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National Nurses United, America’s largest union of RNs, is sounding an alarm.

We’ve organized rallies in New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, as well as in Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, and Florida, other states and cities. We’ve held demonstrations at 60 congressional field offices. And we’ve joined the Occupy Together movement as first aid volunteers in more than a dozen sites, including on Wall Street, where it all started.

Through these actions and others, we’re drawing attention to a national emergency and calling for a tiny but potentially powerful tax on financial transactions. This simple step would amass up to $350 billion annually in this country as part of a global push for revenue desperately needed here and elsewhere around the world.

Why are we making this tax a huge priority? For nurses, patient care extends beyond the bedside.

Consider this heartbreaking story. Steven Cross, a single dad, departed his Lakeville, Minnesota home last month after it was seized by the bank. He was one of the millions of Americans – through a combination of stagnant wages, massive unemployment, Wall Street gouging, and bank fraud – forced out of their homes in recent years. He left his 11-year-old son behind with his neighbors, telling them in a note, “I don’t want him to remember me as homeless.” Actually, more than memories were at stake. According to a recent survey conducted in California, two out of five of homeless people are at risk of dying a “premature death.”