Dear Friends and Allies,

November was National Family Caregivers Month, and our wide-ranging coalition was out in full force to ensure that caregivers are celebrated and recognized for the essential work they do every day.

But caregivers deserve to be celebrated more than just one month out of the year. That’s why we are taking a pause this holiday season to rest, rejuvenate, and care for ourselves and our loved ones, so we can come back even stronger next year to demand (and get!) what we need to build a more caring future for all of us.

And you can help us get there by joining our year end fundraising campaign: $10K for 10 Years of Caring Across. We're almost halfway there, but we need YOU! You don't have to wait, you can donate right now. Please help us reach our goal!

- Antonia and all of us at Caring Across

Grandmas Unite

On Thursday, December 9th, grandmothers from across the country united at the Capitol to demand that Congress pass Build Back Better. Speakers included Representatives (and grandmothers!) Rosa DeLauro and Debbie Dingell, as well as family caregivers, care workers, and disability rights advocates.

Deborah McAllister, a grandmother and home care worker who spoke at the rally, said “The Build Back Better Act is a historic investment in care that takes a huge leap forward in ensuring that grandparents, parents, aunties and uncles, and children can get the care they need, how, when and where they need it.”

The nation’s grandparents agree: according to our new survey, the majority of grandparents believe that Build Back Better will benefit their families. And grandparents would know — we found that 59 percent of them have helped with caregiving throughout the pandemic.

Case in point, many grandmothers couldn’t attend the rally in person. But they showed up online! Check out some messages from grandparents and caregivers on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, and check out more on our blog.

Care Jam

We just completed our first ever Game Jam for Care, in partnership with Code Coven, Counterpoint Arts, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Over the course of seven days, we brought together nearly 200 people, including video game developers, creators and people touched by care, to develop new gaming concepts that uplift care and the people who do it.

For a peek into why bringing the lived experience of care to the game industry is so important, check out our roundtable discussion featuring Evan Narcisse, June Barrett, Cara Reedy, and May Abdalla.

Generations Videos

In partnership with the American Society on Aging, we created a series of moving and personal videos that bring to life how care intersects with many issues, such as race, gender, sexuality, ability, identity, and class, highlighted by the care policy experts in the Fall 2021 Issue of the Generations Journal. The six people highlighted in these videos talk about how care and care inequities show up in their lives and communities, as well as what they hope for the future of care.

Mass Call

On November 22nd, we hosted our “Where Do We Go From Here” Mass Call to celebrate the House passage of Build Back Better and chart a course for the future. Over 1.2K viewers joined us to hear from Care Fellow Jerri Brown about what this bill means to her and her families, while Senator Bob Casey and Representative Susan Wild shared what’s next in Congress. Onward!

In the Field

On Halloween, our partners at Hand In Hand of California showed up at Nancy Pelosi’s office to Trick Or Treat for HCBS and thank the Speaker for her support of this essential policy.

On December 2nd, Caring Across Activist A.M. Kane and her mother delivered a cake to Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine to thank her for supporting the Build Back Better Act!

ICYMI: In the News

Last week, Ai-jen spoke to Heather McGhee on The Ezra Klein Show about our vision for a comprehensive care infrastructure. Listen here.

Our Constituency Organizer, Aisha Adkins, was featured in the Washington Post, where she discussed her experience as a Black millennial caregiver to her mother, who has dementia. Says Aisha, “You can spend hours asking, ‘Why? Why me? Why my family? Why my mother?’ The greater question for me is always more so for researchers, for funders, for society at large: ‘What can we do to solve for these disparities?’”

Our Senior Development Director Sadé Dozan spoke to the Belabored Podcast about how Build Back Better will support caregiving families, and also wrote for American Society on Aging’s Generations Now about “The Habitual Gaze”: how she experiences the medical establishment stripping agency from her parents, and how she’s fighting back.

Our Team is Growing

We are excited to announce that Nicole Jorwic has joined our team as our new Chief of Advocacy and Campaigns! At her previous position as Senior Executive Officer at The Arc, Nicole worked closely with Caring Across, and we are so pleased she is bringing her expertise, and her experience as a family caregiver, to our team. Welcome Nicole!

A Final Note

It is with very heavy hearts that we share that on October 31st, Engracia Figueroa passed away as a result of injuries she sustained when United Airlines destroyed her wheelchair.

Our partners at Hand in Hand, of which Engracia was an active member, shared in a statement, “While we are reeling from the layers of injustice this tragedy makes visible, we are holding Engracia’s tenacity and resolve as our guidepost. Lives are at stake in the work that we do, and our current ableist and racist system continues to fail our communities time and time again. We cannot and will not stand by and let these systems of oppression prevail.”

Let’s let Engracia’s light, spirit and ferocity guide us in our fight for a future in which we are all treated with dignity, respect, and humanity.