 Are we nurses? Yes! And this hospital run without us? No! Do our patients need us? Yes! Do we need safe staffing? Yes! Do we need our contract to be honored? Yes! Is that why we're out here? Yes! On Thursday, January 12th, thousands of New York City nurses won a historic victory at two hospitals that have been on strike this past week. Over 7,000 nurses fighting for safe patient to staff ratios, won better staffing ratios with firm enforcement at Mount Sinai and Montefiori hospitals after only three days of striking. Nurses are celebrating a victory that will ensure the safety of their patients, they said. Over 7,000 New York City nurses won on strike on Monday, January 9th. Nurses from Mount Sinai and Montefiori hospitals in New York City mobilized demanding safe patient to staff ratios, fair wages and to maintain existing healthcare benefits. This action was authorized by the nurses on December 21st with an overwhelming vote of 98.8% in support of the strike. Initially, around 16,000 nurses from eight different hospitals were set to strike. However, hospital bosses reached tentative agreements with the nurses to avert a strike at several hospitals. Everyone here is in solidarity with us to fight for better staffing and for better wages and for better, you know, healthcare in general. You know, we here, we fight for our patients and today we're here fighting for ourselves. Yeah, we're done being gassed up by nurses saying that we're doing the wrong thing and that we're irresponsible, we're not irresponsible, they're irresponsible because they've let it get to this point and we've been screaming and trying our hardest to try to get them to listen to us and do something about it and they're not and unfortunately it leads to this. We would rather be in there doing what we love and want to return to doing that. So I hope for the wealthier of everyone we reach on agreement. I'm picking up my sister now from the hospital. She is over the moon with the care she got. Even though you guys were looming on a strike, the care was still consistent and beautiful. And I thank you for that. Here's a message for the management, okay? Because this is about patient safety. It's about money, but these nurses deserve it. That's right. Because let me tell you something. Management messes you guys over during the pandemic, okay? Over 500 positions over, they should have hired more nurses. Second of all, what they did was they hired outside nurses and paid them $100 an hour. So that gave them five-star hotels to stay in. Okay? Yeah, we'd be thanking them for the service, but that shouldn't have been able to happen. Okay? We should have had enough nurses here. I'm picking places and there's another hospital down the street. This doesn't make any sense. You guys deserve it, you're supposed to get it and even more. The understaffing issue is one of the underlying challenges facing nurses, contributing to grueling schedules and unsafe patient to staff ratios. They argue that today, nurses are leaving the profession at increasingly high rates due to low wages and high stress. NYSNA, a nurses union in New York, argues that by hiring more staff and paying nurses more for their work, hospitals could address the shortage. Instead of making these investments, the hospital executives paid themselves tens of millions in bonuses during the height of the pandemic and have refused to take nurses' demands seriously. 22 years of working in Montgomery, unfortunately it has been breaking my heart to see that our brown and black people of this community is not getting the care that they need. The care that they deserve, the care that they deserve. So we really need to give them quality care and not quantity. It's quality and this is what we provide to them as nurses. We have so many patients that came to me this week and said, you know what, you deserve it. Go on strike because you deserve it. You listen to me, you're always the first one that advocates for me and you are the one that makes the whole department flow. So us as nurses, there is strength. We have strength, we have the power, we run this. We have to stick together at all times, at all times. And it is quality care that we give.