Local nurses pick up the phone in support of Bernie Sanders
Verdugo Hills Hospital nurses Erica Beltran, left, and Dinorah Williams make calls to drum up support for their favored presidential candidate at the Glendale for Bernie Sanders headquarters. Members of National Nurses United helped staff phone banks during the evening.
Local nurses switched their scrubs for Bernie Sanders T-shirts Tuesday evening as they participated in a phone bank at the California Nurses Assn. office in Glendale to support the Democratic presidential candidate.
About 30 volunteers called people living in upcoming primary states such as Iowa, which will hold its caucuses on Feb. 1.
National Nurses United, which encompasses the California Nurses Assn., has already endorsed Sanders for president.
Local nurse Erica Beltran is one of those supporters who said she is rooting for Sanders because of his push for a single-payer healthcare fund rather than a system involving insurance companies. She also likes his push for lowering prescription medicine costs.
“Overall, he stands for a lot of the things I believe in and what other nurses believe in,” she said.
Phone banks will be held twice a week, and they are organized by the grass-roots group Glendale for Bernie.
Local resident Alex Calleros is one of those volunteers who said running a phone bank has evolved from the days of calling numbers off a sheet of paper. There’s a software program that does it now.
“The campaign offered to rent out the office space here in Glendale to do the campaigning and phone banks, so people can come and phone bank for Bernie,” he said.
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Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com
Twitter: @ArinMikailian
