Today is a day to celebrate — and it's because of supporters like you, John.
Yesterday President Biden addressed the country to talk about his administration's jobs and infrastructure plan, and made clear that, for the first time in history, investment in care workers is now a top Presidential priority. President Biden said:
"For too long, caregivers who are disportionately women, and women of color and immigrants, have been unseen, underpaid and undervalued. This plan, along with the American Families Plan, changes that with better wages, benefits and opportunities for millions of people who will be able to get to work in an economy that works for them."
This marks a huge milestone for our movement and a major step forward in our Care Is Essential campaign! None of this would be possible without you. It is truly one of the greatest privileges imaginable to have the opportunity to do work that makes a real difference in addressing inequality and injustice, and delivers care and dignity.
It took a pandemic, but we are seeing that home and community care are at last being recognized as essential infrastructures to a strong economy — that just like roads, bridges and broadband: families and workers need care.
The Care is Essential campaign calls for $450 billion in Medicaid to create 1.5 million new home care jobs and build a sustainable home care workforce by:
- Raising wages and increasing access to benefits for home care workers,
- Creating a pathway to citizenship for qualified undocumented home care workers to ensure job protections and to build a pipeline of workers to meet the care gap,
- Increasing support for home care workers with job training and more.
It's so important to remember yesterday's announcement wasn't made in a vacuum. For years our movement has been working to bring care workers out of the shadows to get the recognition and rights they’ve been actively denied for *generations*.
Someone who gets this is Vice President Kamala Harris, who's been a champion of care workers and domestic workers for years, and was the original lead sponsor of the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights legislation in the Senate.
Together with you and our partners, we have pushed with everything we've got and in just three months we've delivered more than 17,000 petition signatures, made nearly 22,000 phone calls, sent over 14,000 messages, and secured nearly 350 organizations to support the Care is Essential campaign. With the Vice President in the White House, our voices have been heard.
Policy changes like this are hard-won, but when we win we can transform lives. So while we’re excited that the administration is now on-board, we are fully leaning into this moment and we don't plan to slow down until Congress also steps up and we win every right our care community deserves.
There's a lot more to come, but for today, we're celebrating — and John we want you to join us! This moment belongs to all of us.
We say it often, and today I'm happy to say it again from the bottom of my heart: Thank you John for all you've done. We — all of us — are on the way to making history.
In gratitude,
Ai-jen Poo, Director
National Domestic Workers Alliance
This email was sent by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation's leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States.
National Domestic Workers Alliance | 45 Broadway, Suite 320 | New York, NY 10006 | DomesticWorkers.org
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