A bouquet of red umbrellas blossomed in the middle of Broadway Street the afternoon of Aug. 27, as two men in fluorescent green safety vests laid out pairs of baby shoes on the asphalt.
“No Palantir! No ICE! No war!” chanted a group of protesters as they blocked traffic for several minutes in the middle of downtown Asheville.
The demonstration, coordinated by the National Nurses United union as part of a national day of action, targeted the technology company Palantir and its partnership with HCA Healthcare. HCA owns Mission Hospital in Asheville, and members of the local NNU chapter were strident in their criticism.
Rebecca Speas, a registered nurse who works in Mission’s cardiac unit, said she and her colleagues were distressed by Palantir’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the armed forces. She explained that the shoes on the street were meant to “represent the hundreds of babies that have been kidnapped by ICE.” The umbrellas — emblazoned with black-and-white eyeballs — signified that activists were keeping tabs on the company’s activities.
Palantir has also had negative impacts at HCA’s hospitals, Speas said. Many HCA facilities use Timpani, a scheduling platform developed with Palantir’s support. She said the software often recommends “a skeleton crew” to staff a given shift and fails to consider the specialized training of different nurses.
While the Mission Health system uses a different scheduling platform called HCA Inspire, Speas told the Citizen Times that nurses see the Timpani name when that software updates or generates error messages. “We have been told that Timpani is not our hospital yet, but we want to make sure that it doesn’t get in here,” she said.
Mission Health spokesperson Nancy Lindell, responding to questions from the Citizen Times, wrote that the NNU “inaccurately describes” Timpani. She affirmed that Mission does not currently use the software and that HCA Inspire is a separate application.
“HCA Healthcare nurses helped create the tool, which helps reduce administrative work, optimize patient care teams and accommodate nurses’ scheduling preferences,” Lindell wrote regarding Timpani. “The tool is a resource used by nurses and nurse leaders and does not independently make scheduling decisions or use patient data.”
A coalition of other activist and labor groups joined the NNU protest, including the WNC Central Labor Council, Just Economics, Jewish Voice for Peace, Center for Progressive Reform,N.C. A. Philip Randolph Institute, Patients Union and Southern Workers Assembly. Their representatives raised a wide range of concerns about Palantir technology, such as its contributions to Israel’s war effort in Gaza and its potential to accelerate the replacement of workers by artificial intelligence.
Also present was Asheville City Council candidate Jeffrey Burroughs, the only political candidate or elected official to attend the protest. He told the Asheville Citizen Times that he supported Mission’s nurses.
Burroughs also suggested that the local anti-Palantir action drew from similar sentiment as the recent community outcry against Flock Safety and other surveillance technologies.
“The citizens of Asheville have been very clear about where they stand on Fourth Amendment rights,” he said, referencing the constitutional protection against unreasonable government searches and seizures.
Editor’s note: USA TODAY Co., the parent company of the Citizen Times, has partnered with Palantir to use USA TODAY Co. customer data to automate its process for creating affiliate links, the hyperlinked offers by businesses added to some stories.
Reporting by Daniel Walton, Asheville Citizen Times / Asheville Citizen Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
