Justice for Alex Pretti: A Nursing Union Responds
A Case Study in Mobilizing Union Members After a Trigger Event
By Joanna Walsh
The murder of Alex Pretti, a union nurse who worked in the ICU at a VA Hospital in Minneapolis, set off a wave of outrage across the country. While mass resistance to ICE has been forming across the country since the start of the second Trump administration, many potential allies in the fight, including unions, have been far too dormant in this regard, distracted and frozen by the onslaught of manufactured crises from the New Confederacy.
Something about the broad-daylight execution-style nature of Pretti’s killing tapped into a current of horrified energy that was waiting to be unleashed. As socialists working as staffers at a prominent nursing union, we immediately noticed a tangible shift in how everyone—staff, leadership, and rank and file members—was talking about ICE. A topic that had been previously seen as niche, or even taboo, suddenly became the main thing people were talking about.
We knew that we needed to capture the energy of this moment, and that we had an opportunity to mobilize our union to shift its orientation towards resistance to ICE.
The first thing we did was call an emergency meeting for all staff on Monday morning. For this, we did not ask for permission from union management, recognizing that because of the fire of the moment, we had a mandate to supersede management, who may have tried to quell or water down a response. A supermajority of staff, including many in administrative and non-organizing positions, attended the meeting. Some of the outcomes included forming several ad hoc groups to:
Partner with the existing ICE defense infrastructure in our state to put on healthcare-specific trainings for our members.
Push our local to donate thousands of dollars to immigrant defense organizations both in our own state and in Minnesota.
Create a rap of political education to be used by organizers in the field.
On the membership side, a few months before a Signal thread had been created between trusted, left members and staff. Using the Signal thread, some of the member activists began spontaneously organizing vigils across the state. These ended up being well attended, sites of connection, and necessary grieving for not just nurses, but other healthcare workers and working-class people looking for a place to be in community.
Then, using the sign-ins from these vigils as a starting point, the member activists began drafting a solidarity letter addressed to Alex Pretti’s family. There was some discussion about whether to have this be an informal letter, but we pushed to have the letter be sent to the board/elected leadership of the union for official approval. We identified that because of the level of mobilization and anger, even though we have plenty of ICE-supporting members who would be upset, we felt we had the power to push the board to make this letter an official union matter.
In this case, we were right—the board voted unanimously to endorse the letter, which allowed us to use union resources to send it to tens of thousands of union members across the state. Now, we can follow up with all signatories to plug them into ICE defense trainings, and continue to raise money and other resources for mutual aid projects.
We recognized that the killing of Alex Pretti was a trigger moment, and we couldn’t wait to let neoliberal elements of union leadership co-opt a response. We identified some of the available infrastructure we had to mobilize—calling an emergency staff meeting, communicating on the activist Signal thread, etc.—and pushed for material shifts in union resources, which have re-oriented the priorities of our union since.
Every union and community can expect to have an event that triggers exceptional outrage and shock. We cannot control what these events are, nor anticipate when they will arrive, but it’s our job as organizers to pay attention to the way moods shift on the shop floor, and be ready to contest for power.
Joanna Walsh is a queer, Jewish organizer and writer, who has worked for a decade as a union organizer and across social movements. They wrote this article along with a fellow nurse and organizer.
Amazing work and solid advice. Thank you !
Thanks! Sometimes brevity is a virtue as is the case here. You laid out a plan for us to adopt.