Thousands of women—led by the California Nurses Association—are pouring into Sacramento as we speak.
They’re coming by planes and trains and automobiles to celebrate tomorrow’s anniversary of women’s right to vote being recognized. The 19th Amendment is 90 years old!
Women from all walks of life and all parts of the state, and men too, will don their period "suffragist" costumes and honor the women who fought, marched, were imprisoned and died. The march will be colorful and memorable, which is only appropriate for a movement that was the life work of so many of our ancestors.
But these women won’t be just marching to honor their history. They’ll be marching for their future. Candidate Meg Whitman—the Wall St. CEO and former Goldman Sachs—dishonors the legacy that means so much to them.
Meg Whitman let most of three decades go by with what she herself calls an "atrocious" record of almost never voting and often not even being registered to vote. Now she wants to be Governor, hardly a fitting model for the chief executive of the state. Watch this video:
More than that, she’s running for Governor on a platform that is antithetical to nurses’ values, and to women’s values. The heart of the suffrage movement called for caring, compassion, and community. All of those values are missing from Meg Whitman’s efforts to capture the governor’s seat. She doesn’t just represent Wall St. instead of Main St....she represents corporate practices, not women’s values.
Not convinced? Turn your eyes to Meg Whitman’s ongoing attacks versus the California Nurses Association; it’s a classic big business play. Rather than engage, or debate, or just listen to the state’s nurses, Whitman has launched a series of attacks on them... vitriolic rhetoric designed to splinter and divide the political voice of the registered nurses.
Whitman’s campaign against the nurses has been noteworthy—-junk mail, crank calls, online dirty tricks, sending spies to infiltrate events and so forth. It continued this week; as Whitman’s pre-response to the marchers she’ll face in the street, she held a private conference call with some hand-picked healthcare workers, as if to demonstrate that not all nurses are opposed to her values and her candidacy—just most of them.
Whitman repeated her deception and flip flops on that call, claiming to support the "ratios" law that ensures nurses aren’t overburdened with too many patients while she continues to propose sweeping cuts in state funding, such as needed to enforce public protections including ratios, and layoff 40,000 public employees, presumably including those who staff the enforcement agencies.
On the call, Whitman also repeated her plan to roll back state rules that guarantee employees are able to take meal and rest breaks and be paid for overtime work, a stance that would endanger patients by forcing nurses to work long hours while fatigued. Whitman stands for patient safety deregulation, and that’s why nurses can’t stand by and watch her try to stroll to the coronation.
So instead, they’re rolling...and driving...and barnstorming to Sacramento. They’re putting themselves on the march, because of words like these, spoken by Malinda Markowitz, RN, the co-President of CNA:
"California’s nurses understand the threat that Whitman’s program poses for their patients, and for standards they have fought so hard to win. Whitman’s agenda clearly reflects her corporate CEO background and her corporate donors, but is contrary to the well being of regular Californians. It also stands in sharp contrast to the values represented by the suffrage movement – which is why thousands will be in Sacramento Thursday to honor our foremothers and will be working to protect our future.
Learn more about how to stop Meg Whitman here, and register to vote by mail here.
And if you’re in Sacramento, please come by the West Steps of the Capitol tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. and join this historic event!