Local 802 member Kathleen Doran (trumpet), Harry Phillips (sousaphone), George Countryman (sax) and Errold Lanier (snare).

As nurses announce their new union contracts, Local 802 members are offering their congratulations and solidarity. Local 802 member, bandleader and guitarist Adam Lomeo told Allegro, “When you’re out there with the nurses and hearing their stories and struggle, you can’t help but feel connected to their fight – and the music carries that energy!”

He added, “In some ways, it’s a really tough gig: you’re almost always out of tune, hands are freezing, voice is gone and your playing music out into a crowd of people who are trying to make as much noise as possible! But, then I find that I’ll think of a new rhyme for a chant, or a new song that we haven’t done, or one of the nurses will come and sign with us or play a drum, and it’s really beautiful. Like playing for a dance floor, but it’s a picket line and reading the energy and riding the different highs and lows of the day. I find that I really become a different kind of performer and musician on these gigs, like I’m all-in, and then it becomes really pretty artistic, fulfilling, and fun.”

Local 802 member Kathleen Doran, a trumpeter and vocalist, told us, “Protesting with the nurses felt like important work. The nurses truly loved and appreciated the support we provided for them with our chants, percussion and horns. I know so because they came up to me on the site and told me often. Going on strike is a grim affair, but the nurses had a spirit like no other and the fact that we curated sounds of hope, unity and resistance with them and for them under such circumstances — while having fun — was of great value.”

Kathleen added, “When you are fighting for your basic needs to be met in the workplace – and denied those needs – investing in positive spirit and drumming up (literally!) moral support matters. Solidarity forever!”

Local 802 member Hasan Bakr, a percussionist and vocalist, told us “I felt it was my responsibility to support the nurses’ union in their valiant and righteous stand for their rights.” Bakr led the group at the Allen facility. He added that playing for the nurses’ strike “increased my personal dignity and offered me abundant clarity and how corporate greed and inequities still rock our nation after all these years of our existence.”

Hashan Bakr (drums), Tyler Burchfield (sax) and Charles Caranicas (trumpet) perform on a nurses’ picket line in January. CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO OR CLICK HERE.