March 4, 2016 • 19 mins
The director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and one of TIME's Most Influential People, Ai Jen Poo has dedicated her life to advocating tirelessly for the rights, dignity and empowerment of women whose voices are too often silenced. In this first ChangeMAKERS installment, Cristen and Caroline talk with Poo about the role of caregivers in our society and the power women wield when they come together to make change happen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and to celebrate Women's History Month
and also explore questions that we hear directly from sminty
listeners about how to become female trailblazers, about gender equality instigators,
(00:27):
and those fearless rabble rousers, we're presenting this month long
mini series we're calling change Makers. And this whole thing
was inspired by our trip to a women's empowerment conference
hosted by Makers, which is a joint effort from PBS
and a o L which regular stuff Mom Never Told
You listeners have probably heard us a reference before, but
(00:48):
in case you aren't familiar with it, Gloria Steinem is
basically It's godmother, and Makers is the largest video collection
of women's stories, and at its conference, Caroline and I
had the opportunity to chat with a few of them
who were personally driven to change their environments and ultimately
(01:08):
change the world. But we realize how changemaking can seem intimidating.
I mean, how do you start what if you aren't
a celebrity or a corporate superstar? What are the transformative
tools that we all have, regardless of where we are
in life, even if your podcasters let us. So, Fortunately,
we have so many female role models like these change
(01:32):
Makers that were going to be spotlighting all month, whose
stories and insights demonstrate not only what incredible societal impacts
women can create, but also how each of us, you
and me, Caroline, I'm talking to you, talking to me,
all of us can find our voices and our authentic
paths towards success for today and for a hopefully more
(01:55):
egalitarian future. So the feme of this first change Makers
and Almond is dignifying your work. And we're talking about
this with a woman named I Gen Poo, who a
is one of the most incredible women I've ever met,
and the way she puts it in terms of what
(02:15):
she does is trying to build a movement of caregivers
to make sure that we can all live well. And Caroline,
can you share with our listeners just all of the
incredible accolades that I gen Poo has garnered in the
process of doing this, of building this movement. Yeah. So,
(02:37):
who is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance
and the co director of the Carrying Across Generations campaign.
She serves on the boards of directors of several organizations,
including Moms Rising, National Jobs with Justice, and Working America.
Not to mention, she's a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader,
(02:59):
want of Fortune's World's Fifty Greatest Leaders, and the author
of the book The Age of Dignity, Preparing for the
Elder Boom and a Changing America. And this MacArthur Fellow
began organizing immigrant women workers nearly two decades ago, and
it was almost two decades ago, in the year two thousand,
(03:20):
that Pooh co founded Domestic Workers United, and that's the
New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the
state's historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, in which we'll
talk about a little bit more in detail in just
a moment. And one of the reasons why we were
so excited to talk to eigen Poo is because the
(03:41):
work she does focuses on what's often un invisible labor force.
Even though there are so many people doing all of
these jobs that a lot of us probably take for granted,
eigen Poo's mission is to dignify that work, and I
feel like it's a motto that we can apply to
(04:02):
all of our jobs and all of the work that
we do. Because I think Caroline is really easy when
we hear about trailblazers and McArthur geniuses to think, well,
I could never do that, I could never really affect
change just being me. But I Gien Pooh thinks exactly
the opposite. I mean, she really thinks that we are
(04:22):
all empowered to make the world a better place. And
obviously her focus is really on caregiving. And first we
wanted to know why that's so important, why it's worth
the time to start this movement, because I think that
the core of the economic solution for the future is
(04:45):
really about valuing care and caregiving. I mean, we're at
a place where we need more care than ever before
because we have children, and our parents are aging and
living longer, and our grandparents are aged. We have none
of the systems and play so it's just a struggle
for working people to manage their jobs, manage everything in life,
(05:06):
and make sure that their loved ones are well cared for.
If we could actually put the supports in place so
that people could actually go to work knowing that their
loved ones are in good hands and have the support
they need, imagine the incredible creativity and energy that that
would relate release into society. I just think it's the
(05:26):
key to everything else in society working well. And honestly,
the effort that Eye Gimpoo and others in her organizations
are putting in is so critical. Uh. There was a
Washington Post article in October looking at what they called
a looming crisis in family caregiving and the fact that
(05:47):
and I guess this is the silver lining to a crisis,
the fact that advocates like Ei Gimpoo are pushing to
make issues of caregiving visible during the election campaign season.
Particularly so if we look at the caregiving population in America,
there are about forty million Americans caring for family members
and this constitutes an unpaid workforce worth around four hundred
(06:12):
and seventy billion dollars a year. And this is often
referred to as the Sandwich generation. And the individuals who
are most often in this caregiving role are middle aged women.
They're part of what's called a Sandwich generation, right, So
they're taking care of younger children in addition to also
having to care for elderly parents. Yeah. I mean, the
(06:32):
typical caregiver in the United States is a forty nine
year old woman who's caring for her mother. And one
of the big reasons why the Washington Post termed this
a looming crisis in family caregiving is because of the
generational patterns that we're seeing. So we have this aging
baby boomer population, but baby boomers also tended to have
(06:55):
fewer children than their parents, which means that adult caregiving
population shrinks. And then if you look at our generation, Caroline,
the millennials, I mean, we are not only delaying marriage,
but our families are even smaller than that. So the
ratio of potential family caregivers to the growing number of
(07:19):
older people is just rapidly declining. So, according to one estimate,
by fifty when baby boomers are between eighty six and
one and four years old, there will be fewer than
three potential caregivers available for every person in that older population.
Because another factor we have to mention too is not
(07:42):
only baby boomers having fewer children, but baby bombers also
living longer than ever. But beyond that, four hundred seventy
billion dollars worth of unpaid family caregiving, the type of
which that I saw first hand in my family, Caroline
went and my great aunt moved in with us after
(08:02):
she had a series of strokes and could no longer
take care of herself. You also have domestic workers who
are hired on to care for elderly people, are people
with physical or mental disabilities, and of course caring for children.
And one of the things that is so startling about
that group of people is how few laws are in
(08:24):
place to protect them and ensure that they are treated
and paid fairly. What Who also emphasized, though, is that
she's witnessed the power of women coming together to raise
their voices. I would say that we're living in a
really hard economic moment where it's unprecedented levels of inequality
(08:45):
and it's tough out there. Um. But the the way
that we've seen change happen, and I've actually seen women
make history in my lifetime multiple times by coming together
and working together to change policy, to change culture, to
tell their stories in bold, creative ways that open up
(09:06):
more possibility for policy changed. Anything is possible when we
come together and we speak with one voice and work
together for positive change. And one of the most visible
and historic, really outcomes of that community organizing that I
Gimpoo has led was the passage of the Domestic Worker
(09:29):
Bill of Rights in New York. And this was organized
really with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and it took
six years of organizing by domestic workers together with unions, employers,
as well as clergy and community organizations for the New
York State legislature to pass this Bill of rights. And
(09:51):
what it means is that for the first time in
any state, domestic workers were included in all of the
major labor law us protecting other workers. And that includes
overtime pay, a minimum of one day off per week, etcetera.
I mean, And and these might seem like small gains
of like, oh, well, of course you should be given
(10:12):
overtime pay or at least one day off per week,
but far too often that's not the case for this
caregiver population. I mean, I Gimpoo has talked about how
one woman she worked with wasn't paid for fifteen years.
So this kind of legislation is so sorely needed. And
that's not the only, uh, the only piece of legislation
(10:35):
that they've passed. Yeah, that's right. And more recent news,
on January five, New York City Mayor Build A Blasio
signed legislation that expanded the New York City Human Rights Law,
which was already protecting workers against things like race, age,
sexual orientation, and gender identity based discrimination, in order to
(10:55):
add caregiver status as an additional protected category for which
employment discrimination is prohibited, and it works to prohibit employment
discrimination against any employee caring for a minor child or
a person with a disability, and there's a little bit
of muscle behind it. The penalty for violating this human
(11:17):
rights law is a maximum of fifty dollars, with additional
penalties of up to a hundred bucks a day for
each day that the violation continues. And shepherding such an
historic piece of legislation and organizing and bringing together these
sometimes disparate groups might sound like the work of someone
(11:37):
who must be specially trained. That isn't something that anybody
could just hop in and do it. I mean, I
gm who must have some some kind of special privilege
she's working with right. Well, of course, she's incredibly smart,
and she had experience volunteering at a domestic violence shelter
which initially inspired her to get in this line of work.
(11:58):
But one thing she emphasized is this is how this
type of advocacy work is relatively new, so a lot
of what they're doing is innovation. She says, we're making
history every day, and you can kind of see that
reflected in how she answered our question of how anyone
(12:19):
can be a change agent regardless of where they are, because,
as she sees it, we all come to the table
with our set of tools, and when we do that,
incredible things can happen. And so what's the first step
in doing that To get connected, To get online or um,
(12:39):
go to your local or community organization and find a
way to connect to other women who are working in
your similar situation or who live near you and can
really identify with your experience. I mean, the thing about
this experience of working and of trying to support your
family or trying to pursue your dreams is it's such
(12:59):
a universal part of humanity that every single one of
us really at some level shares the same hopes and dreams.
Right to live, our passions, to care for our families,
to live well, um, to be able to contribute. I mean,
these are things that we all want and coming together
just makes us so much stronger in realizing those dreams.
(13:22):
And on that note, we wanted to know who the
people were in her life who helped her achieve her dreams.
There's so many. I feel like I have a whole
family of caregivers that have given birth to me, both
in my biological family and in my family of this
movement of caregivers. My grandmother was an incredible caregiver who
(13:45):
raised me and really taught me about the value of
caregiving relationships. I mean, she taught me how to laugh,
how to cultivate laughter and the hardest moments, she taught
me about joy and about optimism, how cynicism is the
ultimate enemy of progress, um and it's those caregiving relationships
(14:06):
that actually bring meaning to our lives, like the one
that I have with my grandmother, And so I want
for those relationships to be nurtured and and really invested
in then supported in the century. And it's reminded me
to Caroline of what she talked about in her more
in depth Maker's video interview, where she says that love
(14:28):
is the most powerful force for changing the world, and
I believe in the inherent goodness of people, but specifically too,
she really focuses in on the importance of women being involved. Obviously,
women were so critical to her personal development with her
mother and grandmother, and women are so central to what
(14:51):
she's doing today, and and she said that in order
to create a healthy, multi racial democracy for the cent
ay as, she says, it's going to require the leadership
of women, because that's the only way that we can
have an economy that works for everybody, where you can
(15:11):
have a family and economic opportunity and provide caregiving for parents, grandparents,
and children. There are so many structures that we still
need in place to provide for the well being of
our existing and future generations. And that it's such a
tall undertaking. How do you stay motivated to tackle what
(15:34):
probably seems sometimes like an insurmountable task. Right, Yeah. She
talked about not only what helps her maintain momentum, but
what inspires her to work at this every day. And
she describes the people who came before, but also the
progress that she sees every day as she and her
fellow advocates essentially make history day in and day out. Oh,
(15:59):
I am inspired by people like Gloria Steinham, who is
here at this conference, who um has lived through so
many generations of change and been at the forefront of
all of that change and has created space for others
to come in and remake our movements. And UM, and
I remember that it is possible to sustain and continue
(16:23):
to be nurtured by this work. UM. And I've seen
so much progress in my lifetime. I mean, I saw
nanny's and housekeepers and caregivers actually go to the New
York Legislature for the first time. And when they were
told that it would be impossible to do what they
were asking for, which is established a bill of rights
(16:44):
for domestic workers. UM, they just kept going back and
they want they made history and that opened the door
for six other states and we're still working on it.
So the fact that I know I can, you know,
prove that it is possible to make meaningful, lasting change, UM,
(17:05):
keeps me going. And I really do believe what I
said in my maker's video, which is that in a
campaign for human dignity, there is no such thing as
an unlikely ally. UM. That all of us are in
this human experiment together. And I just get a lot
of energy from connecting with other people and realizing how
(17:27):
very connected we are. UM. I also do yoga, just
as this side is actually quite important to find the
thing that allows you to have that ME time, that
time to connect to your sense of purpose and what
you want to do in the world, how you want
to show up. Absolutely. Yeah, well, thank you so much,
(17:49):
Thank you, Caarly. I don't know about you, but the
concept of her even having me time, even having time
to do yoga astounds me considering all the things that
she's doing, I know, and I'm so excited to see
more from her, more of what she accomplishes in the
(18:12):
name of supporting caregivers in this country. Yeah, I mean,
and I think that at some point we need to
come back and do the whole in depth stuff Mom
never told you podcast on this sandwich generation and caregivers
because there are so many of them out there and
they need so much support. And I am really comforted
(18:34):
to know that I gim Pooh and others out there
are working on behalf of them because it's absolutely needed. Yeah,
And so to find out more, we encourage you to
go over to Domestic Workers dot org, which has more
information about the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and if you're
interested in hearing more directly from II gim Pooh, we
(18:57):
referenced her Maker's video, so you head on over to
makers dot com. Slash I dash Jen dash Poo. You
can watch her fantastic videos and really get to see
the passion that this woman has for what she does
every day. And if you are a caregiver yourself, or
if there was a significant caregiver in your life that
(19:19):
you want to shout out, you can email us at
Mom's Stuff at how stuff Works dot com. You can
also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or message us
on Facebook. And if you would like to watch our videos,
read our blogs, or listen to all of our podcasts
not just a change maker's mini series, you can do
that by heading over to Stuff Mom Never told You
(19:41):
dot com for more almost thousands of beause it has
to works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and to celebrate Women's History Month
and also explore questions that we hear directly from sminty
listeners about how to become female trailblazers, about gender equality instigators,
(00:27):
and those fearless rabble rousers, we're presenting this month long
mini series we're calling change Makers. And this whole thing
was inspired by our trip to a women's empowerment conference
hosted by Makers, which is a joint effort from PBS
and a o L which regular stuff Mom Never Told
You listeners have probably heard us a reference before, but
(00:48):
in case you aren't familiar with it, Gloria Steinem is
basically It's godmother, and Makers is the largest video collection
of women's stories, and at its conference, Caroline and I
had the opportunity to chat with a few of them
who were personally driven to change their environments and ultimately
(01:08):
change the world. But we realize how changemaking can seem intimidating.
I mean, how do you start what if you aren't
a celebrity or a corporate superstar? What are the transformative
tools that we all have, regardless of where we are
in life, even if your podcasters let us. So, Fortunately,
we have so many female role models like these change
(01:32):
Makers that were going to be spotlighting all month, whose
stories and insights demonstrate not only what incredible societal impacts
women can create, but also how each of us, you
and me, Caroline, I'm talking to you, talking to me,
all of us can find our voices and our authentic
paths towards success for today and for a hopefully more
(01:55):
egalitarian future. So the feme of this first change Makers
and Almond is dignifying your work. And we're talking about
this with a woman named I Gen Poo, who a
is one of the most incredible women I've ever met,
and the way she puts it in terms of what
(02:15):
she does is trying to build a movement of caregivers
to make sure that we can all live well. And Caroline,
can you share with our listeners just all of the
incredible accolades that I gen Poo has garnered in the
process of doing this, of building this movement. Yeah. So,
(02:37):
who is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance
and the co director of the Carrying Across Generations campaign.
She serves on the boards of directors of several organizations,
including Moms Rising, National Jobs with Justice, and Working America.
Not to mention, she's a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader,
(02:59):
want of Fortune's World's Fifty Greatest Leaders, and the author
of the book The Age of Dignity, Preparing for the
Elder Boom and a Changing America. And this MacArthur Fellow
began organizing immigrant women workers nearly two decades ago, and
it was almost two decades ago, in the year two thousand,
(03:20):
that Pooh co founded Domestic Workers United, and that's the
New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the
state's historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, in which we'll
talk about a little bit more in detail in just
a moment. And one of the reasons why we were
so excited to talk to eigen Poo is because the
(03:41):
work she does focuses on what's often un invisible labor force.
Even though there are so many people doing all of
these jobs that a lot of us probably take for granted,
eigen Poo's mission is to dignify that work, and I
feel like it's a motto that we can apply to
(04:02):
all of our jobs and all of the work that
we do. Because I think Caroline is really easy when
we hear about trailblazers and McArthur geniuses to think, well,
I could never do that, I could never really affect
change just being me. But I Gien Pooh thinks exactly
the opposite. I mean, she really thinks that we are
(04:22):
all empowered to make the world a better place. And
obviously her focus is really on caregiving. And first we
wanted to know why that's so important, why it's worth
the time to start this movement, because I think that
the core of the economic solution for the future is
(04:45):
really about valuing care and caregiving. I mean, we're at
a place where we need more care than ever before
because we have children, and our parents are aging and
living longer, and our grandparents are aged. We have none
of the systems and play so it's just a struggle
for working people to manage their jobs, manage everything in life,
(05:06):
and make sure that their loved ones are well cared for.
If we could actually put the supports in place so
that people could actually go to work knowing that their
loved ones are in good hands and have the support
they need, imagine the incredible creativity and energy that that
would relate release into society. I just think it's the
(05:26):
key to everything else in society working well. And honestly,
the effort that Eye Gimpoo and others in her organizations
are putting in is so critical. Uh. There was a
Washington Post article in October looking at what they called
a looming crisis in family caregiving and the fact that
(05:47):
and I guess this is the silver lining to a crisis,
the fact that advocates like Ei Gimpoo are pushing to
make issues of caregiving visible during the election campaign season.
Particularly so if we look at the caregiving population in America,
there are about forty million Americans caring for family members
and this constitutes an unpaid workforce worth around four hundred
(06:12):
and seventy billion dollars a year. And this is often
referred to as the Sandwich generation. And the individuals who
are most often in this caregiving role are middle aged women.
They're part of what's called a Sandwich generation, right, So
they're taking care of younger children in addition to also
having to care for elderly parents. Yeah. I mean, the
(06:32):
typical caregiver in the United States is a forty nine
year old woman who's caring for her mother. And one
of the big reasons why the Washington Post termed this
a looming crisis in family caregiving is because of the
generational patterns that we're seeing. So we have this aging
baby boomer population, but baby boomers also tended to have
(06:55):
fewer children than their parents, which means that adult caregiving
population shrinks. And then if you look at our generation, Caroline,
the millennials, I mean, we are not only delaying marriage,
but our families are even smaller than that. So the
ratio of potential family caregivers to the growing number of
(07:19):
older people is just rapidly declining. So, according to one estimate,
by fifty when baby boomers are between eighty six and
one and four years old, there will be fewer than
three potential caregivers available for every person in that older population.
Because another factor we have to mention too is not
(07:42):
only baby boomers having fewer children, but baby bombers also
living longer than ever. But beyond that, four hundred seventy
billion dollars worth of unpaid family caregiving, the type of
which that I saw first hand in my family, Caroline
went and my great aunt moved in with us after
(08:02):
she had a series of strokes and could no longer
take care of herself. You also have domestic workers who
are hired on to care for elderly people, are people
with physical or mental disabilities, and of course caring for children.
And one of the things that is so startling about
that group of people is how few laws are in
(08:24):
place to protect them and ensure that they are treated
and paid fairly. What Who also emphasized, though, is that
she's witnessed the power of women coming together to raise
their voices. I would say that we're living in a
really hard economic moment where it's unprecedented levels of inequality
(08:45):
and it's tough out there. Um. But the the way
that we've seen change happen, and I've actually seen women
make history in my lifetime multiple times by coming together
and working together to change policy, to change culture, to
tell their stories in bold, creative ways that open up
(09:06):
more possibility for policy changed. Anything is possible when we
come together and we speak with one voice and work
together for positive change. And one of the most visible
and historic, really outcomes of that community organizing that I
Gimpoo has led was the passage of the Domestic Worker
(09:29):
Bill of Rights in New York. And this was organized
really with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and it took
six years of organizing by domestic workers together with unions, employers,
as well as clergy and community organizations for the New
York State legislature to pass this Bill of rights. And
(09:51):
what it means is that for the first time in
any state, domestic workers were included in all of the
major labor law us protecting other workers. And that includes
overtime pay, a minimum of one day off per week, etcetera.
I mean, And and these might seem like small gains
of like, oh, well, of course you should be given
(10:12):
overtime pay or at least one day off per week,
but far too often that's not the case for this
caregiver population. I mean, I Gimpoo has talked about how
one woman she worked with wasn't paid for fifteen years.
So this kind of legislation is so sorely needed. And
that's not the only, uh, the only piece of legislation
(10:35):
that they've passed. Yeah, that's right. And more recent news,
on January five, New York City Mayor Build A Blasio
signed legislation that expanded the New York City Human Rights Law,
which was already protecting workers against things like race, age,
sexual orientation, and gender identity based discrimination, in order to
(10:55):
add caregiver status as an additional protected category for which
employment discrimination is prohibited, and it works to prohibit employment
discrimination against any employee caring for a minor child or
a person with a disability, and there's a little bit
of muscle behind it. The penalty for violating this human
(11:17):
rights law is a maximum of fifty dollars, with additional
penalties of up to a hundred bucks a day for
each day that the violation continues. And shepherding such an
historic piece of legislation and organizing and bringing together these
sometimes disparate groups might sound like the work of someone
(11:37):
who must be specially trained. That isn't something that anybody
could just hop in and do it. I mean, I
gm who must have some some kind of special privilege
she's working with right. Well, of course, she's incredibly smart,
and she had experience volunteering at a domestic violence shelter
which initially inspired her to get in this line of work.
(11:58):
But one thing she emphasized is this is how this
type of advocacy work is relatively new, so a lot
of what they're doing is innovation. She says, we're making
history every day, and you can kind of see that
reflected in how she answered our question of how anyone
(12:19):
can be a change agent regardless of where they are, because,
as she sees it, we all come to the table
with our set of tools, and when we do that,
incredible things can happen. And so what's the first step
in doing that To get connected, To get online or um,
(12:39):
go to your local or community organization and find a
way to connect to other women who are working in
your similar situation or who live near you and can
really identify with your experience. I mean, the thing about
this experience of working and of trying to support your
family or trying to pursue your dreams is it's such
(12:59):
a universal part of humanity that every single one of
us really at some level shares the same hopes and dreams.
Right to live, our passions, to care for our families,
to live well, um, to be able to contribute. I mean,
these are things that we all want and coming together
just makes us so much stronger in realizing those dreams.
(13:22):
And on that note, we wanted to know who the
people were in her life who helped her achieve her dreams.
There's so many. I feel like I have a whole
family of caregivers that have given birth to me, both
in my biological family and in my family of this
movement of caregivers. My grandmother was an incredible caregiver who
(13:45):
raised me and really taught me about the value of
caregiving relationships. I mean, she taught me how to laugh,
how to cultivate laughter and the hardest moments, she taught
me about joy and about optimism, how cynicism is the
ultimate enemy of progress, um and it's those caregiving relationships
(14:06):
that actually bring meaning to our lives, like the one
that I have with my grandmother, And so I want
for those relationships to be nurtured and and really invested
in then supported in the century. And it's reminded me
to Caroline of what she talked about in her more
in depth Maker's video interview, where she says that love
(14:28):
is the most powerful force for changing the world, and
I believe in the inherent goodness of people, but specifically too,
she really focuses in on the importance of women being involved. Obviously,
women were so critical to her personal development with her
mother and grandmother, and women are so central to what
(14:51):
she's doing today, and and she said that in order
to create a healthy, multi racial democracy for the cent
ay as, she says, it's going to require the leadership
of women, because that's the only way that we can
have an economy that works for everybody, where you can
(15:11):
have a family and economic opportunity and provide caregiving for parents, grandparents,
and children. There are so many structures that we still
need in place to provide for the well being of
our existing and future generations. And that it's such a
tall undertaking. How do you stay motivated to tackle what
(15:34):
probably seems sometimes like an insurmountable task. Right, Yeah. She
talked about not only what helps her maintain momentum, but
what inspires her to work at this every day. And
she describes the people who came before, but also the
progress that she sees every day as she and her
fellow advocates essentially make history day in and day out. Oh,
(15:59):
I am inspired by people like Gloria Steinham, who is
here at this conference, who um has lived through so
many generations of change and been at the forefront of
all of that change and has created space for others
to come in and remake our movements. And UM, and
I remember that it is possible to sustain and continue
(16:23):
to be nurtured by this work. UM. And I've seen
so much progress in my lifetime. I mean, I saw
nanny's and housekeepers and caregivers actually go to the New
York Legislature for the first time. And when they were
told that it would be impossible to do what they
were asking for, which is established a bill of rights
(16:44):
for domestic workers. UM, they just kept going back and
they want they made history and that opened the door
for six other states and we're still working on it.
So the fact that I know I can, you know,
prove that it is possible to make meaningful, lasting change, UM,
(17:05):
keeps me going. And I really do believe what I
said in my maker's video, which is that in a
campaign for human dignity, there is no such thing as
an unlikely ally. UM. That all of us are in
this human experiment together. And I just get a lot
of energy from connecting with other people and realizing how
(17:27):
very connected we are. UM. I also do yoga, just
as this side is actually quite important to find the
thing that allows you to have that ME time, that
time to connect to your sense of purpose and what
you want to do in the world, how you want
to show up. Absolutely. Yeah, well, thank you so much,
(17:49):
Thank you, Caarly. I don't know about you, but the
concept of her even having me time, even having time
to do yoga astounds me considering all the things that
she's doing, I know, and I'm so excited to see
more from her, more of what she accomplishes in the
(18:12):
name of supporting caregivers in this country. Yeah, I mean,
and I think that at some point we need to
come back and do the whole in depth stuff Mom
never told you podcast on this sandwich generation and caregivers
because there are so many of them out there and
they need so much support. And I am really comforted
(18:34):
to know that I gim Pooh and others out there
are working on behalf of them because it's absolutely needed. Yeah,
And so to find out more, we encourage you to
go over to Domestic Workers dot org, which has more
information about the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and if you're
interested in hearing more directly from II gim Pooh, we
(18:57):
referenced her Maker's video, so you head on over to
makers dot com. Slash I dash Jen dash Poo. You
can watch her fantastic videos and really get to see
the passion that this woman has for what she does
every day. And if you are a caregiver yourself, or
if there was a significant caregiver in your life that
(19:19):
you want to shout out, you can email us at
Mom's Stuff at how stuff Works dot com. You can
also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or message us
on Facebook. And if you would like to watch our videos,
read our blogs, or listen to all of our podcasts
not just a change maker's mini series, you can do
that by heading over to Stuff Mom Never told You
(19:41):
dot com for more almost thousands of beause it has
to works dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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