00:07My name is Ai-jen Poo and I'm the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and
00:13co-director of Caring Across Generations. I grew up in an immigrant family and was raised by my
00:20grandparents who taught me a lot about intergenerational care and values and then
00:28when they became older in life really feeling like we weren't prepared to care
00:33for them and realizing that we as a country aren't prepared to care for our
00:39aging loved ones. We don't have a plan, we need a plan and the workforce that we're
00:44counting on to do it is so overwhelmed and undervalued. The National Domestic
00:50Workers Alliance is an organization that works to bring respect and dignity to
00:56this growing workforce of mostly women who work in our homes, caring for some of
01:02the most precious aspects of our lives, our kids, our aging loved ones, our homes
01:08themselves. Our organization is about making sure that these jobs become good
01:14jobs for the 21st century where you can really take pride in the work and support
01:19your family. In this current political environment it's uniquely challenging and
01:24we're actually facing an existential crisis in our workforce because our
01:29workforce is the workforce with the largest concentration of undocumented
01:34immigrants of any job in the country and a huge number of the caregivers and
01:41the cleaners that American families depend on are immigrants and they're right in the
01:49in the in the bullseye of some of these policies that target immigrants. One of
01:54the things that I love about my job is working on caregiving is such a universal
01:59issue. Once you ask people what their care story is it's like a flood of like love and
02:05emotion and pain and you know all this stuff and it is like so core to who we are as
02:11human beings. It connects us and in a country that's incredibly polarized right
02:16now and divided we need issues and like a vision for the future that everyone can
02:24see their interests and their experiences inside of. The thing that gives me the
02:29most hope and energy right now is the way in which women are on fire. Women have been
02:35the engine behind this incredible response and push back when there's been these absurd
02:41violations of human rights and dignity that have been happening since this
02:45inauguration. It's going to transform not only the women's movement but all of our
02:50social movements. I think that truthfully women have driven social change for
02:55generations. I think particularly now the bold explicit misogyny of this
03:04administration has has really catalyzed a response right from women who are just
03:12outraged. Women feel like we're fighting for the future of our families, the future
03:18of all the institutions that make our democracy actually work. I just feel like
03:23women may just save our democracy in this country and it's incredible. This is a
03:30moment where we have to be as ambitious about the kind of change that makes life
03:36better for people in this country as we are about everything else. On January 21st I
03:42don't know if you were there at the Women's March but I was and I looked out and
03:46it was like millions of everyday people in the street and it was amazing. So I
03:50think that there are these moments in history where time and change moves way
03:57faster than anybody thinks it will and I think we're in one of those moments.
04:01Frankly if we can put four million women in the street on one day we can do
04:06anything.
