Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
This deserves loud pushback.
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Society
/ January 29, 2026
Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
Pretti was one of us. We have to carry on his struggle.
Gregg Gonsalves
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Protesters at a memorial to Alex Pretti on January 27, 2026, in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
In 1964, a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Brazil and plunged the country into more than 20 years of dictatorship. One might ask why an epidemiologist like me would be interested in Latin American history at this moment. What drew me to that era was the key role that clinicians and public health workers played in the resistance against the dictatorship; their simultaneous push for a national healthcare program; and the ways in which this sector organized, even as more conservative physicians sided with the putschists, happy to see their more progressive colleagues jailed and persecuted.
I’m not making one-to-one comparisons between our current predicament and what happened in Brazil years ago. But the insights of that time ring true generations later. Brazil’s medical rebels thought healthcare was a human right. They wanted it to benefit the public good, not private greed. And they saw themselves as equal to workers rather than as their social betters. That history also reminds us that authoritarianism, which Americans since the Red Scares of the 20th century have been told comes from the left, finds an easy alliance with the rich and privileged.
Which brings us to Minneapolis and the United States in 2026. The killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti last weekend sent shock waves across this country, but it fell especially hard on people who work in health. The National Nurses United union spoke out directly on an assault on one of their own, but the grief was shared by everyone who knows the clinicians at our local VA hospitals or works on infectious disease research. For all of us, the murder of Alex Pretti has cut close to home.
There are plenty of clinicians and public health professionals who, like Pretti, have been appalled by what is happening in this country and to our communities. But there are still others who, whether because of their class or their ideology, either see themselves above the fray or have allied themselves with the current administration. Then there are the reactionary centrists in the field, more concerned with academic hippie-punching and attacking the supposed excesses of the progressive movement in public health than they are with fighting fascism.
The political economy of healthcare and public health in America is deeply tied up with the oligarchy of wealth. The authoritarian …
This deserves loud pushback.
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Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
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Current Issue
Society
/ January 29, 2026
Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
Pretti was one of us. We have to carry on his struggle.
Gregg Gonsalves
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Protesters at a memorial to Alex Pretti on January 27, 2026, in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
In 1964, a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Brazil and plunged the country into more than 20 years of dictatorship. One might ask why an epidemiologist like me would be interested in Latin American history at this moment. What drew me to that era was the key role that clinicians and public health workers played in the resistance against the dictatorship; their simultaneous push for a national healthcare program; and the ways in which this sector organized, even as more conservative physicians sided with the putschists, happy to see their more progressive colleagues jailed and persecuted.
I’m not making one-to-one comparisons between our current predicament and what happened in Brazil years ago. But the insights of that time ring true generations later. Brazil’s medical rebels thought healthcare was a human right. They wanted it to benefit the public good, not private greed. And they saw themselves as equal to workers rather than as their social betters. That history also reminds us that authoritarianism, which Americans since the Red Scares of the 20th century have been told comes from the left, finds an easy alliance with the rich and privileged.
Which brings us to Minneapolis and the United States in 2026. The killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti last weekend sent shock waves across this country, but it fell especially hard on people who work in health. The National Nurses United union spoke out directly on an assault on one of their own, but the grief was shared by everyone who knows the clinicians at our local VA hospitals or works on infectious disease research. For all of us, the murder of Alex Pretti has cut close to home.
There are plenty of clinicians and public health professionals who, like Pretti, have been appalled by what is happening in this country and to our communities. But there are still others who, whether because of their class or their ideology, either see themselves above the fray or have allied themselves with the current administration. Then there are the reactionary centrists in the field, more concerned with academic hippie-punching and attacking the supposed excesses of the progressive movement in public health than they are with fighting fascism.
The political economy of healthcare and public health in America is deeply tied up with the oligarchy of wealth. The authoritarian …
Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
This deserves loud pushback.
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Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
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Subscribe
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Magazine
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Politics
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Economy
Culture
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The Nation
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Current Issue
Society
/ January 29, 2026
Healthcare Workers Must Continue Alex Pretti’s Fight
Pretti was one of us. We have to carry on his struggle.
Gregg Gonsalves
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Protesters at a memorial to Alex Pretti on January 27, 2026, in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
In 1964, a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Brazil and plunged the country into more than 20 years of dictatorship. One might ask why an epidemiologist like me would be interested in Latin American history at this moment. What drew me to that era was the key role that clinicians and public health workers played in the resistance against the dictatorship; their simultaneous push for a national healthcare program; and the ways in which this sector organized, even as more conservative physicians sided with the putschists, happy to see their more progressive colleagues jailed and persecuted.
I’m not making one-to-one comparisons between our current predicament and what happened in Brazil years ago. But the insights of that time ring true generations later. Brazil’s medical rebels thought healthcare was a human right. They wanted it to benefit the public good, not private greed. And they saw themselves as equal to workers rather than as their social betters. That history also reminds us that authoritarianism, which Americans since the Red Scares of the 20th century have been told comes from the left, finds an easy alliance with the rich and privileged.
Which brings us to Minneapolis and the United States in 2026. The killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti last weekend sent shock waves across this country, but it fell especially hard on people who work in health. The National Nurses United union spoke out directly on an assault on one of their own, but the grief was shared by everyone who knows the clinicians at our local VA hospitals or works on infectious disease research. For all of us, the murder of Alex Pretti has cut close to home.
There are plenty of clinicians and public health professionals who, like Pretti, have been appalled by what is happening in this country and to our communities. But there are still others who, whether because of their class or their ideology, either see themselves above the fray or have allied themselves with the current administration. Then there are the reactionary centrists in the field, more concerned with academic hippie-punching and attacking the supposed excesses of the progressive movement in public health than they are with fighting fascism.
The political economy of healthcare and public health in America is deeply tied up with the oligarchy of wealth. The authoritarian …
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