The work that makes all other work possible Aijen Poo
I want to talk to you tonight
about the work that makes
all other work possible,
about the millions of women
who go to work in our homes
every single day,
caring for children as nannies,
caring for our loved ones
with disabilities and our elders,
as home care workers,
maintaining sanity
in our homes as cleaners.
It’s the work that makes
all other work possible.
And it’s mostly done by women,
more than 90 percent women,
disproportionately women of color.
And the work itself is associated with
work that women have historically done,
work that’s been made incredibly invisible
and taken for granted in our culture.
But it’s so fundamental
to everything else in our world.
It makes it possible for all of us
to go out and do what we do in the world
every single day,
knowing that the most precious aspects
of our lives are in good hands.
But we don’t think about it that way.
It’s almost defined by its invisibility.
You could go into any neighborhood
and not know which homes
are also workplaces.
There’s no sign.
There’s no list or registry.
It’s just invisible.
And it’s this work that is not even
referred to as real work.
It’s referred to as “help.”
It’s often seen as unskilled,
not seen as professional.
And race has played a profound role
in how we value this work in our culture.
Some of the first domestic workers
in the United States were black women
who were enslaved,
and racial exclusion has shaped
their conditions for generations.
In the 1930s, when Congress
was discussing the labor laws
that would be a part of the New Deal,
that would protect all workers,
Southern members of Congress
refused to support those labor laws
if they included protections
for domestic workers and farmworkers.
That history of racial exclusion
and our cultural devaluing of work
that’s associated with women
now means that millions of women
go to work every single day,
work incredibly hard
and still can’t make ends meet.
They earn poverty wages
without a safety net,
so that the women that we’re counting on
to take care of us and our families
can’t take care of their own,
doing this work.
But my work over the last 20 years
has been about changing precisely that.
It’s about making these jobs good jobs
that you can take pride in
and support your family on.
At the National Domestic Workers Alliance,
we’ve been working hard in states
to pass new laws that will protect
domestic workers from discrimination
and sexual harassment,
that will create days of rest,
paid time off, even.
So far, eight states have passed
domestic workers bills of rights.
Yes.
(Applause)
And during the Obama administration,
we were successful in bringing
two million home care workers
under minimum wage
and overtime protections
for the first time since 1937.
(Applause)
Most recently, we’ve been really excited
to launch a new portable benefits platform
for domestic workers, called “Alia,”
which allows for domestic workers
with multiple clients
to give them access to benefits
for the very first time.
So really important progress
is being made.
But I would argue tonight
that one of the most important things
that domestic workers can provide
is actually what they can teach us
about humanity itself
and about what it will take to create
a more humane world for our children.
In the face of extreme immorality,
domestic workers can be our moral compass.
And it makes sense,
because what they do is so fundamental
to the very basics
of human need and humanity.
They are there when we
are born into this world;
they shape who we become in this world;
and they are with us
as we prepare to leave this world.
And their experiences
with families are so varied.
They have some relationships
with the families that they work for
that are incredibly positive
and mutually supportive
and last for years and years.
And then the opposite also happens.
And we’ve seen cases
of sexual violence and assault,
of extreme forms
of abuse and exploitation.
We’ve seen cases of human trafficking.
Domestic workers live
in poor neighborhoods,
and then they go to work
in very wealthy ones.
They cross cultures and generations
and borders and boundaries,
and their job, no matter what,
is to show up and care –
to nurture, to feed, to clothe, to bathe,
to listen, to encourage,
to ensure safety,
to support dignity …
to care no matter what.
I want to tell you a story of a woman
I met early on in this work.
Her name is Lily.
Lily and her family lived in Jamaica,
and when she was 15 years old,
she was approached by an American couple
who were looking for a live-in nanny
to come live with them
in the United States
and help them care for their children.
They offered Lily’s family that
if she came to work as their nanny,
she would be able to have access
to a US education,
and she would have a weekly salary
sent home to help her family financially.
They decided it was a good idea
and decided to take the opportunity.
Lily held up her end of the bargain
and helped to raise three children.
But all communication
with her family was severed:
no letters, no phone calls.
She was never allowed to go to school,
and she was never paid –
for 15 years.
One day, she saw an article in a newspaper
about another domestic worker
with a really similar story to hers,
another case that I was
working on at the time,
and she found a way to reach me.
She also found a way to reach her brother,
who was living in the United States
at the time as well.
Between the two of us,
we were able to help her escape.
And she had the help
of one of the children.
One of the children
was old enough to realize
that the way his nanny
was being treated was wrong,
and he gave her the money that he
had been saving through his childhood
to help her escape.
But here’s the thing about this story.
She was essentially enslaved for 15 years.
Human trafficking and slavery
is a criminal offense.
And so her lawyers and I asked Lily,
did she want to press criminal charges
for what had happened to her.
And after thinking about
what it would mean,
she said no,
because she didn’t want the children
to be separated from their parents.
Instead, we filed a civil lawsuit,
and we eventually won the case,
and her case became a rallying cry
for domestic workers everywhere.
She was reunited with her family
and went on to have a family of her own.
But the thing that’s so profound
to me about this story
is, despite having 15 years
stolen from her life,
it did not affect the care and compassion
that she felt for the children.
And I see this from domestic
workers all the time.
In the face of indignities
and our failure to respect and value
this work in our culture,
they still show up,
and they care.
They’re simply too proximate
to our shared humanity.
They know how your toddler
likes to be held
as they take their bottle before a nap.
They know how your mother likes her tea,
how to make her smile and tell stories
despite her dementia.
They are so proximate to our humanity.
They know that at the end of the day,
these are people
who are part of families –
someone’s mother,
someone’s grandmother,
someone’s best friend
and someone’s baby;
undeniably human,
and therefore, not disposable.
Domestic workers know that any time
a single person becomes disposable,
it’s a slippery slope.
You see, the cultural devaluing
of domestic work
is a reflection
of a hierarchy of human value
that defines everything in our world,
a hierarchy that values
the lives and contributions
of some groups of people over others,
based on race, gender,
class, immigration status –
any number of categories.
And that hierarchy of human value requires
stories about those groups of people
in order to sustain itself.
So these stories have seeped
deep into our culture
about how some people
are less intelligent,
some people are less intuitive,
weaker,
by extension, less trustworthy,
less valuable
and ultimately,
less human.
And domestic workers know
it’s a slippery slope
when we start to see a worker
as less than a real worker,
to a woman as less than a woman,
to a mother as less than a mother,
to a child as less than a child.
In the spring of 2018,
the Trump administration announced
a new policy at the US-Mexico border,
a zero-tolerance policy,
to forcibly separate all children
from their parents,
who were arriving at the border
seeking asylum;
children as young as 18 months,
separated from their parents
after a long and arduous journey
to reach the US-Mexico border
in search of safety and a new beginning.
Thousands of children separated.
And because they were migrants,
they were treated as less than children.
In response, I helped to organize
the Families Belong Together Vigil
at the Ursula Border Patrol
Processing Center in McAllen, Texas,
on Father’s Day.
Inside that processing center,
there were hundreds of children
who were being held, processed
and then prepared to be
shipped all over country
to be jailed in facilities
hundreds of miles away from their parents.
I saw with my own eyes
children not [old] enough for kindergarten
in unmarked buses,
being shipped off to jails
hundreds of miles away.
And as they passed us by,
they reached for us through the windows,
as we stood vigil to let them know
that they are not alone,
and we are fighting for them.
Domestic workers came from all over Texas
to be a part of the vigil.
They saw in those families
their own family stories.
They had also come here
in search of safety and a new beginning,
a better life for their families,
and they saw in the eyes of those children
their own children.
And through our tears,
we looked at each other
and we asked each other,
“How did we get here,
to putting children in cages
and separating them from the people
who love them the most in the world?”
How?
And what I thought to myself was:
if domestic workers were in charge,
this never would have happened.
Our humanity would never
have been so disposable
that we would be treating
children in this way.
The Dalai Lama once said
that love and compassion are necessities,
not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.
In other words, they are fundamental
to human existence.
Domestic workers are in charge
of the fundamentals.
They love and they care,
and they show compassion no matter what.
We live in a time of moral choices
everywhere we turn:
at the border,
at the ballot box,
in our workplaces,
right in our homes, full of moral choices.
As you go about your day
and you encounter these moral choices,
think of Lily.
Think like Lily.
Think like a domestic worker
who shows up and cares no matter what.
Love and compassion, no matter what.
Show up like a domestic worker,
because our children are counting on us.
Thank you.
(Applause)