Hands off Our Healthcare, Research, Education & Jobs
Event Planning Guide for February 19 Day of Action
Event Planning Guide Contents
Narrative and Background
The billionaire class is waging a war on workers, and putting our nation’s healthcare, research, education, and jobs at risk.
The GOP is mounting these attacks by targeting workers in the higher ed sector through imposing a cap on indirect costs on grants across the NIH, freezing funding for crucial research, and threatening academic workers across the country. Core operations of the National Institute of Health (NIH) are frozen, and staff at both the NIH and the National Science Foundation are learning of mass layoffs. Workers at academic & research institutions are uncertain whether their research and teaching work on crucial topics in the public interest can continue. These measures threaten lifesaving research on cancer, viral pandemics, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s and exacerbate the higher education crisis.
Labor for Higher Education, a coalition of unions representing higher ed workers, is organizing a national day of action on 2/19 to protest these reckless attacks. We are organizing actions across the country in Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, NYC, Boston, DC, and more to: beat the federal funding freezes and related attacks on research and put the issues of healthcare, education, and jobs at the forefront of national conversations.
Hands off our healthcare, research, education, and jobs.
Logistics
Organizers of local events should do the following:
On behalf of one or more unions, volunteer to lead the organizing for their local action. Identify a point of contact and reach out to info@labor4highered.org for additional resources and information to coordinate your local action.
Reach out to labor & community partners to determine key info about the 2/19 action.
Adapt national messaging and visual tools to local context.
Types of Actions
Include but are not limited to:
Protests outside offices of U.S. senators, congresspeople, governors, and other elected officials who can influence national policy through lawmaking or public pressure.
Marches in major downtowns.
Public meetings with legislators, public officials, and campus administrators.
Campus-based rallies.
Messaging
Our core message is “Hands off our healthcare, research, education, and jobs.”
Every one of us uses the healthcare system, goes through educational institutions, and depends on work to survive.
Center the voices of affected people, including workers who carry out or support politically popular research, especially research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and pediatric diseases and/or patients and their families who are looking to research for treatments and cures.
Demonstrate direct impact on community/state. Using tools like the NIH Reporter, get specific about the amounts of funding that come to the targeted community/state from NIH sources. Connect the dots between funding and jobs in the target community/state.
Model the diversity of the higher education community, including diversity in job category, race, gender, and institutional type.
Take lots of video and photographs. Interview action participants so we can share their stories of how these freezes and cuts affect them and their communities.