Fifteen thousand nurses across ten campuses in New York City’s three biggest hospital systems are on an open-ended strike. It’s the city’s largest nurse strike in decades.

Picket lines stretched for blocks at Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York-Presbyterian hospitals on January 12, thronged with nurses plus Teamsters, hotel workers, and university staff showing solidarity.

At New York-Presbyterian, nurses in red hats blew whistles and waved clappers. The union’s printed signs read: “If nurses are outside, something is wrong inside!” Others scrawled on cardboard were more whimsical: “So bad even introverts are here!”