{"id":519644,"date":"2026-03-12T18:53:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/519644\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T18:53:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:53:21","slug":"a-motto-for-all-health-workers-resist-resist-resist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/519644\/","title":{"rendered":"A Motto for All Health Workers: Resist, Resist, Resist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Activism<\/a><\/p>\n

\/
\n March 12, 2026<\/p>\n

Doing our work and keeping our heads down isn\u2019t a victory. We need to fight this regime every day, in every way.<\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Nurse<\/p>\n

Nurse practitioner Sarah Malin-Roodman attends a protest outside of UCSF Benioff Children\u2019s Hospital Oakland in Oakland, California, on Monday, January 26, 2026. <\/p>\n

(Jane Tyska \/ Digital First Media \/ East Bay Times via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Iwas in a work-related conversation with colleagues recently and someone just said it out loud: We are in terrible times, the kind you read about in history books.<\/p>\n

People are being killed, disappeared from our streets, whisked away to foreign shores, or held in crowded, filthy, inhumane detention centers. If and when they are released, they are dropped off far from home, often without their belongings, with no proper clothing in the cold of winter. People fear for their safety, stay in their homes, take their children out of school, stop going to the doctor, stop riding the bus. This is a world of terror.<\/p>\n

All of this is thanks to a regime devoted to a twisted version of Christianity, to rank racism, misogyny, homophobia, sheer greed, and a lavish taste for cruelty for its own sake. What are scientists, clinicians, and public health practitioners supposed to do in this moment? What use is research when our patients might be deported tomorrow? Why try to stem the tide of outbreaks when the world has fallen apart?<\/p>\n

This is why: because even in these times, enlarging the scope of human knowledge matters. The search for cures still matters. The fate of individual patients still matters. The containment of infectious diseases still matters.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t enough. Doing our work and keeping our heads down isn\u2019t a victory, and it is not resistance. Our position in the \u201czone of interest\u201d may keep some of us away from direct contact with the terror outside, but we can hear the screams and cries now of those affected, beamed to us through our phones, our televisions, and the radio as we drive to work. We cannot say we do not know what is happening across this country. And yes, silence is complicity.<\/p>\n

I know it\u2019s very easy for me to say these things, sitting as a professor at a wealthy university, in a very blue city in a very blue state. I am not asking people to take risks that would jeopardize their own safety and well-being\u2014though many have in Minneapolis, in Los Angeles, in Portland, in Chicago. We know the stories of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.<\/p>\n

Current Issue<\/p>\n


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But there has to be a new baseline. Those of us who work in health have a larger responsibility to our patients and our communities. Our disciplines are applied, not theoretical. They are about real people, whether the individuals in our clinics or the people in the cities, towns, and neighborhoods that we serve. The institutions we work for don\u2019t make it easy. Many are \u201ccomplying in advance.\u201d Hospitals are opening the doors to ICE<\/a>, shutting down gender-affirming care<\/a>, while universities are capitulating<\/a> or appeasing, shuttering programs<\/a> that the administration doesn\u2019t like, cowering in fear rather than standing up. It makes doing the right thing harder to do. Things aren\u2019t completely bleak: many state health departments are collectively organizing<\/a> to resist the attacks on vaccines and other areas of public health. And in the fall, as the administration made sweeping demands in a \u201cCompact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,\u201d from \u201cchanges in hiring to admissions, altering campus culture and shrinking foreign student enrollment,\u201d few colleges and universities signed up<\/a> to commit institutional suicide at the instruction of the president. But it still isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

Those of us in public health, science, and healthcare have to organize ourselves in two ways. First, find ways you can resist in your spare time. Groups like Stand Up for Science<\/a>, Defend Public Health<\/a>, and Health in Partnership<\/a> offer an outlet for this work. Second, we need to organize inside our institutions, particularly the ones that have shown their willingness to cave to Trump. National Nurses United<\/a> is a powerful force for change, but other healthcare professionals and researchers have to find a way to stand up to their bosses.<\/p>\n

Doctors who understand that their high-status jobs don\u2019t protect them from exploitation are unionizing<\/a>, but not fast enough or at a sufficient scale. University faculty need to unionize or organize as well. The American Association of University Professors<\/a> has a firm base within public institutions. But at private universities like mine, many professors don\u2019t yet see the value in organizing, even as university governance is being consolidated in the trustees<\/a>, with those in administration looking upward for orders, rather towards any shared model of decision making with faculty.<\/p>\n

But what happens in the day-to-day for us? As the German writer Victor Klemperer said<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s not the big things that are important, but the everyday life in tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites.\u201d As Klemperer did, we can bear witness and record the history we are watching unfold in front of our eyes. When the gaslighting and revisionism come in this moment\u2019s wake, when people suggest it wasn\u2019t so bad, when they turn around and lie about their direct involvement or complicity during this era, we can take out our notes. Any of us who can should figure out a way to have our stories saved for posterity.<\/p>\n

We also have the ability to throw sand in the gears. Tell that ICE officer to get out of the examining room. Speak up for scientists and researchers whose work is being targeted at your institutions. Stand up for departments under siege. Do not let your students face harassment or worse alone. Show up for hearings to stop MAHA zealots from undermining vaccine access<\/a> in your town or your state. Dig in where you live and work. As the \u201cmosquito bites\u201d accumulate, swat away as many as you can.<\/p>\n

These local, minor acts of resistance may seem like little solace, but they matter as much as the larger work we need to be part of. The Russians have called this \u201cthe politics of small deeds<\/a>\u201d since the 19th century. Do not let them take away your capacity to care, make you give up, turn away. There is too much at stake. As another Russian writer said<\/a>: \u201cThe line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties\u2014but right through every human heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump\u2019s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new \u201cforever war\u201d\u2014with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground\u2014may very well be upon us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic\u2014and civilians around the world\u2014and shine a bright light on the truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Nation\u2019s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we\u2019re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That\u2019s why we\u2019re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this journalism is possible only with your support.<\/p>\n

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?<\/a><\/p>\n

Gregg Gonsalves<\/a><\/p>\n

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Nation public health correspondent Gregg Gonsalves is the codirector of the Global Health Justice Partnership and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.<\/p>\n

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The iconic civil rights leader, who has died at 84, made anti-war and pro-diplomacy politics central to his presidential bids and his lifelong activism.<\/p>\n

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\n \"Protesters
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Now it\u2019s time to abolish the agency and impeach Kristi Noem.<\/p>\n

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