2 minute read
Standing up for Racial Justice
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the CoVID crisis has laid bare the deep social and racial disparities in our country. Black and latinx New Yorkers, for example, have faced much higher rates of hospitalization and death from CoVID-19 compared with their white peers. And communities of color were hit much harder by the pandemic’s economic fallout, from job losses and business closures to risk of eviction and foreclosure.
From the beginning, NYSNA centered our education and organizing efforts around the racially disparate impacts of CoVID-19, working with our allies to ensure recovery efforts are targeted on the hardest-hit communities, and begin to reverse decades of disinvestment in healthcare, housing, schools, and other vital services.
And in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, and the surge of protests against police brutality, NYSNA nurses across the state took a stand to fight against the devastating effects of the pandemic, police violence, and systemic racism.
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on May 30th, NYSNA’s Board of Directors released a statement in remembrance of George Floyd, in solidarity with Black lives Matter, and recommitting NYSNA to end systemic racism. More importantly, in the following weeks thousands of NYSNA members joined demonstrations taking a stand for racial justice.
over the summer and fall, hundreds of NYSNA members also participated in educational sessions examining the social determinants of health driving racial disparities in a broad range of health outcomes, and discussing why the fight for racial justice—on the job and in our communities—is a strategic imperative for our union.
And at our october Convention, NYSNA’s elected delegates committed the organization to a broad program of internal education and action to promote racial justice—in our workplaces, in our professional practice, and the social and economic lives of all New Yorkers.
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