In what is now the longest mental health strike in U.S. history, NUHW members escalated their fight against Kaiser, holding a five-day hunger strike and addressing tens of thousands of Angelenos during an April 12 Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally.
The hunger strike, conducted by eight NUHW members, generated increased interest in the ongoing mental health strike, which is now in its seventh month. Dolores Huerta visited the hunger strikers on Monday, and Tom Morello of the band Rage Against the Machine sang songs for them on Tuesday. NPR produced a national story on the hunger strike, and CalMatters published a major story as well.
Seven out of the eight hunger strikers, along with many of their coworkers were invited on stage for the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Los Angeles.
“We took that drastic stand to bring awareness to Kaiser’s broken mental healthcare system” Nick Nunez, a striking psychiatric social worker who participated in the hunger strike told rally-goers. “With six months on strike, we may have underestimated their greed, their arrogance, their callousness, but I’ll tell you what, they sure as hell under-estimated our unity, our strength, and our resolve.
Nunez continued: “We all deserve to get quality mental health care. It’s a human right… When a healthcare company denies the human right of mental health care to those in need, they strip us of that humanity. The rich and powerful want us to feel divided and feel disconnected, alone, discouraged. However, this strike has taught us the power of coming together. Our strike continues and our collective fight continues. It’s only just begun.”
Nunez and fellow striker Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson didn’t only get big cheers. When Gutierrez-Thomspon asked the members of the massive crowd if any of them had struggled to get mental health care from Kaiser, lots of hands went up.
The striking workers are continuing to keep up the pressure on Kaiser. On April 19, several dozen NUHW members participated in an 8 mile walk through a section of Los Angeles, which was covered by Spectrum News.
