 New America will like to welcome you to our virtual event. The program will begin momentarily. While we are waiting, I want to review a few housekeeping notes. This event is being recorded, and a recording will be posted to the New America events page within 48 hours after the event. Attendees will be in listen-only mode, and you will not be able to be seen or heard by your fellow attendees or panelists. Therefore, we encourage you to share your comments and questions in the Slido box located to the right of the video. Close captioning is available by hovering over the video and clicking CC at the bottom of the video. If you encounter any issues during the event, please contact events at newamerica.org. Thank you for joining us. We will begin momentarily. Hello, everyone, and welcome. I'm Bridget Schulte, a longtime journalist and author and director of the Better Life Lab, the Work Family Justice and Intersectional Gender Equity Narrative Change Program here at New America, nonpartisan think tank. We use the power of rigorous data, compelling stories, policy solutions and practical tools to shift outdated narratives and elevate the value of care and caregivers in the way we work, the way we shape our policies and institutions, and in our everyday lives. For years, we've been researching reporting and writing about care and how our current lack of a coherent care system fails all of us. The United States has few family supportive policies and spends the least amount on early care and education of many of our care nations. And that means in the U.S., we rely on families to either provide care for them, provide care themselves from birth through death, a responsibility that falls primarily on women, or we expect them to pay for it out of pocket. When it comes to raising children, we've decided as a nation that public education is a public good, and don't expect parents to pay for it from the ages of five to 18. But for children, zero to five, it's a different story. We give parents no time, no paid leave from work to provide care for them, despite the fact that a majority of children are being raised in households where all available parents work for pay. On top of that, we require parents to pay out of pocket for early care and education. And for most, it's too expensive, costing as much or more than rent or mortgage, and for infants, the cost of in state college tuition in many states. And you don't have 18 years to save up for it. And yet the childcare labor costs are so high that without public support providers are forced to pay poverty wages to caregivers. When they caregivers describe what they do as a calling a labor of love, those wages often make it impossible for many to support themselves and their own families. So they leave. And without workers or the ability for providers to earn their own living providers also can't make it. Is it any wonder that half of all Americans live in what the Center for American Progress describes as a childcare desert, caring for our aging disabled or ill loved ones, or even caring for ourselves is no less fraught. And if you hadn't been paying attention before to the to the care crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic made that failure impossible to ignore. The domino effect of childcare facilities, adult daycare facilities and schools closing forced many parents and caregivers, the majority of the women to cut back at work, or drove many of them out of the workforce entirely in order to care for loved ones, putting their own families and their financial physical and mental health stability in a dangerous and precarious place. During the pandemic, both the Trump and Biden administrations provided funds to try to stabilize the childcare sector during the pandemic, but they were short term and short lived fixes that by the time the administration later saw a more permanent solution with sustained public investing in care infrastructure and what they called the build back better legislation, but that failed to pass a divided Congress. The same bill stripped of all care support was later passed as the inflation reduction. In the middle of that national failure once again to address the need for an equitable universal childcare system that we at the better life lab begin looking for much needed hope. We spend a year researching reporting, researching and reporting where states local communities and others are stepping into the void and innovating to find workable solutions and childcare. We released that initial report last fall and are continuing network. We also brought in care reporting fellow Catherine Goldstein to take a deep reporting dive into what local communities and advocates were doing, as well as on the national stage, what they were doing to further the care agenda from the care movement. Today, we're excited to share the results of that reporting with the and who share the results of that reporting with the public and to host a rich discussion about what Catherine found with many of those care movement leaders, and have to say it's truly true. There are hopeful solutions, stories and case studies of just how much effort urgency, and most importantly, success, the growing care movement movement has had on the state and local levels, as well as some big wins on the national stage with the passage of say the pregnant workers fairness act and the pump back late last year. Catherine has distilled some of the creative tactics and strategies that have been working from ballot initiatives on photo approved child children's funds to grassroots power building to care worker organizing to narrative change to building a bigger tent and more the better life lab views this playbook as only the beginning. There is so much yet to do to help families combine work and care and survive and thrive in this country. There are so many more wins and instructive lessons to learn from and share. We hope this report and today's discussion just helped spark more ideas, more conversations, more connections and more action. So we can continue strengthening the care tissue within the care movement and grow its reach urgency and power in the spirit of building those connections with others in the care movement we have a number of impressive care movement leaders featured on the panel. And we're going to start with an inspiring call to action from I didn't do organizer author, thought leader, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance director of caring across generations, I could go on and someone who's a partnership we value immensely as we do with the with all the all the members of the panel, the better life lab reporting fellow Catherine Goldstein will then present her key findings, and we'll follow that with the rich panel with these wins and strategies. We'll have time for your questions and comments at the end of the discussion. So again, please submit your questions in the slido box to the right of the video. And now without further ado, here's item. Okay, as I talked to domestic workers and caregivers around the country. I'm just reminded of how much work we still have to do about how many of us are still struggling to afford and find the care we need for ourselves or the people that we love to find affordable child care, paid family and medical leave to be able to take care of a newborn or someone who needs us in our family, or aging and disability care, especially in the home and community where most of us want to age and live so that we can be connected to our friends and family. And the care workforce, this workforce that I've been organizing with for 25 years now, these jobs are jobs that make everything else possible in our economy. And when we invest in them, it's this incredible investment that has a triple return on investment. We call them triple dignity jobs. Because when we make care jobs, good jobs, it not only benefits those workers and their families, but also the people who rely on their caregiving services so that they can go to work and participate in the economy, working family caregivers, working single moms, parents. And then there's also the children, the disabled people who can be enabled to work and live full lives in the community, or older adults who need those services and rely on them to be able to live with dignity, even as they become more frail. These investments are about investing in our humanity over and over in ways that power the economy, the workforce and everything else in our lives. And we as a movement have made so much progress in the last few years. And I'm so grateful to the Better Life Lab for documenting that progress, helping us tell the story of how much has been built and achieved, and how much has changed in our cultural conversation about care. How close we are to winning a huge investment in our care economy that will support all of us with our early childhood and childcare needs, with our needs to take time off to spend time with loved ones, and with our needs as we age, which is hopefully something that all of us will experience and need. So I'm so grateful and so proud to be a part of this movement and so happy that in this report we can read about and remember how far we have come as we seek to bridge the distance with how far we have yet to go. Hello everyone, I'm Catherine Goldstein, and I hope you enjoyed that message from iGen as much as I did. In addition to being the Care Reporting Fellow here at Better Life Lab this year, I'm also a journalist and speaker who focuses on moms, caregivers, and gender equity, and run a newsletter called the DoubleShift. This report started with some very broad questions to figure out what's going on across all aspects of those working on care issues since the pandemic. And what I came to as a central question that I wanted to answer with this report was, where do we go from here to transform care in America. And the lens I chose to focus on is one of the things that Better Life Lab does the best, which is journalism that focuses on proven real world solutions, not just policy ideas. So this project initially was supposed to be part time for six months resulting in a 20 page report. And after over 40 interviews, it ended up taking nine months and resulting in a 60 page report. So obviously there's a lot to say, and I've tried to answer this question very tangibly from a lot of different angles. And we're going to share links to both the report and some of the key findings in the chat. So I'm going to start today by giving you a brief overview of eight tactics I honed in on that are already underway to transform how America cares. Looking at all angles of childcare and elder care and disability and how everyone policymakers, activists, business leaders, care workers, philanthropists, media, cultural influencers, a cultural influencers and care consumers can all be part of this movement. And then I will be diving into a little more detail on just a few of the tactics. And if you have questions for me you can put them in the chat and I will be answering them, along with any questions you have for the panel at the end of this discussion. These are eight tactics I came up with. For the report based on what I saw and heard from people who are actually working across the country on care issues at the local, state and federal level and also in the private sector and in culture and media and through philanthropy. So there may be some conventional beltway wisdom that build back better was the big chance for care issues and since that fail, there's really not much to do until there's a different makeup of different makeup in Congress. But my reporting has shown me that that thinking is just flat wrong. And to me that systemic change can take a very long time. It takes persistence. It takes a lot of groundwork and activists and those who care about care are making really meaningful progress in their communities and dreaming bigger and demanding more than tiny scraps and notching meaningful wins towards their goals which builds political momentum and creates narrative change for a bigger transformation that we all deserve. These tactics highlighted in the report as not separate steps but more as an interconnected web here that all need each other if we're interested in large scale social change and challenging the status quo of care in America, which is why I hope this report can help people learn about each other's tactics and work together more closely. I want to give a little more color on a few of these tactics that I honed it on. I'm going to talk about care unionizing ballot initiatives and political spending mixed with fighting the opposition, but there's many pages of goodness on all these tactics for anyone who wants to dive in. So I want to spend a little time talking about care unionizing as one of the tactics that really fascinated me. I don't have personal experience as a care worker, but I do have personal experience as a care consumer. And care consumers may be aware that care workers aren't paid enough for that there are shortages, but there is so much more to the story than that. I'm going to guess that you've probably heard something about the tons of labor activism that has been going on really since the start of the pandemic and a lot has been happening this year in particular. But you might not realize how much organized labor is involved with shaping the future of care. So I attended the care workers can't wait summit in April where this photo was taken, and I was really surprised and impressed by the gains unions are making. And what we're seeing in California and Washington and New York and some other areas, I think are a blueprint for a transformation of the care economy. There's a lot of really exciting progress with something called sectorial bargaining. Basically, how this works is that rather than working with individual employers or work sites. Care workers are coming together to bargain with the government, the state government, usually but sometimes also local governments on Medicaid reimbursement rates, childcare subsidies, and this is having an impact on their pay rates and their benefits. A lot of the biggest wins are coming from the nursing home long term care direct care worker groups, but I think that progress could pave the way for other sectors in the care economy, like in childcare down the road I really think these groups are leading the way so this is a movement that is led by women of color and I think care workers are going to be an increasingly dominant force over the course of the next 10 years in our politics and our economy. An example of one of the recent wins I'd like to highlight is in Washington State, SEIU 775 and other organizations. It's their care workers have successfully advocated for over a billion dollars to be included in the state's 2023 to 2025 budget for long term care. This will result in giving home care workers a starting wage of $21 an hour with benefits. These are very meaningful, tangible results that are coming out of care union worker organizing and there's tons of more examples like this in the report. So now I want to talk about the ballot initiatives tactic. I loved learning about ballot initiatives that defy some conventional wisdom, like the conventional wisdom that people in red states aren't you know particularly interested in motivated around care issues. So what you're looking at here is a map of funds that have been created by voters directly that support children's well being. So when you look at the map in the report is interactive and when you hover over those dots, they each represent a fund and you can see how much money it raises and what it raises it for and how long it's been around so that's really cool. I actually didn't know about voter approved children's funds until I started this recording, and it was really interesting to learn that there are over 50 local funds across the country that raise $1.5 billion annually for children's well being. And the report and actually also I wrote an op ed that's out today in time about how about initiatives and voter approved children funds could be an important stock gap for the childcare financial cliff that is underway. And we will share a link to that time op ed in the chat as well. What's clear to me from this reporting is that care policies around children's needs specifically put directly to voters have been shown to be popular in red and blue states. And people are also willing to vote to raise their own taxes to fund them, even when their political stalemates among elected officials. So one of my favorite ballot initiatives that I learned about I wanted to share with you is in Escambia County in the Florida Panhandle, they passed a ballot initiative with 61% of the vote. That's now raising $10 million per year for 10 years for children's services that's funded through a property tax. And this passed in 2020 at the same time that Donald Trump won the area with 57% of the vote. So I just think that's pretty cool. The downside of voter approved children's funds and ballot initiatives is that I still I think there's a lot of possibility with them. But they're not all states allow them. And I also just want to give a shout out to the children's funding project who is doing who are doing amazing work on this I learned a lot from them, if you want to find out more. While there's so much to be optimistic about this last slide I wanted to share is just a little bit of a wake up call. The last point I want to bring up, which I think deserves more discussion within the care movement and I hope this is just the beginning of that discussion is how the movement needs to raise and use political money and how to effectively counter opposition. So this slide features open secrets data that reveals the difference in spending of the top three care oriented groups lobbying efforts, compared to the top three major business groups, who specifically fiercely oppose the social policy legislation So another way to put what you're seeing of these very small numbers and these very big numbers is that the top three care groups had 1.4% of the lobbying spend compared to top business groups who opposed billback better. So, while these business groups they lobbied on a range of issues in 2021 and 2022 not just billback better. The difference in the spending I think, you know, in lobbying connections and the decades of work, these two different groups have done I think is an understatement to say it is stark. So, I just think this graph is a big reminder about what those who care about care are up against and why coalition building messaging and when needed, calling out villainous corporate greed needs to be a part of this movements arsenal. I go into all of this and more in the report so of course I hope you make the time to check it out. Thank you so much for coming. In addition to the links in the chat. We're sharing a few ways you can stay in touch with me and also stay in touch with a better life lab. I'm now very excited to turn this over to better life lab senior editor Julia Craven, who will leave a fantastic panel of care movement leaders. We have great stories and experience about some of these eight tactics, and I will be coming back on the screen at the end for questions. Thank you. Thank you so much Catherine very kind of you and also thank you for your kind words I really appreciate that. I'm so happy that our panelists are here with us today to add personal stories and expertise around some of the recent successes of the care movement. One of the things that Catherine's report highlights is how many exciting and creative efforts are happening within this wide ranging care movement. And at times people in different parts of the country are working on a variation of issues, and they don't know of each other's work so we're excited to put a spotlight on some of those efforts with today's panel. Let's start by introducing our panelists to everyone watching. Sandy Marina is a labor representative with United domestic workers of America. She has seven years of experience in the labor movement, representing technical employees, domestic workers, and warehouse workers. She's going to chat with us about the effort she's involved with to secure better pay and benefits for California's in home supportive service workers, we're often family members of the people that they're caring for. She has been an early childhood education professional for over 23 years. In 2021 she co founded for providers by providers, a nonprofit that champions Louisiana type three predominantly biopic and woman led earning early learning centers. Rochelle is going to talk about a NOLA about a New Orleans. Sorry, I said NOLA because I'm actually going to New Orleans later this week. Valid initiative that passed in 2022 that secured early childhood education funding for 2000 low income kids every year. Kristen Raugh, think finer is the co founder and executive director of moms rising a nonprofit advocacy group with over a million members across the nation, working to improve economic security stop discrimination and build a nation where everyone can thrive. Kristen is going to share some birds I view perspectives on making care and election issue. And one of the things that she's been doing in this region a base is the calm director for Isaiah where she specializes in integrating grass roots organizing and narrative strategy is help develop and implement a race class narrative framework in both Minnesota and across the US. She will discuss successes and passing a state funded family medical leave legislation this year in Minnesota. So, thank you all for being here and really excited to chat with you. Just hop right into it so my first question and this is for everyone. Once when from the care movement get picked up by national news outlets are often framed as overnight successes. But a lot of how these ones happen is based on years of work on the ground. So for Sandy, Rochelle and Dine, who have worked on recent issues, specific campaigns. Can you just give me a number of how many years of ground work went into these ones, and then I'm going to bounce to Kristen for a different question. Whoever wants to get started to pop in. Hi, hello, this is Rochelle so I would say, at least seven years, if not more of just laying ground work, educating being a part of working groups talking to politicians, even advocates before they were politician people who you know were leaders. It was a lot of being a part of groups and talking to people when you thought things were going nowhere. So, it was a lot of ground work that we had to lead to lay prior before things even start and failing. We failed at a ballot measure miserably before we our ballot measures even passed. Yeah, I can also speak on the specific measure that we won in November of 2022 is specifically California November number 22 in Kern County. Yeah, it was a major victory for us, just changing the infrastructure of the county board of supervisors, however, it is a lot of ground work right from the beginning. When it started, I would say about two years before we even started the ground work, because we do have to go through different stages, political education, activating our members, making sure that we have those leaders in different areas because when we talk about home care worker organizing that those of who live in different in people's homes right they live they don't have a common place of work so the ground work is even a lot harder than maybe doing union work at a shop right so it's about also building coalitions with other organizations, making sure that our tactics and strategies are also on point so that we can eventually when it's about following that plan right and learning from our failures from what went well what didn't go well and it's just constant work constant, you know just talking to other union members about the importance of, you know changing pretty much the infrastructure and making history right and understanding that there's a larger vision so it does take a long, a long time to make those things work and yeah for us specifically I would say about about two years but you know the history is a lot longer as kind of like our last measure a last pressure point that we had on our end. Yeah. And so I would say so we passed statewide paid family and medical leave policy and program for all Minnesotans, and we have been working on that bill for almost 10 years, so we created the coalition. And we as in a bunch of us started a coalition Minnesotans for paid family and medical leave in 2014. And so that coalition has been going strong in times where I think it was Rochelle names when things were you know going well and we would pass out of one chamber we pass out of the house or we pass out of the Senate but not out of both and going through different committees through our legislature getting the support of our governor like there were many many steps along the way and quite frankly because we have such a strong policy it really did require that amount of time because quite frankly, we could have passed a really weak policy one that was completely gutted that didn't do the things that Minnesotans needed, you know, five years ago, for example but in order to pass a policy that was really going to benefit the largest group of Minnesotans that was going to make sure that what we have now is, you know, one of the most racially engender equitable policies in the country. It really did require getting all of those relationships built and and really doing a lot of the groundwork to get us here. Absolutely. And Kristen, can you jump in and give us the perspective from the federal level, because you've been working you've been doing movement building at that level for quite some time so how many years have you been at it. I've been at it for more than a decade and I joined other people and sharing that this is a marathon, not a sprint. We're not going to get wins overnight but we're going to get incremental wins along the way and we've seen that happening. This is the state and national work so in Washington State, for example, it took us 10 years and more than two big bill tries to get a spectacular policy in place. And the thing is that's important for people who are watching who are listening and who are also joining or have joined the movement is to just not give up hope. I think it's so important at the national level these states, the cities, the counties who are passing care policies are really marching toward our nation's capital, so that we can have care policies put that pressure on Congress to have care policies that we need in a national way so that no matter where people live no matter where people work, no matter what's happening in people's lives, everybody has access to paid family medical leave. Everybody has access to affordable high quality, if not free childcare. Everybody has access to home and community based services so we can age with dignity and live with dignity. And so at the federal level, we've seen that we as a community in a community, what a lot of people just mentioned I think is really important I want to underscore it, we are working in community we are working in coalition, all of us are almost rising, we just heard it from people who are speaking a moment ago on the panel. And as a community, we have been punching above our weight. And this is important to say, because when the build back better package came out we as a community of care can't wait organizations for our hundreds, really pushed to get that package into the president's priorities and we won. And then we want it in the house at the national level, and then we lost by one vote in the Senate. Now I have lost by hundreds of votes before. Now you lose by one vote, you know you're on to something you know that it's no longer a question of if but when we'll finally pass these policies at the federal level, and that's in large part due to the work that's happening at the city to county the state levels. That's in large part due to the victories that we're hearing from the other panelists right now, it's that pressure from all angles. Now when we're talking about pressure at all angles, another thing that many people on the panel, just raised is that these policies are highly polling shows that Democrats Republicans independence libertarians you name it, they support the top three care policies paid for medical leave childcare home and community based services by a wide margin. 76% of Trump voters support these policies. So what we're looking at in Congress from the federal level as we're looking at Republicans who have yet to catch up with their constituents in terms of where their constituents who are Republicans want them to vote. And Democrats who are largely leading the way on these care policies. Again, this shows momentum. We just recently had momentum to demonstrate the winds, we together as a coalition past the pregnant workers fairness act in the last 12 months, past the pump for the pregnant mothers act in the last 12 months past coverage for all birthing people in health care in the last 12 months. So our ability to get close to the solutions through build back better and more shows that we're going to win at a federal level, the other shows that we're passing shows that we're going to win eventually at the federal level and what's happening in the states shows we're going to win at the federal level and we couldn't be happier and more honored to be working in coalition with hundreds of organizations across the country we're truly a movement together. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And so that actually brings me to Rochelle. So you have held a lot of different positions in the care space. And you've been a childcare worker you've been a center director and now you are an advocate and an organizer. So you know the ups and downs of what it takes to make change. So advocates in New Orleans actually lost an early childhood education ballot initiative in 2021. But I want you to tell us about your second try, and what ultimately made that more successful. So absolutely. So, to be clear, it was it was a gut punch when we lost our ballot measure, but we're happy that we lost that ballot measure wasn't what we actually wanted but that's what we were offered. It was $1.5 million a year millage that was going to be dedicated to early care and education, and it was going to keep our current funding that we had that was only going to serve like maybe 100 or 150 children, which is great. We had money that is dedicated to early care and education where it's a win, right. But we lost in the end, it was a gut punch. And so we had to rally, we had to rally the troops, people were upset, and our coalition was upset, but it's, you know, it's never a failure it's about what you have to, what you have to learn it's the learnings. So, what we learned is that you know what, we didn't do really good polling. So we had to bring it we had to, first of all, we got a campaign manager this time. We had to be strategic. We had to do the polling. We bought in a really good comms team. We did we wind up doing a pack, which was really good we did we were able to figure out who was who were the missing stakeholders that we had not engaged the first time in the campaign. One of the missing stakeholders that we had not engaged the first time was the business community. And so we really wind up engaging the business community heavily, because in doing one of the surveys and doing a lot of data, we realize specifically in New Orleans, that the business community was losing and bleeding millions of dollars, because their employees cannot come to work if there's not anywhere specifically high quality early learning daycare, if they cannot place their employees in high quality early learning while they're going to work. So we were able to engage them pull out the data see where people were really wanting early learning, and that supported our that supported and help us guide our strategic strategic plan. So with, with all of that information, we not only were able to engage parents we understood what the poll said at the poll said, we want to hear from the people that this is going to most impact, which means the parents, the providers and the teachers. So we, all of those people made the calls, all of those people were the people that knocked on the doors, all of those people were the people that had that had the signs, we were able to gain fun funding for to be paid for those those same people to be paid volunteers. We had advocacy boot camps to inform people on if somebody asked you a question this is what this means. It was a marvelous campaign, we had over. And this was done by the providers, people who are just like me, I am an early kid in education, early learning center provider, I own for early learning centers in a greater New Orleans area. I know what I'm talking about this directly impacts me, I can say this. So, on April 30 2022. If you felt the earth shake a little bit that was the votes that was being cast in New Orleans, and we were able to win that vote by 60%. The only thing that was on the ballot. It was $22 million per year for the next 20 years. It is specifically for children zero to three. And a lot of people ask why did we do zero to three in Louisiana. So, our children specifically the children at me, we kind of have that covered so it's really like a pre K for all. So, we really want to make sure that those first 1000 days are cared for. And so that is what we did, we really re energize reset and make sure those little people were cared for. Absolutely. And could you just briefly tell us and you know explain to the people watching why that first 1000 days is important. So again, the first 1000 days is when those brain synapses. It is all about the brain architecture so and we make sure that our teachers know that they are the brain architects of early learning is that is when those brain synapses are firing off at the the most highest rate right 90% of brain development happens by the time by the time a child is three. So that is why it's most important. The other thing about it is is that we were able to get into that village that though our teachers are paid at a higher rate during that time. So our goal is to work our teachers out of poverty. Thank you so much. And Sandy, your journey in becoming a care advocate began when you had to leave your full time job in Chicago to care for your grandmother full time in California. Can you tell us a bit about your personal story and how the need to support care workers became very, very real and clear for you. And also what issues you've organized around. Yeah, so I'm, I'm a first generation, you know, college graduate from an immigrant family. I thought I had been doing everything right at the time right and I had an opportunity for a new career in Chicago. When I heard the news. Well, I had already known the news of my grandmother. And because you know, I'm pretty much the only person that has flexibility of where I work and maybe I can find a better job later on in, you know, and I'm still like the young one in my family. I took that role of taking care of my grandmother, which was one of the toughest things I had to do so when I when I tell the story I want everyone to picture that it's not just my story it's it's it's thousands and thousands of other caregivers that this happens to. So, I did have to leave my full time career to take care of my grandmother, which, you know, in a sense. It brought me. It gave me a new understanding, even though I had already been organizing with caregivers before but actually doing the work of caregiving. It's way different. It's completely different and it was one of the hardest jobs like I've ever done because it's an emotional physical labor. It's a labor that's not really understood or it's invisible labor, it's labor that it's not recognized as real work sometimes right, the cooking the cleaning the grocery shopping the emotional the patients all of that. Um, so I think by actually being a worker of being a caregiver right a family caregiver and there's the working conditions that I saw when I made that transition moving from Chicago to California. And caring for my grandmother is one. It is. It is a low pay right so essentially you are not. You're not being compensated for the actual work that you do which is a full time 24 hour a day thing. It's long hours low pay savings running out right. And, you know, it's it's a sometimes the most often it's work that we do by ourselves. It's an isolated job. And so, for me understanding that, you know, as of, you know, in my own personal story, even though I did organize understanding the issues is very important but actually doing the work. You do feel the exploitation that goes around that right because you're not really being compensated adequately. And it's something that it's important to me because it is something that will impact a lot of folks across social status religions language it will eventually, you'll either become a caregiver or you'll need someone to take care of you. And need to support caregivers right and making that choice for that someone it's it's not something that should leave you in poverty. But I did. It took me a while to get back on my feet to make sure that she had everything in place. When I was taking care of her she lost half of her mobility of her body and she lost her speech she had something called a facial. We cannot communicate with each other very well. So it was very hard. But, you know, because of that. I'm understanding that, you know, this is important work, and we do need to fight to make sure that is not just me going through it but other concrete providers that are going through the same thing. I started getting involved with union work and I've organized on issues of higher wages, you know, work better conditions for caregivers specifically in the current area. Who are paid to the in-home support services program. And what that means is that we are essentially negotiating with county county supervisors. So, in those issues, you know how we pressure those people in power is different, right, is is different we need to strategize. So, we right now, you know, understanding that that we do need to negotiate our contract with board supervisors. That means we need to build pressure so that they can actually be friendly to us when when it comes to investing in home care workers, right. We want to make sure that because the people are getting older, right. We want to make sure that we're taking care of our loved ones actually gets paid a living wage. So, two things that before I finished my thought, two things that we dedicated ourselves to doing was we went through, we've gone through a whole history of fighting for better wages, running conditions, but we actually had a 7% penalty on the counties who did not bargain in good faith. That was one of our first fights that we had more than four years ago. So this fight has been going on for about seven years. So this is where it's better wages working conditions for I just as providers. And then, you know, our second strategy was to, to actually build for a ballot measure that will put term limits on the board of supervisors right. So, and then as a third one, it's, you know, starting to understand that we, we're going to need a statewide level bargaining our contract so that everyone that, you know, does this work gets paid the same it's not just it's like different in each county, but essentially, I got involved so that I can start, you know, fighting for those weight, you know, wages what better way for us to be recognized for our work, and by better wages, to be recognized, right, insurance. Many home care providers don't have insurance they don't have. They don't have vacation pay right. So, yeah, so that's pretty much some of the things that I that I started fighting for and advocating for and organizing around in specifically to current county in California. Thank you so much. And, Janae, we have a two part question for you. Um, so can you briefly tell us about what makes Minnesota's new paid family and medical leave program unique. And then after that, could you tell us about how Isaiah brings a faith based component into the care movement organizing which I thought was very interesting and I want to hear about that historically for black communities, especially because faith and movement work have always been deeply intertwined. Sure, sure. So, well, a huge reason why Minnesota's paid family and medical leave policy is so unique is because of how strong it is, particularly around equity and access. And the reason for that is because we have a series of things. One is that we have 12 weeks of family leave and 12 weeks of medical leave, which are stackable up to 20 weeks and that is especially helpful for those who, for example, are are having you know We have really strong job protections to make sure that people don't lose their jobs when they want to be able to when they need to take time off of work. We have an inclusive family definition. And there is really nearly universal coverage for this so we fought hard as I mentioned before to limit carb outs. And so, with all of these things including a progressive wage replacement that means so like up to 90% of your income, you get to receive. So, because of all of these things that makes it really, really equitable across gender and across race, which we know those we're usually the first folks to get cut out of things that that are going to benefit everyone. And so, in regard to, you know, connecting it to Isaiah and our particular voice, landing a faith lens in this because, you know, we organize communities of faith and institutions of faith, largely Christian churches and Christian folks as well as folks who practice Islam and who are Muslim. And so, but we also organize black couple dozen black owned barbershops near a little over 500 childcare centers, we organize folks out in rural Minnesota, and then also young adults and so we have like a very large constituency of people who organize with us. And I think it is especially important to have a strong faith lens in that knowing, which came up earlier around opposition that oftentimes I think opposition tends to weaponize and wield faith in ways that are really really unhelpful for this like collective future that we're talking about together and so when I think about even the how we were very clear on our messaging around paid family and medical leave, knowing that communities of faith and institutions of faith are constantly embedded in community, talking to real people in conversation and communion and communion with real people. One of our own leaders in the barbershops and black congregation cooperative. Her name is Miara. She, her and her husband have six children, and she noted the extreme need for paid family medical even so she took time out of her day to come to the Capitol to record and brought a lovely photo of her of her family with her, and you could audibly hear in the hearing room the awe, you know to her and her family and this is you know a black woman black family who is advocating for her ability to be able to care for her body and her loved ones. And when the time and when the time occurs, and right after her came a lobbyist from the Chamber of Commerce, the testify and he, he voiced the fact that it was very hard to come after she spoke. And that is the kind of things that we need to remember as we're doing this work is that it is about real people it's about our values it's about the things that matter to us, and the folks who usually are trying to come against it. The folks like that lobbyist I'm sure has paid family and medical leave. Right. Tim advocating against it for everybody else to have it was was very, very clear, and he couldn't even deny that when it was his time to testify against what we now have one. And so, so yeah I'll stop there because I know we want to be able to get to to folks who have questions and are watching right now. Absolutely thank you so much. And actually I did just want to let people know watching that we might run over a little bit. Just to make sure that we asked all of the questions about this very important topic and it's very important conversation that we're having so if you all could just bear with us until maybe 305. That would be awesome. And so the last question before we do bounce over to audience hues is going to be for Kristen. And so what are some of the things you've seen at mom's rising and just in the political world that 2020 that is informing how you think about the election coming up next year. We're seeing at moms rising and across the nation and at other organizations just incredible momentum for these policies again all across all political parties. We're seeing momentum at the local level and at the federal level and so we know that people aren't going to give up on voting for candidates who support care policies. And that's a polling that shows that when candidates support paid family medical leave childcare home and community based services. That means that mom voters in particular pay extra attention to those candidates, and it sparks them to actually leave the house and go vote when they're competing interests to have people stay home and not vote so these are voter drivers and that's really important because we need every voter to go out and vote for care candidates in 2024 to ask questions at town halls. And so where do you stand on these care issues to the candidates and to keep raising these issues over and over again. As we've heard from the panelists today and from the report, it takes multiple different efforts at the same time. In order to create the change that we seek. It takes narrative change it takes legislative change and it takes voting change. 76 million mom voters in America, and everybody at some point in life has had a mother. So we are an unstoppable political force that is gaining momentum going into 2024 and I hope that everybody who's watching who's listening who's joining joins a group doesn't have your mom's rising it could be any group that's working on care and builds toward that momentum in 2024 so that we can all win together, because again it's not a question of if but when we'll finally pass these national policies. And when we work together, including the 2024 elections that when we'll come all that sooner. So thank you. I love that question. Of course, thank you all so so much and as we bring Catherine back in in terms to one final question that I believe is best for her to ask because this report is her baby and I just think it feels better she asked this question. And I just want to remind everyone that there's so much more information and full detail in the report including case studies about Sandy and Rochelle work. And so you should definitely check that out and give it a read and now that's the captain. So I would love to end this on a hopeful note and would love to hear briefly from the panelists, whoever or if all of you want to answer. I just started with talking about how many years had go into this and how much groundwork is late. What, what, what, what for each of you keeps you motivated and inspired when progress feels slow and far away because I think so many people in the care movement, you know, go through a lot of ups and downs so what, what is the thing that keeps you going. So really briefly, the thing that keeps me going is organizing. It is what gives me hope in this work. It is being able to talk to the mirrors of the world, the, the pastors the clergy, the e-moms, the barbers who are like this is what matters to me. This is what matters to the people around me. And I feel like I can do something about it, like organizing taps on people's own agency to say we're not going to be a spectator in our own lives where that the government is not just people in a capital or a White House or a city hall, it's us. And we have, we have some abilities and agency to do things together. So that's what gives me hope. So, in, in the same way. So I work with little people and children and families every day so when I have the ability to open my doors and little people run in and are excited to see me or to see their teachers and to know that we are doing something we are making a difference and to also see when my now seniors are children that are graduating college come back and hand me their diploma. And it makes that is what keeps me motivated because we know that we can now follow them from birth to college. And in our teachers and our we've helped parents do that that is the great work that we get to do every day. We have, we have power, the one of my favorite quotes and then I'm going to pass it on is Alice Walker says that the most common way people give up their powers by thinking they don't have any we have power in our voice and our actions. Yeah, thanks. So, as a, as a union represented as a labor organizer the stories I hear from individual woman, woman of color who have been doing this work of, you know, the challenges they go through the issues of the strength and to still care for the most vulnerable and being so selfless selfless about the work it's what keeps me going. Second is understanding the history of care work. Right. Understanding the history of of how caregivers became unionized specifically in California is such a huge win it was a 12 year organizing victory and one of the largest drives ever since the 30s. Right. Um, it just shows that when we get together we can actually win big things. And when we're organizing with caregivers is not just me it's me and my grandmother. It's you and the person that you take care of, and every time that we win something throughout the time right since ever since the time that we won those victories. It's been a long fight but we, I'm actually getting the benefits of those people who won, you know before me, and I wanted to do the same for the folks that are coming after me. So that's what keeps me going, just knowing that we can make this a better thing, especially caregiving is what makes everything go round. You know, when we think about that how proud can we be, you know, to be caregivers, you know, to be changing policy to be just making history because our work is it's so important and I want everyone to you know leave knowing that care work is is such an important work to to be doing. Thank you Cindy Kristen bring us home with what keeps you going. What keeps me going is our stories are power together, our moms rising members and the members of everybody across the country and I have a good story to share with you. Last week we brought in moms from over 20 states to the White House and to the Capitol, and we said hello, we need 16 billion in childcare stabilization funds because we had a childcare cliff, it just happened. We said hello the WIC funds are not sufficient we actually 1.2 billion in WIC funds, because we need to make sure that women infant and children have access to adequate nutrition. And do you know what happened less than a week later, the White House announced that they are going to put those two things in the supplemental budget. Our stories, we are opening avenues together by we I mean everybody on here is opening avenues for people stories to be heard. And as you've heard from the other panelists, our stories are so powerful, our voices are so powerful. And so when we raise our stories together, we see sometimes not always immediate change, and it is a marathon, not a sprint this isn't the solution to all of our problems to have these two items in the supplemental budget. But rather that wave that tsunami is growing so that we can finally build the care infrastructure that we all need so people like my mom who was a childcare worker when I was young, can make ends meet and earn living wages so people like me who was pushed out of the labor force, because I didn't have any paid family medical leave no longer pushed out of the labor force there are millions of people with the same stories that my family that your family that our families have experienced that don't have to be that way for future generations. So my hope is that we are making progress, and that future generations will have it better. Thank you. I knew you were the perfect person to end on Kristen thank you so much always so inspiring I want to thank our panelists so much for being here, and the over 40 people I spoke with for the report to help inform this work. Bridget Schulte for her introduction and I Jen poo for her wonderful remarks. We are, we are over time we're out of time but I just want to say I really hope this is the beginning of many many future conversations about how we continue to build this movement and how we can keep using tactics to work together for a better care future for the future. Thank you to Julia for moderating and I think I think we will I think with that we will adjourn I don't know what the official words are that ends it but thank you and these are ways you can keep in touch with new America.