The second election of Donald Trump hasn’t deterred Mogilles. She and so many other Southern workers — particularly Black and immigrant Southerners — have been fighting proto-Trumps and mini-Trumps for decades. They’re used to the politics of divide and conquer, to overt racism, to having to organize despite anti-union laws and state-level preemption of local attempts to improve lives. These workers have lessons to teach the rest of the country about resistance, survival, and building institutions that wield power effectively. They know better than anyone how to face a loss and come back swinging. They also understand, despite the region’s meager union density, the power of workplace organizing to fight political overreach by the forces of organized capital.

The UMC nurses held a two-day strike right before the 2025 Super Bowl, held in New Orleans. It was the second strike of their contract campaign, and Lauren Waddell was on the picket line. A nurse practitioner and member of the bargaining team, Waddell was born and raised in New Orleans. It was important, she said, for patients at UMC to be attended to by providers who look and sound like them, who are Black and brown and understand the city’s culture and its touchstones, who know what it’s like to be underestimated and written off. “I’m still doing everything they say I couldn’t, and I’m in the rooms that I’m in because I deserve to be there, not because it’s just some kind of DEI propaganda,” Waddell said.

At the bargaining table, Waddell said, the hospital leadership has been stalling, and she attributed that in part to the Trump administration’s anti-union actions. The National Labor Relations Board was toothless at the best of times, unable to issue more than a slap on the wrist to companies that break labor law. But when one of Trump’s first moves was firing Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, bosses took that as a signal that it’s open season on workers — even, it seems, after Wilcox was reinstated by a federal judge who called her firing “a blatant violation of the law.”

The right-wing attacks on health care, particularly Medicaid, affect the UMC workers’ conditions as well — though Waddell and Mogilles noted that hospital executives stand to lose a lot if Medicaid and Medicare are slashed.

For now, the nurses are focused on winning a good contract at University Medical that would enable them to keep fighting for their patients. They’re pushing for better staffing levels, more input on working conditions, and pay packages that will allow the hospital to retain experienced nurses. “We’re constantly under some type of adversity,” Waddell said, adding, “The beautiful thing about New Orleans is we just keep coming back.”