Exclusive Video Report: Nurses Speak Out In Favor of Wall Street Transaction Tax to Heal America

“It's not your fault.”

That's the message that the nurses of National Nurses United and their union allies have for Main Street. The broken economy, the day-to-day struggle that the nurses are watching their patients go through to pay their bills and pay for health care is not the fault of working America.

It's the fault of Wall Street. And today, September 1, the nurses are converging on 61 congressional offices in 21 states to ask Congress whose side they're on: Wall Street or Main Street. They're holding town hall meetings, soup kitchens, street theater, and calling for the politicians to sign a pledge to make Wall Street pay for the damage it's caused.

And they have a plan. They're calling for a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculation, and they've already brought that message to Wall Street with a dynamic rally back in June. AlterNet was there, and so was a video crew.

In this exclusive video report for AlterNet, produced in partnership with The Nurses' Station on GRITtv, NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, NNU co-presidents Jean Ross and Deborah Burger, and nurses from around the country explain why that tax is so desperately needed—and why it'll work.