On August 3, thousands of protesters took part in The National Day of Resistance Against Unsafe Openings to protest the Department of Education’s efforts to send students, staff, and teachers back to school without proper safety measures. Healthcare workers like nurse and Left Voice member Jillian Primiano joined the mobilizations in a show of support and outrage at a system that will put the lives of staff, students, and communities at risk to keep the economy open and protect capitalist profits. Speaking at a rally in New York City, Primiano shared her solidarity as a fellow essential worker with the teachers and staff who will not sit idly by as school boards send them back to work in overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded schools that will put millions of students, staff, and families at risk of contracting a virus that hospitals are not equipped to treat. She spoke about the power that teachers and the working class have to fight for safer working conditions and the need to organize together for their interests:

Every time rank and file members stand up to demand policies that prevent the spread of Covid, you’re saving lives that medicine cannot save. If teachers refuse to work in order to make their working conditions safe for staff and students, people will live…Teachers: if you don’t get what you need you should strike. And healthcare workers, other essential workers, the unemployed, the evicted, should stand behind you in a united front to demand that the working class stop paying for this pandemic with their money and their lives.