help rebuild America.

In June, NNU members, joined by labor and community activists, rallied in support of such a tax on Wall Street across from the New York Stock Exchange, and outside the U.S. headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.



More than a dozen countries now collect revenue from financial transactions. Britain alone raises billions every year just with a tax on stock trades. The French and Brazilian parliaments this year endorsed such an FTT, as did the European Parliament, with the EU now considering adoption.



Nurses warn that without an FTT and other efforts to support jobs, quality health care, education, retirement, housing and for protection from hunger – our Main Street Contract for the America People – millions of Americans will continue to suffer the effects of an on-going recession. Nurses are seeing the results of the economic decline in their hospitals and communities, as well as in their own homes.



NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro: “America has the wealth to end the despair and deprivation. To reclaim this nation, we have to start by making Wall Street pay to undo the damage that has caused immeasurable suffering while the high rollers on Wall Street, who created this crisis, are rewarded with bailouts, bonuses, tax cuts, and regulatory rollbacks.”



Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of National Nurses United: “America’s nurses see and feel broad declines in health and living standards for their patients and their own families that are directly tied to the collapse in jobs, housing, healthcare, and other basics of what used to be called the American dream. Nurses are calling for a change in priorities because they have seen enough, and want to stop the bleeding now.”



More background about the nurses’ campaign is available at www.mainstreetcontract.org <http://www.mainstreetcontract.org> .