Eliyahu Gasson | editor-in-chief

Freezing temperatures and snow on Saturday were not enough to keep health care workers and nurses from gathering on the North Shore for a vigil to honor Alex Pretti.

The vigil, organized by SEIU Healthcare workers, was held next to the Fred Rogers Memorial Statue, which Jessica Platt, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital, said was a fitting place for the event given their shared values of helping others in need.

Pretti, 37, who was an intensive care nurse, was shot and killed in Minneapolis last month. Video footage showed that Pretti put himself between federal officers and another person before being pepper sprayed and wrestled to the ground.

Officers then removed Pretti’s gun and fired at least 10 shots at him, according to the New York Times. There is no evidence that Pretti held his weapon during the altercation with federal agents. Pretti had a license to conceal carry a firearm in Minnesota.

“The reality is heartbreaking in its simplicity. [Pretti] helped someone. He stepped in when another person was being carelessly thrown around, and he chose compassion. [Pretti] did what any nurse would have done and what any human being should do. And for that he was killed,” Platt said.

Pretti’s death happened three weeks after federal agents shot and killed another American citizen, Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, which has become a hot bed for ICE activity during Donald Trump’s second term in office.

Monica Ruiz, the executive director of Casa San Jose, a local organization that supports Latino residents, said ICE’s brutality isn’t just in big cities, it’s happening in Pittsburgh too.

“Every day a dad doesn’t come home from work to his family. Every day a parent isn’t there to pick up their child from school … And the most recent heartbreaking story was a little girl that was planning her quinceanera who was now looking for a dama because her dama got deported,” she said.

Ruiz said many of the people Casa San Jose serves are afraid to work or seek medical attention because of ICE.

“I have a mom who needs cancer treatment that will not go because she can’t drive home, and she’s afraid to ask her husband to drive her home … She’s more afraid of what would happen to her family if ICE picked them up than dying,” she said.

Francis Adams, a home care worker from Washington County and SEIU Healthcare member, said he feels a sense of camaraderie with Pretti “because he took care of other people in need.”

“That’s what home care workers do for seniors and people with disabilities everyday,” he said.

Adams said recent events remind him of other moments in American history such as the 1964 killing of James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan because of their work with the Freedom Summer campaign registering Black Americans to vote in Mississippi. He also compared current events to the Kent State Massacre, where National Guard troops opened fire on student protesters.

“The fact that some of those who were killed were white contributed to the turning point in the fight for freedom,” Adams said. “Alex Pretti shows that we are all in this together, no matter the color of our skin or where we’re from.”

Since the start of his second term last year, the Trump administration has overseen sizable cuts to federal health care programs, including cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicaid cuts could total $911 billion over the next 10 years.

Teresa Brown, a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital and SEIU Healthcare member, criticized the Trump administration’s defunding of federal health care subsidies as well as ICE activities.

“When money could pay for health care, for Medicaid, for the Affordable Care Act, pays for ICE instead, our government has lost its way. But we, the people, we can fight against that. We can fight for justice,” Brown said. “There are 4 million nurses in the United States. Four million voices together. We can stand up, cry out: ‘Justice for Alex. Justice for Renee. Justice for everyone who’s been hurt. Hurt or killed by ICE.’”

Platt told the crowd to stay hopeful and continue working together for what they think is important.

“Help your neighbor. Remember kindness,” she said. “Tomorrow our work continues, but tonight all of you prove that we are not doing it alone.”

On Tuesday, Trump signed a spending package that would fund the federal government for the next year. Democrats agreed to pass the bill in the Senate without funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes agencies such as ICE, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Travel Security Agency — the result of a deal made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Trump to prevent a repeat of the 35-day government shutdown late last year.

Jess Lott, a registered nurse at West Penn Hospital, said they had pushed U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Braddock, to vote against the DHS funding provisions in the package. Fetterman voted ‘no’ with other Democrats, leaving Trump and Congressional Democrats two weeks to strike a deal on a funding package for DHS.

“The actions that we are taking can feel inconsequential sometimes, but this is proof that our calls, letters and protests do work and that we can’t afford to slow down,” Lott said. “Tomorrow our work continues, but tonight all of you prove that we are not doing it alone.”

Eliyahu Gasson can be reached at gassone@duq.edu