Resources for Activism

Use our contact form to shares resource on any form of activism you want listed here!  We will continue to update as we get new items!

To see videos related to activism – go here
To see articles related to nursing activism – go here

Access to healthcare

Rorry Zahourek is involved in a Western Massachusetts effort to provide a single payer healthcare system in Massachusetts and nationally.  See the website for the Western Massachusetts group to get involved, and to get ideas for your own region!

Appropriate End-of-Life Care

Jerry Soucy’s website: Death Nurse: Because this is a blog about living and dying, and because I’m a nurse.  From Jerry: “The blog is to help patients, families, and the community know more about care for serious illness and at end of life, so they can demand better; and to help caregivers and clinicians provide intelligent care. Most recently, I’ve been working to get established nursing organizations to go on the record against genocide.

Crisis: Children and Families Separated and Detained at US Border

Jerry Soucy’s blog post on toxic stress harming children separated from their parents

From Robin – Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope

Nurses and the Media

The Truth About Nursing

Woodhull Study on Nurses and the Media

Health Policy and Media Engagement Graduate Certificate

Nurse Messenger Media Training

Power Relationships

two great resources shared by Joyce Morrissette

  • New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make It Work for You –  From a review on Amazon: “This book is a MUST READ in the truest form of the phrase – brilliant, thought-provoking, useful, and able to be applied to work, movements, business, as well as everyday life. Also one of the only books . It provides such tangible case studies and applications of the ideas being discussed that really make it real and digestible. It explains the things happening in the world around us – shifts in business models, movements, activism, – but it explains it with real world case studies, like the ice bucket challenge, Airbnb, #GivingTuesday, and not just in theory. Could not recommend this book more highly, I couldn’t read it fast enough. I hope they put this book in the curriculum at colleges!”
  • Netflix original “Nanette” by Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby.  See this insightful review of the special published in the Washington Post.

Racism, white privilege, and racial justice

Nursology.net posts on racism in nursing

Website – Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)

Webinar – So … You Have White Guilt. What Now?  Shelly Tochluk and Salina Gray, webinar leaders. This is an excellent 60 minute Webinar (with additional 30 minute discussion) – very worth taking the time to view.

Shelly Tochluk‘s handout Engaging to Interrupt or Dismantle Oppression “

Discrimination in the healthcare system – by Kenya Beard, EdD, AGACNP-BC, NP-C, CNE, ANEF, FAAN

School Violence

Robin Cogan’s blog post Solving Wicked Problems

Self-care for Activists

From Joyce Morrissette:

1. “How to Build a Culture of Good Health”, Gabor Mate, Yes Magazine, Nov
16, 2015. Mate talks about the unmistakable patterns he’s seen in patients with ALS.
One of these is extreme dutifulness. We have this in our profession and
this exact idea was raised yesterday (at the gathering). We are obedient to employers instead of to the common good. This may not be conscious. Mate also talks about
reductionist medicine, adverse childhood experience and emotional
repression and how they all play havoc.

2. Give and Take. Adam Grant. Power book. Grant is the most popular professor at Wharton Business School. After I wrote “Receive, So You May Give: A Self Care Path for Nurses,” to provide something that was nourishing with the knowing that I’d been a compulsive giver and didn’t know how to receive, I found Grant’s book. Selfless givers are not successful in life but otherish givers are ultimately the most successful. He categorizes 2 other groups and names them as “matchers”, and “takers”—who can show up as fakers. He brings up nurses with research to back up some of his ideas. These power dynamics are not being discussed in our profession but I agree with Grant–givers who don’t know how to receive not only burn out, they get burned, used and manipulated. In other words, they attract takers.

3. Self-Compassion researcher Kristin Neff has a very resourceful website.
http://self-compassion.org

Support for Social Activism

Relational Uprising is a non-profit organization that offers residential trainings and collaborations based on the intersection of deep social justice organizing work and somatic healing and education. This organization and the trainings are based on the values of values empathy, diversity, and interdependency. The mission of Relational Uprising is to:  “support inspired social movements and community leaders who catalyze social transformation and radical engagement to foster a healthy, interdependent, relational culture of complex connection”.