Schwarzenegger committed a cardinal sin. He insulted a group of women, nurses to be exact, and unleashed a fury that just couldn’t be calmed. His problems started last November after he suspended key portions of the state's nurse-to-patient ratio. This angered Rose Ann DeMoro, chief executive of the California Nurses Association, so she and some of the 65,000 members of the union started protesting. Their efforts were timid at first, until one day when the Terminator put his mouth in gear before engaging his brain, and this, according to an article on AlterNet, is when the Terminator met his match:
While the governor addressed a state convention of 10,000 women, a few nurses unfurled a protest banner that read "Hands Off Patient Ratios." Schwarzenegger grinned for the TV cameras, then said: "Pay no attention...to the special interests. I am always kicking their butts." DeMoro was outraged. "For the Governor to denigrate nurses -- a historically female profession -- while speaking to an audience of women is an affront to women everywhere," she told CNN. Because Schwarzenegger had shut them out of the health-care debate, the nurses decided to take their case to the streets.
The nurses were told not to make waves, but they continued to dog Schwarzenegger, protesting at fundraisers and even renting a plane to buzz over his gated mansion during a Super Bowl party. Their protest continued solo, while other unions watched from the sidelines, until the Terminator made another serious error and angered more women:
When the governor reneged on his oft-repeated promise to restore $2 billion to education cuts in February, students and teachers joined the nurses. They gathered with pickets one rainy day at a Sacramento theater where the governor was about to watch the premiere of Get Shorty 2. But when nurse Kelly Di Giacomo was whisked out of the movie line and into a back room, protestors grew worried. The governor's security team grilled the petite nurse for over an hour until she finally asked why they considered her a threat. One of Schwarzenegger's bodyguards pointed to her scrubs and explained. "You're wearing a nurse's uniform."
"Oh, sure," she said, drolly. "The international terrorist uniform." That intimidating experience emboldened the nurses, whose protests began attracting media attention. By spring, TV news cameras were moving their soft-lens focus from Schwarzenegger to the growing crowds of angry workers, most of them women.
The genie was out of the bottle by now and there was no turning back. Arnold’s popularity was plummeting, and by March “a California court ruled that the governor had indeed broken the law by suspending the state's nurse-ratio regulation. By then, however, the governor was trying to gut California firefighters' and police officers' pensions, mimicking a Bush administration proposal.” It wasn’t long before law enforcement and firefighter unions joined in to protest the governor's rash of cuts to middle-and lower-class programs, and then they added star power: Sean Penn, Annette Bening and Warren Beatty started speaking out in support of the unions.
"Instead of attacking the real problems of our schools, Schwarzenegger attacked school teachers," Beatty said. "Instead of attacking the cost of healthcare, he attacked nurses. Instead of increasing our safety, he attacked police and firefighters."
The Terminator was on the mat and out for the count, and the nurses had become grass root heroes:
Nurses in Illinois, Massachusetts, Arizona and Mississippi have asked DeMoro for help in challenging the growing clout of corporate hospital chains and other states' anti-worker initiatives. To be effective, the CNA has created a subsidiary called the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which allows it to organize nurses outside of the Golden State. This fall, the NNOC welcomed 2,000 Chicago nurses into their fold, and it anticipates more members by year's end.
Arnold made a serious tactical error when he misjudged the nurses’ union. He assumed the "little women" would go meekly home and cry their hearts out after his insults. Wrong. The women saw their livelihoods coming under attack and they weren’t going to let the government – and by extension big business – take food away from their children. No way, mama bear decided to fight back against that big bad wolf from Sacramento - and they cleaned house all at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment