Nurses, health care workers kneel in solidarity with protesters
As thousands of protestors marched for justice amid the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, a handful of essential health care workers took pause to genuflect in solidarity.
Health care workers near New York City's Union Square took a knee to honor protesters calling for an end to police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25.
"We gotta let the world know, we're here and we're not going anywhere," Yvette Courts, a health care worker at Lenox Hill Hospital told ABC News. "That's why I feel this movement is important."
Courts said that conversations about racial challenges with her African American son, Joshua, have been compounded by discussions of news and recent events.
"It's just a lot that we have to explain to our kids and, as a parent, I definitely need him to understand what's going on," she said. "This is not something that we can sit here and close the door on."
"If we act like this never happened, move on, keep accepting it, keep accepting it, sometimes we just can't accept it, sometimes we have to fight, you know?" she added.
As the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation, New Yorkers quickly found creative ways to show their support for front-line workers, like with a citywide round of applause at 7 p.m. every night.
"The clapping was for us fighting COVID," she said. "Then all of the sudden, this happened. So why not kneel? You know, why not sit there and show that we are in unison with them? Why not show that we’re united?"
Nyishah Samaniego, a registered nurse at Lenox Hill, spoke of the similarities between the COVID-19 pandemic and racism.
"What’s happening right now as far as the racial injustice and equality and police brutality, that is also a pandemic. And we need to treat it as such," Samaniego said. "It starts with us doing this. We have to do better."
