Tell Congress to Build a Care Infrastructure
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Dear Friend,

Hope is here. We have a window of opportunity to raise our voices together
to make real, necessary, urgently needed change. [ [link removed] ]And we hope YOU can
take a quick moment to help right now.

Why? The pandemic has laid bare the devastating economic and personal
costs of our country’s failure to invest in care or have a care
infrastructure. Families have been left to shoulder the burden of
caregiving and working, often double and triple shifts, without
common-sense protections like universal paid leave, access to child care
and home and community-based services for people with disabilities and
aging adults - and through this all, people working as child care
educators and care providers have been underpaid and without workplace
protections like paid leave too.

[ [link removed] ]→ There is a new national clarity that things have to change.  Add your
voice now!  Urge Congress to include significant investments in America's
care infrastructure in the upcoming recovery package! 

Women and moms, and disproportionately women and moms of color, have taken
the most responsibility for caring for our kids, our sick family members,
our aging relatives and neighbors and supporting the people in our lives
with disabilities; all while sacrificing our own careers and wellbeing in
the process. We have become child care providers, at-home educators, home
health aids, and personal care professionals - and we’re done all of that
without the critical support we need to make ends meet for ourselves and
their families.  And, we have lost the most jobs. 

Our insufficient care programs, the people working in them, and families
across the nation were hanging by a thread when the pandemic began; and
now that thread has unraveled altogether. It’s on us to push now to build
a real care infrastructure that will endure long after the pandemic is
over in order to lift our economy and our families, and to create and
sustain good jobs.

Your voice can make the difference.

[ [link removed] ]→ Tell Congress to ensure that the upcoming recovery package includes
significant investments in America's care infrastructure. That includes
passing legislation to guarantee access to child care, paid family and
medical leave, and home and community-based services for people with
disabilities and aging adults. 

The numbers are stark and show the cost of decades of inaction: In the
past year, 32% of women aged 25 - 34 were pushed out of the labor force
due to a lack of child care, proving how essential a strong care
infrastructure is to the U.S. job market. In 2020, more than 2.3 million
women [1] lost their jobs —over 600,000 are Black; 618,000 are Latina. 

Those in the caregiving workforce — 31% of whom are Black women [2] — have
been on the front lines of the pandemic without adequate pay [3] or
support and have experienced disproportionate health and economic harm.
Today, many caregiving professionals live in poverty, with median annual
​earnings of about​ $20,000 for home health aides​, ​$21,920 for personal
care aides​, and ​$13,558 for nannies, and cannot afford to care for their
own families​.  We need to ensure that caregivers are paid well, and the
minimum wage is raised to at least $15 per hour for everyone including
tipped workers. We also need to provide a pathway to citizenship for
essential workers who have been on the front lines of fighting COVID and
providing care for children, people with disabilities and aging adults,
and make permanent enhancements to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and
Child Tax Credit so care workers no longer are forced to live below the
poverty line. 

[ [link removed] ]→ Solutions are possible! Let’s make them happen! Add your voice now to
urge Congress to make immediate change.

It’s long past time for our nation to make a significant investment in
care! The upcoming federal recovery package must include significant
investments in America's care infrastructure. It must build comprehensive
child care and early education programs, include paid family and medical
leave, and home and community-based services for people with disabilities
and aging adults.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. caregiving
infrastructure, which relied heavily on women leaving the workforce to
stay home or provide paid care, demonstrates that an investment in the
country’s caregiving workforce and care infrastructure would create
millions of jobs, while enabling parents and family caregivers to return
to the workforce. 

Robust investment in the care economy would create millions of new jobs
[4]  for the women hit hardest by this crisis, generate hundreds of
billions of dollars in economic activity [ [link removed] ] , and allow millions of women
who have been pushed out of the labor force to return.  With home health
aides and personal care assistants being the third and fourth fastest
growing occupations in the United States, investing a benchmark of $77.5
billion per year would support over two million new jobs. Over 10 years,
this translates to 22.5 million jobs.  And that doesn't even include the
moms who have been pushed out of the labor force and will be able to get
back to work, or the family caregivers who can increase their work hours
once affordable care options are available.  Investing in the care economy
is both job creating and also job enabling. 

To create jobs, lift families, and boost our economy, the federal recovery
package must include:

* The Child Care for Working Families Act to ensure that no family pays
more than 7% of their income for child care and that early educators
have pay parity. 
* $450 billion for Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services to create
over one million union protected direct care jobs, expand access to
home- and community-based services to people with disabilities and
aging adults, and support unpaid family caregivers to re-join the
labor force.
* Paid Family and Medical Leave that would ensure all working people
have access to at least 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a new
child, address a personal or family related illness, or handle needs
that arise from a military deployment.

The cost of inaction is too great. Decades of underinvestment is what made
the pandemic so disastrous for our communities. And it’s costing not only
women, moms, and disproportionately women of color and their families, but
our economy overall. For example, “the risk of mothers leaving the labor
force and reducing work hours in order to assume caretaking
responsibilities amounts to $64.5 billion per year in lost wages and
economic activity.” [ [link removed] ] 

Now more than ever, people and leaders are starting to realize just how
important women, moms, and a care infrastructure are to our entire economy
-- and that’s why Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently raised
the importance of building a care infrastructure to lift our entire
national economy. [ [link removed] ]

Just like we need to build bridges to drive on to go to work, we need to
build a care infrastructure so parents can go to work, people with
disabilities and aging adults can get the care they need with dignity in
their communities, children and families can thrive, and child workers
have sustainable jobs that pay a living wage. 

*Please join us in raising your voice for change.  After you sign on,
forward this email to your friends and family, post the action link on
your social media accounts, and stay engaged.  The more of us who raise
our voices, the faster change will happen. 

[5]→ Here’s that action link again so you can use it and share it to build
change: [link removed]

Thank you for being part of an unstoppable force for good in our nation!

- Amber, Aryan, Beatriz, Beth, Casey, Christina, Claudia, Diarra, Diana,
Donna, dream, Elyssa, Felicia, Gloria, Hanna, Jessica, Jordan, Joy, Julia,
Karen, Keisha, Kelle, Kristin, Linda, Lisa, Lucrecer, Maggie, Marysol,
Monifa, Nadia, Nancy, Nate, Nina, Ruby, Ruth, Sara, Shanette, Sheila,
Sili, Sue Anne, Tasmiha, Taylor, Tina, Tola, and Xochitl 

P.S. Want to have some big fun and make real change with homemade art? 
Draw a picture of a kite on a piece of paper (Family members, kids &
friends can do this together!), put the hashtag #CareCantWait on it, take
a picture with your cell phone camera -- and post it to your social media
(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) with the hashtag #CareCantWait.  *You can
also download this printable coloring page of a kite to use:
[6][link removed]

Through this kite project we will send this message to Congress: Building
a Care Infrastructure will make our families, economy, jobs, businesses
and nation soar! #CareCantWait. The kite symbolizes the lifting up and
soaring of our communities. 

P.P.S.  The #CareCareWait coalition is led by many organizations working
together, including Caring Across Generations; Center for Law and Social
Policy; Closing the Women's Wealth Gap; CLASP; Community Change & Economic
Security Project Community Change; Family Values @ Work; MomsRising;
National Domestic Workers Alliance; National Partnership for Women &
Families; National Women's Law Center; Paid Leave For All; Service
Employees International Union (SEIU); The Arc; TIMES UP; and Zero To
Three. 

References: 

[1] PDF: [7]THE PANDEMIC, THE ECONOMY, & THE VALUE OF WOMEN’S WORK
[2] [ [link removed] ]It’s Time to Care: The Economic Case for Investing in a Care
Infrastructure
[3] PDF: [ [link removed] ]Undervalued: A Brief History of Women’s Care Work and Child
Care Policy in the United States
[4] [ [link removed] ]It’s Time to Care: The Economic Case for Investing in a Care
Infrastructure
[5] [ [link removed] ]It’s Time to Care: The Economic Case for Investing in a Care
Infrastructure
[6] [ [link removed] ]How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward: Congress’
$64.5 Billion Mistake
[7] [ [link removed] ]Powell Says Better Child Care Policies Might Lift Women in Work
Force


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