- Hi, I'm Sylvia Law, and
it's, for the 21st time,
it's my honor to welcome this group
to the Rose Sheinberg lecture.
If you have a program,
you can look on the back
and see the people that
we've had in the past,
and it's a remarkably
accomplished group of people.
The formal words we use
to describe the program
is that it's to invite
people on the cutting-edge
of race, class, and gender to come speak
with folks at the law school.
But the more accurate
description of what we do
is we invite people who are
by and large not lawyers
but very sophisticated about the law,
and never law professors.
(audience laughs)
So today,
we have a program that's
solidly in the great tradition
of the Sheinberg program.
Richard and Jill Sheinberg are responsible
for creating this wonderful institution.
21 years ago, they
wanted to give some money
to the law school, but
had the wit and wisdom
to understand that it was better to try
to target it in a particular way.
And the way that they chose was to create
a committee that's self-perpetuating.
It's dominated by students.
We pick two students each
year from the first-year class
to serve for the entire time
that they're in law school.
We're now open for 1L students,
and I have handouts for how you apply.
It's very simple.
I'm going to, and the Sheinbergs
have been here every time.
Maybe Richard might have
missed once, but maybe not.
They're incredibly loyal to the program
and generous in creating
it and supporting it.
The committee picks the lecture,
organizes the program,
and it's an important
part of all of our lives.
The 3L members of this year's committee
who we'll say goodbye to soon
are Tian Germoo, right here,
and Matt Wasserman in the back,
will be leaving us at graduation.
Molly Lauderback, right
here, right in front of me,
and Nina Slef, who I think is not here.
She has a class.
Erin Collins is the lawyering
member of the committee,
and she's gonna be
replaced by Naomi Sunshine,
who's a graduate of the
law school and wonderful.
Elena Doss has been on
the committee forever,
but she's had a baby a couple months ago
and she may walk in at any moment.
Holly McWiggin has been a
long-time member of the committee
and can't be with us tonight,
but her husband Abdeen is back there
and we'll see her later with a report.
Patricia O'Brian is my faculty
assistant and helps us.
My only job today is to
thank all these people
and to welcome Gara LaMarche.
Gara LaMarche has the honor
of being the only person
who's ever introduced
two Sheinberg lectures.
Now, that says something (laughs),
because we usually ask
the lecturer to tell us,
"Who's somebody who knows you well
"and respects your work and
would be a good speaker?"
and Gara's name comes up again and again,
but this year we're gonna break new ground
and have him do it twice.
He introduced Van Jones in 2010,
and that was also a great lecture.
Gara began his career working for the ACLU
of Texas and of New York.
In past decades, he's promoted progressive
social change through philanthropy.
He helped George Soros to make
the Open Society Institute
a powerhouse in support
of drug policy reform,
in support of issues of in
opposition to mass incarceration,
and most visibly and recently,
in support of LGBT rights
and marriage equality.
Beginning in 2007, he led
Atlantic Philanthropies
in promoting the Affordable Care Act.
That was a home run,
and working to implement it
to make it work for the 99%.
He's now the president of
the Democracy Alliance.
And most of all, Gara has been somebody
who is just a source of inspiration
of thinking about how you work to make
progressive social change happen.
Gara.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you very, very much, Sylvia.
And it's nice to be, I don't know,
who has the distinction of hosting
Saturday Night Live the most times?
Alec Baldwin or something like that,
so maybe I'll go for that kind of record,
do it with the Sheinberg lecture,
so thank you for having me back.
It is a distinct honor to join you today
to introduce my good friend Ai-jen Poo
on the occasion of her delivery
of the Sheinberg lecture
in which she joins a distinguished line
of social justice advocates
and thought leaders.
Those two categories
do not always overlap.
But in the case of today's lecture,
they do in multiple reinforcing ways,
for Ai-jen is someone whose
gifts of heart, brain, and voice
have been fused in the service
of one of the most
important and progressive
and impressive social
justice movements of our time
for the dignity and rights of
those who work in our homes
and give care to our
children and our elders.
Takes nothing away from the
honor you've afforded Ai-jen
this afternoon to note that you and I
are not the only ones to have
noticed how special she is.
I take proud, in fact, that
one of the first such occasions
was her receipt of an Open
Society community fellowship
when she was founding
Domestic Workers United
and I was the director of U.S. programs.
Nevertheless, we've now
really become friends
until we traveled together
some years later to India
where Gloria Steinem,
Sarah Jones, and others
to spend time with
activists working against
the sex trafficking of young girls.
Typically of Ai-jen who believes
in a seamless web of solidarity
with all who struggle to have
their humanity recognized,
her vision and social justice
consciousness have no bounds.
She went on to be recognized
by the Miz Foundation,
where I'm a board member,
as a woman of vision,
and by Time Magazine as
one of the Time 100 in 2012
where Gloria Steinem
compared her with Jane Adams
and Cesar Chavez as a gifted organizer
who knows how to create social
change from the bottom up.
Not to be outdone, Time's
long-time rival Newsweek
named her one of the 150
women who shape the world,
and I have no doubt that Hertz
and Avis or Coke and Pepsi
who are, as we speak, trying
to be the first rental car
or soda company to give Ai-jen an award.
And so of course last fall,
the MacArthur Foundation recognized her
with the equivalent of
an Oscar for activist
by naming her one of their genius fellows.
It comes with $625,000 of prize money.
Now I've known a lot of MacArthur fellows,
and many have taken nice vacations
or bought that summer house
with their well-earned loot.
Ai-jen is funding a scholarship
for domestic workers
and invites others to join her
in matching the MacArthur funds.
I hope you will.
For her, the personal is
politic in more ways than one.
Her own activism on behalf of caregivers
got renewed inspiration from
watching the ways in which
Mrs. Sun, who became a part
of her family as she nursed
Ai-jen's grandmother through a stroke,
now helps her beloved grandmother at 87
to live independently.
One of a number of stories
in the book she wrote
with Ariane Conrad, "The Age of Dignity,"
published by the New Press,
where I'm a board member.
Theme is emerging here.
(audience laughs)
The personal and politic
fuse in another way,
for those who clean our homes and pick up
our children from school and wash and comb
the gray hair of those who raised us
work in the most intimate of settings,
largely in isolation from
others who do similar work.
Isolation too often leads to
exploitation and even abuse.
Ai-jen's genius has been to
help many hundreds of thousands
of domestic workers find one another
and work to improve their
lives and conditions,
in the process lifting us
all to a higher standard.
This work has made a real difference.
In the passage of the New
York State Domestic Workers
Bill of Rights in a few years
later, one in California,
that the struggle has far to go.
We know from recent
reports about the delay
in implementing one of the
movement's big victories.
New rules by the Labor Department
that would have required
employers of home care aides
for the elderly and
disabled to pay at least
the federal minimum wage and
time and a half for overtime.
We are living in a moment
when those left out
of the social compact, left
out of the most cherished
progressive victories for
social welfare legislation
and collective bargaining
are claiming their place
in the human rights picture.
Not only the domestic
workers and caregivers
who work with Ai-jen,
but restaurant workers and taxi drivers
and day laborers and car wish arrows.
Most are immigrants.
Many are women.
And visionaries like Ai-jen
are helping them write
the next chapter of the
great American story.
Ai-jen's genius has played
a large part in this moment,
and her creativity, while now captured
in the timeless form of a book,
has mostly been deployed in the creation
of organizations and movements.
From the cav organizing Asian communities
to Domestic Workers United
to Caring Across Generations
to the new organization Make It Work,
where I'm the board of advisors,
pressing for an economic agenda
in which the lives and concerns of women,
like paid sick leave, equal pay,
predictable hours, are central.
I have the hope that Ai-jen's book,
which you'll hear more
about this afternoon,
will have the impact on public discourse
and awareness that its
antecedents have had.
Books that captured and further sparked
a season of change like Rachel
Carson's, "Silent Spring,"
Ralph Nader's, "Unsafe at Any Speed,"
Betty Friedan's, "The Feminist Mystique,"
Michael Harrington's, "The Other America,"
and Michelle Alexander's, "The
New Jim Crow," among others.
Compared to Jane Adams and Cesar Chavez,
Ralph Nader and Betty Friedan,
you might think Ai-jen
Poo is Mother Teresa,
Nelson Mandela, and Robert Moses
all wrapped up in one,
and you would not be far off,
except that what none of this captures
is a lovely, accessible human being
who does not seek the spotlight
so much as to shine it on others.
Someone whose quiet, courage, and steel
mask a wicked sense of humor
and a zeal for all the beauty and joy
that life and love and heart and nature
and friendship have to offer.
Please welcome, join me in
welcoming my friend Ai-jen Poo.
(audience applauds)
- Good afternoon.
(audience murmurs collectively)
It's really just such a huge honor
for me to be with you this afternoon.
I wanna start by thanking
Jill and Richard Sheinberg,
the Sheinberg family,
for this great, great
honor of giving a lecture
in the name of Rose Sheinberg,
and also to Sylvia Law and Elena Doss
and all the amazing students
here at NYU law school
who we've worked with and partnered with
in the domestic workers movement
over many, many years.
And a word about Gara before I start,
who's not only the Justin Timberlake
of the Sheinberg lecture.
(audience laughs)
He is also a human rights lawyer,
a political strategist,
a philanthropic leader for many decades.
For those of you who may not be familiar
with the world of philanthropy,
there's this field that exists today
called social justice philanthropy,
and it funds everything from
work on mass incarceration
to low-wage worker organizing
to immigrant rights,
organizing and civic engagement
among core people and the
least visible among us,
and it believes in the
leadership of the people
who are on the front lines of inequality
as protagonists in shaping the future.
Without the field of social
justice philanthropy,
there would be no domestic
worker movement today.
And without Gara LaMarche,
there would be no field of
social justice philanthropy.
So I just wanted to
make sure that you knew
that we have among us a giant
who is like the wizard of Oz,
only the real deal, the wiz.
Thank you, Gara, for everything you do.
(audience applauds)
Yes.
PowerPoint.
Who's operating?
- She is.
(woman murmuring)
Okay.
You want the video or your PowerPoint?
- PowerPoint.
- Okay.
- Okay.
So, one of my favorite
speeches of all time
was given by the author George Saunders
at the 2013 Syracuse
University commencement.
I don't know if any of you
read that speech or heard it.
In speaking to the young graduates,
Saunders helped them
anticipate their futures.
And he said the things
we regret most in life
are not the things that you might expect.
They are rather failures of kindness.
Those moments when another
human being was there
in front of you suffering
and you responded sensibly,
reservedly,
mildly.
Or to look at it from the
other end of the telescope,
who in your life do you
remember most fondly,
with the most undeniable
feelings of warmth?
Probably those who were kindest to you.
Now Saunders goes on
to admit that kindness
is in fact not easy.
But he believes that it
becomes more natural with age.
He quotes the poet Hayden Carruth
who wrote near the end of his life
that he was mostly love now.
Saunders wished for the
graduates to embrace
this awareness early,
avoiding failures in kindness,
and striving to be ever more
kind and connected to others
and ultimately mostly love.
Now, I come from an immigrant family
and had the great gift of growing up
with my grandparents.
How many of you had the gift
of having your grandparents
involved as you grew up as a young person?
That's great.
I don't know if they grew
to become mostly love,
but that is certainly where they were
by the time I entered the world.
They showered by sister
and me with kindness.
They cared for us, laughed with us,
offered important perspective on life,
and I learned, from my grandmother,
I learned how to appreciate
and cultivate laughter.
She's one of those people who believes
that if you laugh deeply
from the bottom of your belly
three times a day it extends your life.
(audience laughs)
(Ai-jen clears throat)
She also taught me how to use the potty,
a skill that's proven very useful.
(audience laughs)
My grandmother also taught me how to cook,
which is admittedly
still a work in progress.
From my grandfather,
I learned hard work and discipline.
He was also a tai chi instructor,
and so I also learned tai chi from him.
And every night we had a ritual
of sitting in his blue
chair in his room together
and we watched the show
Wheel of Fortune every night
and developed a deep appreciation
for the hidden strategies of the show.
I feel incredibly fortunate
to have been cared for
by both of them and carry them with me
through life every day.
And I'd like to ground
this afternoon's talk in
your own stories today and ask that you
actually take a few minutes right now.
Turn to the person sitting next to you.
Hopefully it's somebody
that you don't know.
But turn to the person sitting next to you
and share a short story
about someone in your life
who's cared for you and the value
of that relationship in your life.
We'll just take a couple of
minutes to share back and forth.
(audience talking among themselves)
Okay (clears throat) we're
gonna start wrapping up.
(audience talking among themselves)
Thank you so much for
sharing your stories.
It's my favorite thing to
watch the energy in the room
when we're sharing
stories about the people
who we love and care about.
Could we give a round of
applause for all the people
in our lives who've cared for us?
(audience applauds)
My grandparents, both of them
were extraordinary people,
and even though they're on
different sides of my family,
they actually had very
similar life experiences
growing up in rural poverty in China,
experiencing war, migration,
raising families, hard work,
each a very full life
of hardship and triumph.
And then in their later years,
their stories began to diverge.
My paternal grandfather
lived to the age of 93,
a very long and for the
most part healthy life.
However, the final months
will haunt me forever.
After my grandfather's
vision and other functions
started to deteriorate,
we were unable to find
appropriate home care support for him
and had to place him in a
nursing home against his wishes.
I visited him there, and even now,
my memory of that first visit
still gives me the shivers.
My grandfather's room,
his bed was in a dark room
with about half a dozen other people,
some completely still and unmoving,
the others wailing in pain and suffering.
It smelled of mold and illness.
And when I found him,
it was clear that my grandfather
hadn't slept or eaten for
what seemed like days.
And though he was alive enough
to tell me he was afraid,
I knew that we was dying inside.
And he passed away after only
three months in that facility.
Now on the other hand,
my maternal grandmother is still alive
and she just turned 89 a few weeks ago.
I visited her for Lunar New Year.
We celebrated the year of the
ram, goat, sheep, whichever.
There's some controversy
over which animal it is.
She lives in her own apartment
in southern California
across the street from a Chinese grocery,
not far from a Chinese hair salon
that knows how to do her perm just right.
She's incredibly active.
She goes to church twice a week,
and she sings in the church senior choir.
That's their Thanksgiving performance
last year of the senior choir.
She and I play mahjong together,
although I'm not her
preferred mahjong partner.
She lets me win about
once a year on my birthday
just so that I keep engaged.
She thinks it's a lifelong
process, you know,
for me to learn how to
play mahjong appropriately.
But she is living life
on her own terms at 89.
And after caring for so
many of us in our family,
it just brings me so much
joy to know that at 89
she is able to live life on her own terms.
Two grandparents, both made
of extremely strong stock,
both loved dearly by their families.
So what made the difference?
Mrs. Sun.
Mrs. Sun is the home care worker
who looks after my grandmother.
A few times a week, Mrs.
Sun comes and assists
with the things that have become
more difficult for her over time.
Things like lifting,
cleaning, sometimes cooking,
although that's usually a team effort.
Buying groceries.
Our last big scare was when my grandmother
slipped and fell as she was rushing
to catch the bus to get to church on time.
Now Mrs. Sun or her
husband always make sure
that one of them gets my
grandmother to church.
Mrs. Sun is also an immigrant from China
and has become a key part
of my family's care team.
Her own family of two
grown sons and a husband
have become an extension of ours.
Note, these relationships
are really strong
and in fact quite beautiful.
But like so many families
with aging relatives,
we did not have a plan.
That lack of a plan proved painful
in the case of my grandfather.
A few years later in the
case of my grandmother,
we were just fortunate to find Mrs. Sun.
We just got lucky.
And having her has changed everything,
particularly my grandmother's
quality of life.
And what's become clear
to me in all of this
is that we as a country
don't have a plan either.
Whether you're an
overstretched family caregiver,
an underpaid professional caregiver,
or you can't afford the
long-term care you need,
or you can't find the
right long-term care option
for your family, you're not alone.
It's all of us.
And it's gotten to the point
where we as individuals,
as families, and as a nation
can't afford not to have a plan
because every eight seconds
someone turns 65 in
America today (coughs).
This year, four million of
us will reach retirement age
such that by the year
2030, 20% of our population
will be over the age of 65.
20%.
The baby boom generation is aging
plus advances in health care and medicine
that have extended our life expectancy
by nearly 20 years since the year 1930.
The combined effect is what
some call the silver tsunami.
I prefer the term elder boom.
Whatever you call it, what
this means is that by 2050,
27 million of us will
need some form of care
or assistance just to meet
our basic daily needs.
Now, for the vast majority
of the 27 million of us,
care does not mean or will not mean
living at home with the help and support
of someone like Mrs. Sun.
For most, elder care will
mean something more like
what my grandfather experienced,
unless we do something
very, very different.
And that dark ending
that my grandfather faced
is too costly.
There's that emotional cost
of what my family lives with,
the feeling of failure.
There's what he endured, my grandfather,
in his final months.
But then there's also the financial cost.
The average private room
stay in a nursing home
costs $87,000 per year.
That's unimaginable for 27 million people.
Possibly it's actually,
but really not possible.
So then perhaps the solution is simple.
Perhaps all we need are more
caregivers like Mrs. Sun.
The more than 90% of us who
would much prefer to age
in place in our homes and
connected to our communities
could just be supported to do so
by caregivers like Mrs. Sun.
And we could actually age the way we want.
So instead of spending that $87,000
per year on nursing homes,
we could spend that
money on quality, trained
home care workers like Mrs. Sun, right?
Well, not exactly,
because the more than two million workers
who currently work in
homes as home care workers,
personal care aides, and
domestic caregivers today
can barely sustain in their jobs.
It's the kind of job that people
don't even recognize as a real job.
It's called companionship or help,
anything but real work.
And we're still fighting for inclusion
in basic, basic labor
rights and protections.
Many of the workers in this workforce
are also undocumented immigrants,
trapped in the shadows.
The wages are unfathomably low.
Average wage is less than $9 per hour.
So low that the women,
mostly women of color,
that we count on to
care for our loved ones
simply cannot care for their own.
It's to the point where 30%
of the home care workforce
must rely on public
assistance for food security.
And many live in fear of being separated
from their own families
as a result of our immigration
enforcement policies.
So what does this mean
in the lives of the women
who do this work as professionals?
Mirla Baldonado is a Filipina
immigrant caregiver in Chicago
who helps elders in the
community live independently.
She's had over 20 clients,
working 24-hour shifts four days a week,
lifting her clients in and out of bed,
bathing, cooking, administering medicine,
helping with physical therapy, cleaning.
For all of this work, Mirla takes home
between $5 and $9 per hour.
And then what does Mirla do?
Because she's also a parent,
she sends money home to the Philippines
to support her five children
who are living there with relatives.
But with that plus the cost of rent
for the room that she lives in,
some weeks Mirla barely
has any money left over.
And she described to
me on several occasions
that she has gone for days eating nothing
but hard boiled eggs
and bananas to survive.
So we can stay on the same dark path
of unsustainable home care
wages and working conditions,
which reinforces an
unsustainable overdependence
on nursing homes that
no one wants to live in.
Or, we can seize upon this
moment of demographic change,
this moment of opportunity to create
a whole new system to
care for our families
and care for the workers too.
Think of this as a care grid,
like the grid of infrastructure
that once brought water
and electricity to every home in America.
A grid of infrastructure
and capacity to bring
real caregiving choices to
every family in this country.
And if we look closely enough,
all around us we can see the
seeds of what is possible
and where we need to go in the future.
We have naturally occurring
retirement communities
and the village movement,
designed as communities
for older people to pool
resources and purchasing power
and share services that
enhance their quality of life,
like caregivers.
In the state of Hawaii,
this legislative session,
champions will be
introducing the first state
social insurance program
for long-term care,
supporting families to
receive their choice
of long-term care for up to 365 days.
The state of Washington
has created the country's
foremost training facility
for home care workers,
training 40,000 professional caregivers
in 12 languages in consumer-driven care.
Utilizing the most
cutting-edge training content
and methodology, this
facility has elevated
the quality of care
for people in the state
as well as the quality of jobs,
and the average wages
for home care workers
in the state of Washington is
up to $12 and $13 per hour.
As a result, Washington state
is among the most prepared
among all states for what's to come.
And in the last four years,
domestic workers and caregivers
have passed state-wide legislation
to establish basic rights
on the job in four
states, with Massachusetts
being the most recent state
whose bill just went
into effect on April 1st.
Yes.
(audience applauds)
One of the strongest bills
in the country to date,
including maternity leave for caregivers.
These examples are just the
beginning of what's needed.
The care grid of the future
must be a connective lifeline
of creative solutions that individuals,
families, public policy leaders,
legislatures, and
entrepreneurs create together.
It will support choice in how
we receive and access care.
It will make quality care
affordable and accessible
while bringing poverty-wage
jobs out of the shadows
and turning them into millions
of good care jobs for the future.
This is our moment to take caregiving,
what has been a private and
often isolated conversation,
into the national public
policy conversation
about the future of this nation.
Another caregiver whose story
I write about in my book,
Erlinda, shared about a
client that she calls My Lady,
who always would ask her to sing to her
because Erlinda has a very
beautiful singing voice.
One particular day, rather
than ask her to sing,
she said, "Give me your hand."
And Erlinda knew right away
that she was going to transition.
So she immediately got on the phone
and called the family together,
and together they stayed with Her Lady.
And she was proud that she
could be there in that moment,
ensuring that Her Lady was in good hands
and surrounded by love in that moment.
Just as Erlinda's family
remembers her kindness,
Erlinda thinks of Her Lady often.
We remember in life and ultimately rely
on those at the end of our
lives who are kindest to us.
We need a care system that is mostly love.
A care grid that channels dignity,
enhances choice, respect, health,
self-determination,
and fairness, and love.
Especially as more and more of us age
and hopefully grow in kindness,
we need a care system
that cares for all of us,
including the workers.
And in creating such a system,
we will begin to lay the foundation
for an economy and a democracy that honors
the full diversity of who we are
and who we're becoming as a nation.
Opening up jobs with real
pathways to opportunity,
out of the shadows.
Real pathways to citizenship
and new supports for workers, immigrants,
our elders, people of all
generations and walks of life.
And to be clear, the demographic
shifts in this country
that we're about to
experience are profound.
By 2040, we will be a majority
people of color nation,
and by 2030, we will be
20% over the age of 65.
The older population will
be significantly whiter,
and the younger population
will be significantly
more of color, particularly immigrant.
In this context, we could run the risk
of becoming the kind of country
where our interests are constantly
being pitted against one another
along lines of race and generation
if we don't present an alternative vision
for the future of this country
that actually holds and
recognizes all of our dignity.
It will be up to us to make it clear
that amidst all of this change
that there is a shared vision
for a healthy, secure American family
that benefits all of us
and that coming together
toward that vision
will ultimately make the country
more whole and connected.
Care can connect us all.
A vision for a more caring,
just future for all of us,
and it will take all of us to create,
and that is what Caring
Across Generations,
our campaign, is all about.
I'd like to queue up a video
to bring into the room some
of the faces and stories
of the leaders of this campaign,
and then I just have a few more thoughts
to leave you with after the video.
- Okay.
Sorry, one moment.
- You are
(piano tones)
a wonderful, joyful, loving person.
- You are like a father figure to me.
- You are
just gentle.
- We care about each other,
and we take an interest in each other.
- Before I came to this country,
I was taking care of my grandmother.
So I thought I could do the job.
- I took it for granted that, you know,
if I wanted to do
anything, I would get up,
go out shopping, visiting people.
Before Julie, that's no longer the case.
(melancholy piano music)
- I noticed you were changing years ago.
- After I been able to
get you to go outside,
I got the opportunity then to
go places with you.
- When I got home from
rehab after being away
for over three months,
the first thing I saw
were pink balloons that you
had put up around my door
welcoming me back, and
I knew I was truly home.
- I am totally honored to
be a caregiver for you.
It is a great privilege and a joy for me.
- There are so many things
that I still can't do
that I depend on you to help me,
and the help is given so freely
and with so much love,
and that makes me feel a lot better.
And still independent,
but as they say,
independent with benefits.
- We are not only just caregivers,
you are nutritionists,
you are a nurse,
you're the doctor.
(melancholy piano music)
- You are my mother, Julie Davis,
and you are loved by
a whole lot of people.
- You are Dr. Morrie Steiner.
You are my patient, your
pediatrician, war veteran.
You have taught me things that I know
take me through the rest of my life.
- You are my community,
but you're even more than that.
You are my friends.
And as much as you've done for me,
it's nothing that I
wouldn't do for you also.
(melancholy piano music)
- [Woman] That makes me
cry every time I watch.
- May has seen this 50
times and still cries.
Okay, so that gives you
a sense of the stories
that we're connecting in this vision
for a more caring America.
And because we're at one of the premier
public interest law schools in the nation,
I wanted to say a few
words about politics,
policy, and the new social contract
in this moment because it's all related.
We live in this really unique moment
in the history of this country.
Inequality is at an all-time high.
Our democracy is in
jeopardy with unprecedented
amounts of corporate money
flooding into elections
and corporate lobbyists defining the realm
of the politically possible.
The far right has gained enormous
momentum in recent years.
Republicans control both
Congress and the Senate
and could conceivably gain control
of the White House next year.
Our courts have been stacked
by conservative judges
over the course of the last 30 years
at every level on up to the Supreme Court.
And there are more
conservative-controlled state houses
today than there have been
in the last 100 years.
So what does this mean?
It means that the political spectrum
continues to get pulled
towards the far right
as does the realm of public policy.
Low income and working
families are for the most part
on the defensive, struggling to defend
the gains of past generations.
And if we're not careful,
we'll soon be forced to
defend the gains of the 1930s.
Now what does that mean in
the real lives of people?
When the New Deal was being negotiated
more than 75 years ago,
southern members of
Congress refused to support
the labor law provisions of the New Deal,
including the National Labor Relations Act
and the Fair Labor Standards Act
if they included two groups of workers,
farm workers and domestic workers,
who were African American at the time.
So, in a concession to
southern members of Congress,
those laws were passed,
explicitly excluding those
two groups of workers.
And to this day, farm
workers and domestic workers
live and work in the
shadow of racial exclusion.
Poverty wages, long
hours, unsafe conditions,
at the bottom of our economy,
despite the precious work
for millions of families.
Over many generations, farm
workers and domestic workers
organized and sought to
change those exclusions.
In 1974, domestic workers
successfully gained inclusion
in some minimum wage protections
under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
It took organizing, movement
building, and advocacy,
but there was a loophole
that remained in place.
Something called the
companionship exemption.
Again, excluding
caregivers for the elderly
and people with disabilities
because it was
companionship, not real work.
Now, this current generation
of the domestic workers movement
has been fighting to change and address
these exclusions once and for all.
Since 2009 when the first
group of domestic workers
went to the Department
of Labor in Washington
to push for stronger enforcement
of domestic worker rights,
we have been working to
bring the nearly two million
caregivers who are still excluded
now once and for all under
minimum wage protection.
And I'm proud to say that
in what I believe to be
one of the most important victories
for low-wage workers and
women of this administration,
we were successful.
On January 1st the new
home care rule change
was set to go into effect
to bring 1.8 million
home care workers and caregivers
under minimum wage and
overtime protections
for the first time in 75 years.
Unfortunately, however, let's clap.
We should clap.
(audience applauding)
Yes.
Now, the story takes a turn
because the home care industry lobby,
which does not wanna pay
minimum wage and overtime,
filed a lawsuit to try to stop
the rule from going into effect.
And the case was heard
by a DC district judge
that not only ruled in favor of industry
but vacated the entire rule.
So now the deal, well, the
Department of Labor is appealing
the ruling and it's being
fought out in the courts.
And in the meantime, our
movement is actively working
in partnership with
consumers and other advocates
at the state level to push for states
to adopt and prepare
to implement the change
so that the rule can be implemented
without any negative impact
on how services are delivered
and we create a climate of
inevitability for this change
from the states on up.
It's an ongoing struggle in 2015
for these basic protections.
And I'm sure many of
you are also following
the litigation against the President's
executive action on immigration, yes?
So as you see, these basic changes
so minimal and so far actually
from what we actually need,
right, are under severe threat and attack.
And the truth is, we
are and will be fighting
on every front in this way,
both defensively and offensively,
because our movements are relatively weak
in relationship to what we are up against.
And our old models and
institutions that have anchored
progressive power and
social change are outdated.
From trade unions to old
models of electioneering,
we simply haven't kept up with
the changing global economy
and all the new alignments
and concentrations
of wealth and power that define
this reality that we live in.
We haven't built the power to define
the future in our new context.
But I feel incredibly hopeful,
and I want you to feel that way too,
because change is happening all around us,
in the economy, in the nature of work,
in the structure of families,
in our demographics,
in our popular culture
and American political life,
and amidst change there is
always opportunity to contend.
There's always room for new
protagonists, new alignments,
new convergences of
communities and movements.
And the experiences that
have existed at the margins
are becoming increasingly
defining of the whole.
Domestic workers used to be considered
a shadow, marginal workforce.
Today, the conditions that are associated
with domestic work are
increasingly defining
of the whole of the American workforce.
More and more people can identify
with domestic workers and caregivers.
More and more people can identify
with the formerly incarcerated
as more and more experience
being locked out of real
opportunity in this unusually
unequal and cruel economy.
Those of us who not only
want progressive change
but need it are actually in the majority.
And if we were to look
back at the new deal
and think about the story that I told,
even the gains of the
1930s and '60s had holes.
They were not gains that
necessarily benefited
or uplifted all of us.
There were profound exclusions
with profound implications.
So what gives me hope
and energy in this moment
is that in the midst of all of this change
that's happening all around us,
we have the opportunity to put into place
a new framework for public policy,
a new social contract,
a long overdue new social contract,
one that learns from past
errors and exclusions
and what reflects the true essence
of the 21st century reality,
the reality that we live with today.
And it will be this generation,
you at this law school, us together,
who will lead the way in shaping
what that new social contract looks like.
Just as law students right here at NYU
worked alongside domestic workers to craft
the breakthrough New York
Domestic Worker Bill of Rights,
my hope is that all of
you will work alongside
the many movements for
social justice today
to develop the new social contract
that will uplift all of us,
with one major caveat.
Building power must be a
focal point of that work.
We must build a significant force
behind our values if we want our values
to shape the future of
the social contract.
We must achieve an entirely
new level of power and impact
in our social movements to
open up the political space
to win what our communities
and our children truly deserve.
The new social contract
must not be defined,
not by what's considered
politically possible today.
We must build the power
to fundamentally redefine
the realm of what's possible,
and it is fundamentally
a question of power.
Now there is a path to power
through organizing and movement building,
and where it's unclear, we
must simply get out there
and create it as we build it
through elevating new protagonists
like domestic workers and
other low-wage workers,
through building powerful movements
with integrated strategies,
where policy, litigation,
narrative, and culture change,
organizing and civic engagement, all of it
are part of a shared strategy
to build and exercise
the power of real people.
We need to be dreaming boldly
and organizing broadly.
We must be prepared for
a long-term journey.
And we must always remember,
at the end of the day,
what is politically possible
and ultimately what is considered justice
will be defined by how
powerful our movements
for human rights and dignity become,
and that is up to us.
To that end, on each of your
chairs at the table out front,
there's a way for us to keep in touch.
If you fill out the card
that is on your tables,
even with just your name and email,
then we can start building
the caring majority
one person and one card at a time.
The caring majority we need
to live and work with
dignity in this country,
and I so hope you will join us.
Thank you so much.
(audience applauds)
Questions?
And I really do hope this is uplifting.
It was meant to be very
optimistic and hopeful.
You all are so serious.
- [Man] I'll start with a question.
- Okay, good.
- [Woman] I have a microphone for you.
- [Man] Thank you very much.
I can speak loudly.
- It's being recorded.
- Oh okay.
Thank you so much.
You paint a very positive kind of picture
of the caregiver-recipient relationship.
Do you focus on, and I guess
maybe this is the lawyer in me,
the potential of abuse of
the caregiver abuse aspect?
So I don't know if that's
something you focus on (mumbles).
- Yeah, absolutely.
(man mumbles)
No, I mean, we definitely
know that abuse happens
on every side of this equation,
whether it's of workers or of seniors
or of family members.
And one of the things
that we talk a lot about
is in a shadow industry, a lot
of shadow behavior happens.
And part of what we need to do
is really recognize that
this is a profession,
this is an essential part of our economy,
and these caregiving relationships
are something that need to be formalized
in such a way that people really take,
think of them as
professional relationships
and it receives the kind
of training and support
that any other professional sector would.
So, that's sort of how we think about it.
We absolutely recognize
that abuses will happen,
and that is definitely one of the things
that we're trying to
prevent in the future.
Mm hmm.
Yeah?
- [Man] You talked about
in Washington state
how the higher wages and higher training
how it translates into better care.
How do you rate that
(mumbles) the country?
What is your standard of better care?
- Well, right now, there
are no training standards
for home care workers
and personal care aides,
and oftentimes agencies that
say they offer training,
what they're offering is
like a three-page handout
that you fill out and hand in.
And so it's really all over the map,
the kind of preparation
that people are receiving.
There's everything from
cultural competency issues
to safety issues and all kinds of issues
that are not being
addressed on the front end
through lack of preparation,
and so one of the things
that we're really focused on
is looking at some of the
best, most comprehensive models
for training around the country
that really take into consideration
the varied conditions and experiences
and situations that caregivers,
professional caregivers,
will walk into and making
sure that people have
the best baseline preparation as possible
and then also counting
on families and consumers
to offer a level of training as well,
personalized training and support.
So, I mean, I thinks it's
kind of like in general,
I think what I would
say is like caregivers,
both family caregivers,
family members who are
caring for their family,
and professional caregivers
are like superheroes.
They're just, it's like the
unsung heroes of our society,
and we need to move from a superhero model
to a super friends model,
where we're actually
like all hands on deck
figuring out what are the
public policy solutions,
what are the systems, what is the training
and support we can
offer to make these jobs
better jobs to facilitate the
role of the family caregiver
and to elevate the quality of care.
It's gonna really be a,
it's not one solution.
It's gonna have to be a series
of innovations, I think.
- [Woman] I'm interested in
finding out the training,
specifically one of the things I find that
(Ai-jen's cough drowns out voice)
is the ability to maintain personal
viente ti time person and place.
I go and see different places,
whether it's assisted
living where they have
their personal aides
where it's total silence,
and I think this is an area that should be
an area of concentration
in terms of teaching the aides
to maintain that person alert,
and it's not happening.
I think that's a serious
problem with the aides.
The other thing is that
teaching them skills
in terms of listening skills,
which they often don't have, and they...
They often lack empathy,
not because necessarily
they don't have the empathy.
They do not have the skills,
the listening skills that
an elder would require
and thereby sometimes the
aide's not being prepared,
they become abusive.
How are you going to,
how are you addressing those things?
- Well you raised a few important points.
One, I think, is just the
kinds of, the approach
to caregiving in our current system,
which is very much an institutional model,
a nursing home model.
Have any of you seen the
documentary "Alive Inside"?
Okay, it's about
personalized music therapy
in the treatment of
people with Alzheimer's
and dementia in nursing homes,
and a lot of issues get
raised in that documentary,
but one is really about
how much our entire
health care system and
our long-term care system
is oriented towards delay of death
and pharmaceutical-based
treatments and expensive procedures
as opposed to quality of life
and a more human approach to caregiving,
one that involves good
listening, real presence,
more caring, like putting the care
back in health care, right?
And so, that is one of
the big culture shifts
that we think needs to happen
is that there has to be
a much more human and humane approach
to health care generally
but a real focus on quality of life
and dignity and independence and choice
and actually living longer,
a full life longer, right?
The idea that we are all living longer
is actually an incredible blessing.
The fact that we have longer to learn,
to teach, to connect,
to work, to contribute,
to receive, and it is only realized,
that potential is only realized
when we have the right
supports and plan in place
to support people to live well
at different stages of life,
and I think that that's a big area
that requires everything
from kind of rethinking
the way our nursing home care system works
to creating more home- and
community-based options
to strengthening this workforce,
better training, better preparation,
both for families and for the workforce.
There's so many dimensions to it,
and I think a lot of what you're saying
is that we have to be more humane overall
in how we think about this
work and these relationships,
and I would say that our
campaign really agrees with that.
- [Woman] But I think it's
not just that general.
You have to have an
agenda for those workers
with the specific skills
because those skills can be taught.
And they are not.
When the training that
supposedly these agencies provide
is maybe how you change
them, how to move them,
when in reality there is no training
in terms of how to maintain
that personal learn
connected and feeling competent,
which is basic for that person
to really live a meaningful life.
- Yes, I--
- [Woman] And I would like
to see a program actually.
- Well that's actually good,
because there are a few different pilots
that are happening around the country
that are about stronger,
much more in-depth and thorough training
in a range of skills for this workforce.
And I'm not sure if it includes everything
that you're thinking of,
but there are six pilots
happening around the country
that have been supported
through the Affordable Care Act.
And there are groups like ours
that are piloting many
pilots around the country
on everything from
personalized music therapy
for people with Alzheimer's
to mindfulness for caregivers,
mindfulness training and
meditation for caregivers.
But I think the point that you're making
that this is skilled work,
that it requires real
skills and it's difficult,
but it is trainable, like
that is absolutely right.
That is absolutely right.
- [Woman] Hi, everyone.
My name is Jennifer Minot,
and I am a child caregiver
for the past 27 years.
When I have been in contact
with home care workers
because of I've adopted
two seniors in my home
that I check in on every day,
and I have found the reality of it all
is that even though some
of these girls are trained
to do the job that they do,
they measure it by the
monetary part of it.
It's like, I'm not being paid (mumbles).
So I'm gonna give what I'm being paid for.
And this is the reality of it.
(mumbles) skill.
A lot of them have learned well,
but because they're not being
paid fairly for what they do,
they measure what they do.
They do just what they
think they're being paid for
and nothing more.
And I see that every day as
I talk to home care workers
within the same community
that I monitor with seniors,
and I do understand them,
I do understand them.
It becomes frustrating when they're like
almost like minimum wages
and they work very hard
and they have to give a lot of themselves,
and they're not gonna
give so much of themselves
if they're not being paid fairly.
And to those who are being
who should be trained,
if we compare Seattle to New York,
they are being paid fairly
and they gonna give just
what they gonna be paid for.
And it's hard to just
say to not understand it
because the truth is,
it happens in my industry as a nanny too.
A lot of nannies go all day,
and they grow to love these children
and they put their whole
selves into this work
and they really work
hard, even though that,
and some of them do measure their pay.
They measure it, and they're not
doing anything more than that, you know.
And that is all, it
all stems from respect.
A lot of people are
still not being respected
for the things that they
do as domestic workers,
you know, home care workers, nannies,
child caregivers, whatever you call them.
So if they don't get the respect,
they have to live from day to day
and they have to live on these
minimum wages that they get
and the small money that they get,
so they choose to do what
they think is worth it,
to whatever, to measure out, you know.
So, we have to correct so
many things in the industry,
and that's one of the things,
and so, what is fair pay?
What is fair pay for fair work?
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- I had a question about models
that you see elsewhere
when you talk about,
you know, great vision and pilot projects
being done in other
localities that are successful
or looking likely to be successful.
But outside of the U.S. borders,
do you and your project and your work
see other countries, other nations
that are doing a better job,
systematically doing a better job?
I mean, rather than invent
something and dream something
(mumbles) actually happening
and operational somewhere else.
- Yeah, yep.
Well in my book I write
about Japan and Germany,
who both have universal
long-term care programs.
And I also write about a program in Japan
called the caregiving
relationship tickets (coughs).
The caregiving relationship tickets,
which is essentially a
sophisticated time-banking program
where you can go and
provide care for a neighbor
and then bank that time and those services
and ask that someone
then care for your mother
who lives on the other side of the country
for the same amount of hours or services,
or you can switch, you
can trade, you can barter,
or you could get those
services for yourself,
that assistance for yourself.
So it's a really wonderful
and very effective
time-banking program that's
been scaled in Japan.
And they're testing versions of it
here in New York, I believe.
I know in Los Angeles, as well,
there's some test happening.
So I think that particularly
those kinds of solutions
that leverage innovations and technology,
we're gonna see more of those spreading,
which I think is great.
And a lot of people ask
me about robot caregivers.
(audience laughs)
It's true.
They do.
People are obsessed with robots right now.
And they talk about
the fact that in Japan,
they're starting to use
robots as caregivers,
and my sense is that it's not in any way
the way that people think about it,
and the way that we collectively, I think,
should think about it
is that there's actually
a tremendous role for
technology in improving
the quality of care and improving
the quality of these jobs.
These jobs are incredibly
strenuous, difficult jobs
that technology could
potentially make much easier.
And so, how do we think about the values
that will drive tech
innovation in this space
and make sure that it's
really about improving
quality of life and quality
of jobs and quality of care
as opposed to, you know,
the next big tech trend
that drives sales in whatever market.
And so I do think that
there will be a role,
a really important role for technology
in helping us find some of
these creative solutions.
Mm hmm.
There's a, in the back over there, yeah?
- [Man] So you had mentioned earlier that
any resource ordinance
have these amazing ways
of (mumbles) divisiveness among
already marginalized people.
So, I mean, I see you
organizing almost two
invisible groups, right?
One, the elderly.
The other, the workers.
And there is, at least
from my perspective,
immense potential to pit
those two groups against each other.
- That's right.
- [Man] And, which
(mumbles) tragic outcome
of the status quo.
I'm curious, in your organizing models
how do you not only give in
to that but overcome that
and build community between two groups
whose liberation is clearly mutual.
Not clearly, but from the
outsider's perspective, tied,
and how do you base building
how to build on both sides
of that equation without
creating false competition?
- Right, no, that's a great question.
I think partly it's a
long-term, short-term.
There's a long-term,
short-term dynamic to it.
In the long-term, this
vision of more choice,
better quality, more
affordable, and better jobs,
like everyone agrees with that.
In the short-term, we're
dealing with state budgets,
state Medicaid budgets that
keep getting shrunk and cut,
and so even in thinking
about this home care worker
wage increase or bringing
home care workers
under minimum wage and
overtime protections,
we are dealing with this very challenge
that you lay out in real time
because what the states are now doing,
and this is why I name
that conservative control
over states has real
implications for people
who are struggling to survive already,
basically they're taking this
as an opportunity to say,
"Well sure, you want higher wages,
"then we're gonna cut services.
"We're gonna cap hours."
And so we have been actively
working with consumers
and people with disabilities
and senior advocacy groups
to make sure that this
rule change is implemented
in a way that doesn't have any
negative impact on services.
But the truth of the matter is,
I mean, we've been able to
beat back cuts in California,
but in other places, we
may not be successful
because we have a lot of
organized groups in California
who have visibility and power
and who know how to really
push on the legislature,
and that's again why I say
it is a question of power.
It's like can we build
enough power in enough time
to be able to ensure that
not only do we prevent harm
but that we actually get to a place
of being on offensive
to create what we need.
Protect what we have, create what we need.
And it's hard because it
is an ongoing struggle
where people are asking
us to choose, right?
To rob from one bucket for another.
I mean, people are talking about cuts
to childcare to fund elder care.
Really?
No, we're families and we actually need
a huge reinvestment in families
as opposed to these cuts in services.
And so, we have to figure
out how we build enough power
through aligning enough of
these different constituency
groups that we can prevent these cuts
while actually figuring
out how we get to the place
where we can create the solutions
that actually lift all boats.
And many of them will
require a significant
government investment at a time
when the agenda is to
shrink government, right?
So that's a thing that we're gonna
have to really face head on,
is that do we wanna be the kind of country
where we turn on each other,
or do we wanna turn to one another
and really kind of and build
the power we need to win?
It's really the hardest thing
because it's life and death, you know?
It's like for everyone involved,
these are really serious stakes.
- [Woman] I just wanted
to thank you for starting
this conversation with the words kindness.
I attended law school, have
practiced law for many years,
and have even taught law,
and the word kindness
is rarely if ever heard.
I don't know.
Maybe I missed Kindness 101
when I went to law school,
but it's rarely if ever mentioned
when we talk about these issues,
and yet, as someone who's, I've done,
in the last 20 years, I've
been human service provider
and it's been through that process
that I've come to
understand the importance
of that sort of almost intangible
- That's right.
- but very important component
of how we interact with one another.
I've seen it among early
childhood providers,
how you can have someone
who's technically very knowledgeable.
Happens in medicine.
You can have a surgeon who's
technically very knowledgeable
but who lacks the human
empathy and ability to interact
in an appropriate way with patients,
and I sometimes wonder if we don't,
we can't find a way to make
sure the training is necessary
but we also understand
that it's not sufficient.
The issue that the
woman in the back raised
about being able to
impart knowledge to people
who work with other human beings
about how to interact with them,
not only in terms of technical skill,
how you move the person
from one place to another,
but how you interact with
them as a human being.
How you're present to them.
I think that's an important part
of the work that you're doing,
and your encouragement
that someone take that up
I think is something
that I really support.
I think it's really, really important.
So thank you very much
for kind of introducing
that component to this discussion.
- Thank you.
Now, I think that
relationships and the quality
and texture of our relationships
are gonna be the key at every level.
How we receive and provide
the care that we need
in the future and how we also organize
and build the movements
that we need to win.
And, yeah.
Kindness is key (chuckles).
Mm hmm?
- [Woman] Given the very
inspiring way that you described
this problem, I think we can all conclude
that it's not only universal
but really non-partisan,
and I'm wondering to what extent
(Ai-jen's cough drowns out voice)
on that basis to not
only our legislature here
in New York state but in federally.
Money is the issue.
It's the bottom of the problem,
and we got to be able to
convince people that there are,
the money that is now in
the system is enormous
and not doing a very good job.
There could be better ways
of using these (mumbles)
and finding ways of adding to it
so that we do get a system that addresses
all the aspects of proper care,
particularly in a time when
the generation of seniors
is growing so rapidly (mumbles).
- That's a great point.
I do think that we're thinking about cost
in all of the wrong ways.
In this case, I mean, I think the figures
are that two-thirds of all
of our health care costs
have to do with caring, health care costs
and needs for older adults,
and I think that that
has to do with the fact
that a lot of the way that
our health care system
delivers health care to older populations
is inefficient and ineffective
and doesn't really build
in that quality of care,
quality of life piece.
And I think that the
campaign really believes
that investing in the home care workforce,
both in family caregivers
and professional caregivers
and this training and
the skills and support
that they need to provide quality care,
I mean, what better prevention
than quality caregiving, right?
The fact that you have somebody
there day in and day out
who knows exactly what
the person is eating,
how they're sleeping,
whether they're taking
their medication on time,
what their temperature
is in some instances.
Temperature is really key to monitor.
I think we could actually save
a tremendous amount of cost
in our health care system on
unnecessary emergency room
visits or poor management
of chronic illnesses.
So I think that there are
ways that an investment
in caregiving can actually
save the entire health care
delivery system a tremendous
amount of resources,
and then even if we don't
think about it that way,
our economists in Washington
have said that we could ensure
that every single person, every single one
of the 27 million of us
who are gonna need care
by the year 2050, could have real choices
for 5% of the defense budget.
5% of the defense budget.
So, you know, I'm not
proposing that we don't
spend money on national security.
But I think our budgets
reflect our priorities,
and we have to make caregiving a priority
and send that message as a country.
And so, it's not this,
when people talk about
cost, it's as if it's
this overwhelming mountain
or natural disaster tsunami
that we'll never overcome
that's gonna kill us.
No.
Like so much other infrastructure
that we've invested in in the past,
to be the foundation of a
successful and growing economy,
like roads, like public
education, like electricity,
like all the things
that we know are sort of
the invisible pieces of infrastructure
that make everything else happen.
We need to invest in
caregiving in that way too.
Mm hmm?
- So, your work and this presentation
are just stunning.
I say that (mumbles) to a question
that I don't want to be divisive.
And also to underscore
that the Sheinberg program
is about class, race, and gender,
and this has been a wonderful presentation
on class and race.
But, I wanna talk about gender.
Again, I think some of the
best work on long-term care
has been done by feminists who observe
that in the patriarchal society,
where caring for the young
and for the old falls,
without anybody even
thinking about it, on women.
And looking at the caregiver (mumbles)
they quite accurately, they're women!
And most of the people they
take care of are also women.
And I just would love
to hear you talk about
the absence of the focus
on the gender aspect
of the problem and how
the understanding and
energy that might come
from focusing on the gender
injustice of this problem
can be used without being divisive.
- Mm hmm.
Well, women really are on the front lines
of this issue on every front.
Women are still, actually
women have a longer
average life expectancy, so
oftentimes when we're talking
about who that 27 million of us will be,
it is our mothers, our grandmothers, us.
And then, the family caregiving,
73% of all family caregiving
is done by women in this country.
And then all, over 90% of
professional caregivers are women.
And so, on every side of this
question, in every dimension,
women are really
disproportionately affected,
and therefore have to be at the center,
leading the solutions in our mind.
And a key audience in the caring majority
that we're building through
our movement building work
is key audience and
key set of protagonists
is the sandwich generation.
The generation of people
that are panini-ed
between the caregiving needs
of their aging loved ones
and those of their children.
And most of the sandwich
generation are working moms
who are struggling,
struggling, struggling,
working hard, caregiving constantly,
and they're doing it in isolation,
and a lot of their family
caregiving responsibilities
are, as you said, completely
taken for granted.
They often, they also
happen to be a constituency
that is becoming more and more important
during election cycles.
They are also the most active
online of any constituency
because they lack the time to go shopping
and do whatever else,
so they purchase online,
they engage civically online.
An organization that
we partner closely with
called Moms Rising has an audience
that's incredibly active of moms,
most of whom are sandwich gen who...
2 million moms that are an
exact reflection of the census,
in terms of demographics.
And I think that these voices
are going to lead the way,
lead the charge towards
the kinds of solutions
that will lift all boats and
actually create the win win
that we're looking for here.
And finally, I'll say that
I'm very much influenced
by this article that Gloria
Steinem wrote 20 years ago
in her book, "Moving Beyond Words."
It's called Revaluing Economics.
And what she talks about in that article
is the fact that there are
these two invisible resources
upon which everything else in our economy
and society rely upon and
are driven by, based upon.
One is the planet's natural resources,
and the second is the work that goes into
raising and supporting families.
That life force that is
about raising families,
supporting families across generations.
And our society and our economy over time
has evolved in such a way
that has intentionally
made those resources invisible,
taken for granted,
not accounted for them,
such that we don't even see,
we don't even think about
how we are extracting
from those resources for everything else.
And she says that any vision for economy
that actually is sustainable
and allows for more democracy
and more people to thrive
and have opportunity
has to fundamentally revalue
those two natural resources
(coughs) or those two
forces within our society.
So she believes the
planet's natural resources
and the work that goes
into caring for families
need to be at the center
of our economic vision and revalued,
and I think that that is,
if ever there was a
feminist vision, that's it.
(audience applauding)
(Ai-jen laughing)
And like all feminist vision, in my mind,
it is actually about
democratizing opportunity
and dignity in our world.
It's not about women.
It's about how do we create
a society that actually
honors and recognizes
everyone's dignity, so, yes?
- So we have time for one
or two more questions.
- Okay.
Somebody who hasn't (coughs) yes?
- [Woman] I do research
with family members,
and I think that leveraging
unpaid family caregivers
with the domestic workers is just huge
and a really important area to work on.
But you mentioned a home care lobby.
Could you just say a little more about
the home care (doors banging
drowns out voice) lobby,
some of like the biggest
enemies kind of here?
- There are definitely
barriers to progress (laughs).
The lawsuit that was filed
against the Department of Labor
for the home care rule change
was filed on behalf of
three entities (coughs).
One is the International
Franchise Association
that represents all franchises.
And then the other is the Home
Care Association of America.
That is the industry lobby for
all the home care agencies.
And there's also a very,
very well-resourced
and powerful nursing home lobby,
but I don't think that
they were on the lawsuit.
And they are really
fighting for their life
because I think that the
nursing home industry knows
that the future of long-term care
really is in the home and community.
That that recent AARP
survey that found that 90%
of Americans would prefer
to age at home and in place
is just like a, just a
very obvious, overwhelming
litmus test for where
people are in this country.
And so I think they're
hanging on for dear life,
but it is, I think, an
inevitability that we will,
right now it's, we're
off balance more towards
nursing homes, less home-
and community-based options.
Ultimately, I think we'll flip.
- [Woman] But 80% of long-term
care happens at home,
so it's the payment, right?
I mean, so much more money
goes to nursing homes.
- Exactly.
- But more care
actually happens at home (mumbles).
- That's exactly right.
So, I think our system needs to resource
more home- and community-based options
and it needs to kind of flip in that way.
I'd also think that there
will always be a role
for nursing homes, that for some people
that will be the form of
care that makes sense,
and in that case, we need to,
there's been this culture change movement
within the nursing home industry
to try to make nursing homes more humane
as institutions and more
home-like in their environment.
I think that that's critical
because I do believe
that there will be a role
for nursing homes and other
institutions in the future.
But yeah, the industry lobby,
just like in any other industry,
poses real challenges to us.
Mm hmm?
- [Woman] One last question.
- [Woman] Hi, not sure
whether we should open
this whole can of worms,
but you did mention trade unions
and I was wondering
whether you might speak
to a little bit more about
the integrated strategy
of the future that labor
might be asked to play.
(Ai-jen coughs)
- Labor has historically played
such a huge role in this industry.
The home care unions
have a 30-year history.
And the origins are in Chicago
where migrant home care
workers migrated from the south
from Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia
to work in cities like
Chicago and New York,
basically earning poverty wages.
They came together and
recognized that their path
to economic opportunity was
through working collectively
and trying to form a union,
and those were the origins
of the home care unions,
and in SEIU and AFSCME,
they're predominantly
concentrated in those two unions.
I believe that today
there are about 600,000
unionized home care
workers around the country,
and those unions have
built some of the best
training institutions for home
care workers in the nation.
The Washington state training
fund that I described
was built by an SEIU local,
and it is a state-of-the-art,
beautiful facility.
So I think that unions
have historically been
the path out of poverty
for this workforce,
even though the wages
are still very, very low.
We have not made as much
progress as we need to,
but they have made a
tremendous amount of progress
and a tremendous difference in the lives
of home care workers who
are part of the unions.
But I think that it's not enough,
and in fact, a lot of Supreme Court cases
and efforts on the part of industry
to undermine the strength of unions
have basically made it such that it is
nearly impossible to unionize
new groups of workers.
It's just so hard, and...
So I think we have to be really creative
about how we conceptualize worker voice
and improving these jobs and job quality,
and I think it will
involve working together
with family caregivers and seniors
and people with disabilities, consumers,
employers, all of us together.
And in many ways, that is what
Caring Across Generations is trying to do.
It's trying to say,
"We are, in this caregiving relationship,
"we are all interdependent."
And that us versus them
model has never worked
in this industry.
And so, we actually should come together
because together we
are incredibly powerful
and we're incredibly representative
of this country and all of our diversity
and find the solutions
that meet all of our goals,
which are all interconnected
and interdependent.
So, the unions have joined in this effort
and they're supporting it,
and it will take many more institutions,
organizations, families joining on board
in order for us to get
to where we need to go
in terms of wages and working conditions,
let alone the entire long-term
care system (laughs).
(audience applauds)
Thank you.
- So, thank you, thank you so much
for giving us so much to think about
in terms of new ways of
working, new ways of caring,
and also a sense of passion
about the importance
of the work to be done.
I hope you'll all join us.
We're gonna have a reception
on the third floor,
down that hall, down that
way, the faculty library.
Wine and cheese, but best of all,
the opportunity to buy one of Ai-jen's
wonderful new books and
get her to sign it for you
and trade stories about, thank you.
(audience applauding)
