The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, well welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez and I am speaking to you all today with a heart that is both full and broken at the same time. After our last episode with three union organizers in the Twin Cities, we witnessed something truly incredible take place in the state of Minnesota last week, followed by something that was truly horrifying as Thomas Birmingham and Ari Blum MCAT’s report at. In these times, about 50,000 protestors took to the streets in downtown Minneapolis on Friday to demand ice and its thousands of federal agents immediately leave the state and stop brutalizing and killing residents.

And as recently as Tuesday snatching preschoolers, the next morning ice agents responded to Friday’s economic shutdown acts of civil disobedience and uprising in the seemingly only way they know how by beating, shooting, and killing. In this case, it was 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Alex Preti, an ICU nurse who was shot and killed Saturday morning, the Department of Homeland Security claims Preti was armed and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at the same press conference with Fray that Preti had a legal permit to carry a firearm. O’Hara also told CNN that ICE agents attempted to prevent local police from accessing the scene of the killing Footage posted on social media shows Preti filming a group of federal agents with a cell phone before one agent begins shoving him backwards. Now, I assume that if you are listening to this, you’ve already seen the video of ice agents brutalizing, Preti and other volunteer observers and pepper spraying them before one agent executed Preti on the street firing 10 bullets into his body at point blank range.

I’ve watched it numerous times myself from different angles. I’ve heard the blatant lies from the Trump regime and right-wing media about what they say happened. And I’ve concluded with my eyes that they are lies as you should. I saw Preddy holding a phone that he was using to record agents in his final moments of life, not holding or brandishing a gun as the regime claims, I saw agents tackle Preti and remove his legally licensed firearm before another agent fired shot after shot into his back. I saw those same agents leave his unmoving body there in the Cold Street while people all around screamed in horror. I know what I saw and you do too. I need you to trust your eyes. Do not believe the lies in response to the murder of their nursing colleague, Alex Preti, national Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses with more than 225,000 members issued the following statement, the nation’s nurses who make it their mission to care for and save human lives are horrified and outraged that immigration agents have once again committed cold-blooded murder of a public observer who posed no threat to them.

This time they have executed one of our fellow nurses, Alex Preti, who saved Veterans’ Lives as an intensive care unit RN for the Veterans Health Administration. He not only advocated for his patients inside the VA as a member of American Federation of Government employees A FGE, but also took his advocacy to the streets to stand up for his community as nurses do we demand justice and accountability for his murder. ICE and all related immigration enforcement agencies have repeatedly shown through their violence, terror and lawlessness that they pose a dire public health threat to the entire country. In all our communities, ICE agents have been kidnapping, hardworking people, mothers, fathers and children, and now murdered a registered nurse, one of the most trusted professions in the country. Nurses demand the immediate abolition of ice and quote Now as we speak, national Nurses United is engaged in a week long series of actions to quote honor Preti and all who have been murdered by ice, as well as demand that Congress vote to immediately abolish this violent, racist and lawless agency that poses a dire public health threat to all of our communities.

And that is what we are covering on the show. This week on Wednesday, I will be on the ground in Washington DC to cover one of N U’S Week of Action events and I will be speaking with union members for the second installment of our two-part episode this week. And in part one, today’s episode, I’m truly honored to be joined by Mary C. Turner, a registered nurse and a member of the Council of Presidents of National Nurses. United Turner is also a member and former president of the Minnesota Nurses Association serving in that role from 2015 to 2023. President Turner, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it. And I want to start by asking the blunt, how are you and your fellow nurses processing the horrific ice shooting and killing of your colleague Alex Preti? Right now,

Mary C. Turner:

The first thing I’m going to say is the nursing profession is very unique in the sense that you injure one, you injure all 3 million of us, just how we feel. Okay. And so they pick the wrong profession to pick on. Okay? And I’ve had nurses calling me anger, despair, fear. We have fear in our hospitals now because we have ice agents that are coming down the halls. Our biggest fear is that they would do some kind of an action and from what we’re witnessing on in the streets, it would be no surprise to me if they would try to come in and take our patients right out from their beds. And our nurses are desperately wanting to know what do we do in these situations? We have black and brown nurses that are afraid to even come to work along with other hospital, our ancillary services.

And the thing is, is that our hospitals are packed. It is kind of like pandemic conditions and it’s made worse because you have so many people who are sheltering at home that aren’t getting what comes to my mind. Picture somebody with dialysis afraid to go to dialysis, picture that expected mom about to give birth and afraid to go to the hospital. I had one community member here say, we’re going to start to find dead bodies and if not dead bodies, we are definitely going to be finding people that are going to be coming to the hospital and they’re going to go right to our ICUs because they will have been too far gone. So that’s the biggest concern among the doctors, the doctor population, all of us, all of us healthcare workers is this delay of care that people are experiencing and how it makes everything so much worse for them.

We are a profession that does no harm. We’re the profession that comforts and cares. We are the profession that are the caretakers of society. We are not meant to have to deal with the fear of caring for people. And we all know in our world, number one, if they come storming our hallways demanding information, our number one priority is HIPAA privacy laws. That is number one. That and protecting our patients at all costs. And so we have a lot of nurses that have a lot of questions about just what do we do and how will our hospitals protect us? What resources are we going to have if we have to deal with things like this? I’m fortunate at my own hospital, they’ve got central command that we can call on at any time to deal with this so that nurses don’t have to deal with it. My only hope is that every hospital and every healthcare facility has the same things in place.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want to drill down on that a little more for a second because as I read in the introduction, national Nurses United forcefully called this week for the abolition of ice in a statement following prey’s death. But as you mentioned, it’s not just what happened to Preti. We have been reading and seeing terrifying and surreal reports of federal agents entering hospitals and clinics trying to detain and deport immigrants. And I wanted to just ask if we could talk about that a little more for a second. Can you describe for our viewers how ICE and DHS and the policies of this administration are impacting the medical field right now? The people who work there and your patients?

Mary C. Turner:

Well, like I told you, I said the fact that we have nurses that are afraid to come to work, they’re afraid to do their sworn duty, to care for the people, to care for our patients, they’re afraid that right there, there’s something wrong with that. And I would say that with any healthcare worker that is black or brown, well obviously now it doesn’t really make any difference, does it? I mean, because to be honest, labor leaders like myself are just as much at risk because this government does not have any time for labor unions. Let’s be honest about that. And so with Renee and now Alex, the world knows now that nobody is safe. And then on top of it, I talked about how our hospitals are getting filled and the acuity is getting higher and higher, kind of like I said during the pandemic. Now you add to that every bed full workloads, nurses not showing up to work, and then add to that stress, fear, anger. So conditions that are not optimal are now made even worse because of all the emotional strain and stress that is now put on us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And for listeners, you guys have heard the interviews that we’ve done with healthcare workers at the VA specifically earlier this year. You’ve heard from these frontline workers talking about the immense stress that they are already under in an understaffed, under-resourced healthcare agency that is facing additional massive cuts from the federal government that has been facing direct assaults on the very right for federally employed workers to be in a union. And now those same workers have seen one of their colleagues be murdered in cold blood on the street. So this is what we’re talking about here. None of this is happening in a vacuum. These are crises that are compounding on top of each other. And I want to return to that in a second and sort of close with that. But while we’re kind of on the topic, I did just want to ask if you could tell our listeners more about what the union NNU has been doing in response to the killing of Alex Preti. Could you tell folks more about the week of action, the demands that the union is making right now?

Mary C. Turner:

Right. So I was very, very happy and proud that we right away put out the statement that you read. And thank you for doing that. We were swift with our statement and our demands. And here’s the thing is that this week, and this is for the nurses and for all healthcare workers, is these vigils that here in Minnesota, they’re going on in towns that I didn’t even know they were going on. But these vigils, this is for people to take a break and try to find some comfort in each other in a very quiet, positive way. And so we are sponsoring these vigils. There’s going to be one here in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Nurses Association is doing one at seven o’clock in the evening on Wednesday at the site. And that’s just an example of vigils that are going to be going on. So I encourage anyone, and it doesn’t have to just be nurses to try to get to these vigils because this is, hopefully it gives a little bit of healing environment into a world God mad.

And then the second thing and more important is at the end of the week, I’m not quite sure when that vote is coming up, but I hear at the end of the week the appropriation bill for Homeland Security, we have got to, everyone across this country needs to call their senators Republican democrat, it doesn’t matter and we need to make sure that we are telling them to vote. No, not one more dollar goes to ice. They have proven that again, they were what founded in 2003 or something like that after nine 11, and maybe they had a purpose back then, but they have proven time and again here in Minnesota that they are lawless. They have no place As a federal institution, I am confident that with our state and federal that have been established for decades, institutions that we can get along without ice. And so we are demanding that gets pulled out of that appropriation bill because I think at this point they’re lumping it all together kind of thing. Pull it out and vote, note to the appropriation bill and then pull that out and just abolish it. That is what we’re calling on, but we need everyone. It already passed the house so we can’t do anything about that. But boy, we can sure be calling our senators.

Maximillian Alvarez:

This is of course funding that’s coming on top of the tens of billions that ice received after the passage of the big bill last year. And ISIS now become the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the entire country. It has more resources than most armies around the world. And we’re seeing what that looks like in our streets right now. And of course, president Turner, as we said, none of this is happening in a vacuum and I want to bring it back down to the shop floor level because as we speak, over 30,000 nurses are on strike in California and Hawaii. 15,000 nurses have been on strike in New York City for the last two weeks. Like healthcare workers, as you mentioned, continued to be squeezed and exploited and overburdened while working. People in general are struggling amidst a cost of living crisis in this country. And I wanted to just ask, since this is a show where we speak with working people about their lives and their jobs and everything in between, what is it like to live and work as a professional nurse in these times? What issues are you and your fellow nurses facing at work and frankly, how do you continue to do your jobs when it feels like the entire world is falling apart?

Mary C. Turner:

The first thing I’d like to point out is that you talked about all the funding that came to ice. We do need to acknowledge that 1 trillion was cut from healthcare either from Medicaid, Medicare, the A, CA, they’re not being at people’s premiums. And so the cost of healthcare for our patients has gone up where they can’t afford it. That kind of leads into before they started rowing and terrorizing our people in the streets, we were already having a situation where people were not coming to the hospital because they couldn’t afford it. And thus what was happening, like I’ve said at another event, I said, they are brought in when they’re found down. That’s how the stories are starting to more and more starting to go when you take report as an ICU nurse, patient found down and that meant that they were not able to come for preventive care and they were found in some kind of crisis and they were hauled into the emergency room and right to the ICUs, the most expensive care that you can receive.

Okay, so let’s establish that. That’s where a lot of that money came from is right out of the health and welfare of all of our people and our patients. Once again, when they do come in, the acuity is so much higher, but we don’t take any less patients. In fact, we’ll be called on to take more because if we have nurses that are afraid to come to work and can I blame them and now that they’re entering our hospitals, that used to be a sacred place where you could feel safe and that’s not the case anymore. It’s one thing when you’re in the environment and you’re working in your ICU and you’re doing all the jobs that you’re used to. Yeah, it’s high stress and all that, but it’s part of the job, but god darn it, to sit and add the stress of, oh boy on my shift, will someone come down the hall and try to take me away?

Will somebody try to come and take my patient? What will I do? Will I stand in front of them? Will I try to protect them? And now like Alex, if I do that, do I run the risk of being shot? I mean seriously. These are all things that could run through people’s mind. Now that we have seen a fellow nurse doing exactly that on the street corner and on the street helping somebody, and may I say that that is an instinctive reaction, especially in an ICU nurse because we are used to leaping to the moment in a crisis. And so it is very natural. I do it all the time. When I was visiting the site the other day, I saw somebody fall, my first instinct was to go to that person. See, we just do. And so what Alex did that day was pure instinct, pure professional behavior. That was just what you do when you’re a nurse. But now we run the risk. Now we’re going to second guess it. So we’ve got instinct taking over, but here we are second guessing in our mind, but what will happen if we do this that’s intolerable to be denied, the ability to be denied the right to care for our patients intolerable? Well,

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think that was beautifully and powerfully put and I know I have to let you go in a minute and I just wanted to with the final minute I have you ask if you had any final words on that to our listeners because as dark as this past week has been, it has also been filled with light including Alex Preti putting himself in harm’s way and ultimately losing his life to stand up to evil and to fight for good and to do what he could to take care of others. We saw that with our own eyes. We saw medical workers joined the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who marched through the freezing cold in a general strike that shook the country. I wanted to ask if you had any final thoughts you wanted to share with fellow nurses, fellow workers and neighbors in our country about what we can take away from the light that we saw from our fellow workers this past week and not just the darkness that we are all feeling in our hearts right now.

Mary C. Turner:

What I want the people to take away is that nurses will be behind you to defend you. We will be alongside of you to advocate for you. And if need be, we will be in front of you to protect you. Nurses will never give up what we do best. We will never give up the right to care for our community. We are the caretakers of the community. We’re the caretakers of the people. We hold that right and that honor with great pride and that was so evident in the actions of Alex on Saturday. He epitomized what every nurse, what we are all about. And that’s why I say, I started this off with saying they messed with the wrong profession. You do this to one and you harm all 3 million of us across this country and we do not forget, but just be assured people, we don’t forget you. We will continue. Everything that comes their way is not going to stop us. Nothing will stop us from doing what we do best. And that is give care and love to our patients. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ll always do.

Maximillian Alvarez:

President Turner, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guest, Mary C. Turner, a registered nurse and a member of the Council of Presidents of National Nurses United. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. Stay tuned for our next episode where I’ll be speaking with more union members from nnn, U’S Week of Action Rally in Washington DC this week. And in the meantime, please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. Follow our social media accounts and YouTube channel and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez, take care of yourselves and please take care of each other. Solidarity forever.