Baratunde Thurston  0:03  

Hey, I'm Baratunde Thurston and this is How to Citizen with Baratunde.

When I was about seven years old, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. My classmates, we're like, astronaut, Doctor, not this guy. This guy was like, garbage man. Yes. Because oh my goodness, all the reasons. That truck, I would hear the truck coming up the block, and raced to the front porch. To see the coolest dudes that ever lived hanging off the back of the truck as it rolled up the street, a street, it shouldn't have been able to fit up. But because the driver was so good skills, I'm talking skills, they could navigate any urban environment. And you're looking so cool hanging off the back of that truck, and they leap off the truck, and they pick up the trash. And I'm like, this is a win win. I don't, I can't even count the amount of wins. There are in that job. You're gonna pay me money to let me look cool. pick up trash, and get free stuff. Yes. And if the garbage man life wasn't for me, my fallback dream job was gardener. Yeah, little garden bear. Today, I was a member of a community garden, I grew food. For my family, I'm trying to provide for my family, it was so much fun. And I guess the thread is I like getting my hands dirty. I just I wanted money for dirty. That was the calculus of young bear today. And there are millions of Americans who've worked, getting their hands dirty for all of us in jobs that many of us can't, or don't want to do. But the difference between the early 1980s, when I had these dreams, and now is that so many of these people don't make nearly enough don't have the protections they need to take care of themselves and their families. You've heard me say this before, but it's hard to citizen when you can't pay the bills. and wealth inequality in this country is making it hard for increasing numbers of people to do just that. Now that inequality was baked in from the start through racism, and exclusion, then you add unchecked corporate growth on top of that concentrating economic power in the hands of the few, not the many. As a result, we've got a whole class of people who are trapped in poverty, perpetual insecurity, no matter how much or how hard they work, we call them the working poor. The system is designed to keep them poor. And that same system encourages us to always think of ourselves as individuals, which is convenient for the status quo, because it's overwhelming to think of yourself as a worker versus an entire Corporation, or as a citizen versus the whole system. But when we think together when we come together, we can change these outcomes. There is a better way, this is how to citizen y'all. And we're not gonna leave you hanging on the problem and wallow in that note, we're going to point toward those solutions. Now I knew who we had to talk to. on this topic. I sat down with someone who's organizing with one of the most historically discriminated groups of workers in our nation's history. Today's guest is AI Jen poo. She's been helping domestic workers lead a charge for fairness, the fairness all workers need so they can live with security live with dignity. So they can show up for themselves for their families, their communities, and all of us.

Ai-jen Poo  3:50  

We have to take every bit of power, every relationship every ounce of hope and determination that we have to win big for our communities right now. And I think domestic workers are ready.

Baratunde Thurston  4:08  

We meet Ai-jen after the break.

Let's start with you introducing yourself say your name and what you do.

Ai-jen Poo  4:34  

My name is Ai-jen Poo and I work for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which is an organization that works with nannies, housekeepers and home care workers, to build our power and to when dignity respect and fairness.

Baratunde Thurston  4:53  

dignity, respect, fair, those are all great things. I co sign Where do I sign up when you were growing up, what did you want to be?

Ai-jen Poo  5:02  

I actually wanted to be a writer. Because I'm actually kind of an introvert. And then as I got older, I started working with clay. And my pottery teacher became one of my best friends and mentors and the ceramic studio became kind of a refuge for me. So then I thought maybe I should be a potter until I ended up in New York City and in the world of organizing and activism.

Baratunde Thurston  5:33  

So you're shaping clay? take the leap with me from shaping clay to shaping the world. What's the jump into activism? Where does that first show up in your life?

Ai-jen Poo  5:46  

Well, I think it was because I was raised by my mom and my grandma. And, and they're just such strong, powerful women who did so much like really moved mountains every day. And I just thought they walked on water and could do anything. And, you know, I saw women doing that in the community. And I think I just assumed that if they were powering everything that they would be in charge of everything, actually in power, and you know, very quickly, you realize that that's not the case. And in fact, so much of what women do to power our world is not visible or certainly not valued, often not protected. And so I think I just was always drawn towards women's issues, women's organizations, I became a women's studies major in college and got involved in the New York Asian Women's Center when I moved to New York, and it was kind of a journey from there.

Baratunde Thurston  6:50  

Do you remember a formative experience that first got you interested in workers rights?

Ai-jen Poo  6:56  

Yes, I think it happened in stages. I was volunteering for the hotline at the New York Asian Women's Center and the domestic violence shelter for Asian immigrant women. And because my grandparents played such a role in raising me, I spoke Mandarin, albeit 12 year old Mandarin. But I did and so I volunteered on the bilingual hotline and survivors would call and they would talk about their experiences of violence and abuse. But they would also talk about just how hard it was to survive, doing the work that they did, and feeling like they just didn't have real choices to take care of themselves and keep themselves and their family safe. Because they worked in jobs that didn't pay the bills, where they couldn't put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads and the lights on for their families. And I also was volunteering at an organization called the Committee Against anti Asian violence, which is also now called Caf organizing Asian communities. And at the time, there were a group of us who were seeing the women in the Asian immigrant community working in these low wage jobs, restaurant work, nail salon work, domestic work, and seeing just how impossible it was to make a living doing these jobs. So we started organizing health fairs and know your rights events, just to see if there was interest on the part of women in these jobs to organize to come together. And it was always the domestic workers who would come to the meetings and really understood how valuable and powerful it is to break out of the isolation of your day to day life and join together with others. And they really seem like they understood the potential of organizing. And so we just really continued to work with at the time it was Filipina domestic workers organizing, bringing people together and a number of them before they had come to New York had worked in Hong Kong, where there's really like a powerful domestic workers movement that has been built there over many, many years. And they had a standard contract and clear rights and protections. And so the Filipinos who worked in Hong Kong before coming to New York, were shocked when they came to New York to find that in the United States, which is supposed to be kind of a bastion of freedom globally, that they had less rights and less protections and less standards. And they immediately said, you know, we need to organize with our sisters from all different communities, especially Caribbean women who were the majority of domestic workers in New York at the time and and everybody He needs to come together so that we can have standards and protections and rights. And that, in many ways, was the beginnings of the domestic workers movement generation that I was a part of in New York City. And our national movement, which has now grown. We're in all 50 states now we have 75 local affiliates and chapters all over the country and a community of about 280,000 domestic workers and and we're building every day.

Baratunde Thurston  10:36  

280,000 that's an army right there. So you speak of standards, rights, privileges for domestic workers. What are those, like? What does a domestic worker need? Or what was missing that other workers have that you notice domestic workers didn't have?

Ai-jen Poo  10:57  

There's a really deep history here that not a lot of people know, which is that? Well, if we think about it, it kind of makes sense, because the work that domestic workers do has always been associated with work that women do, right caregiving cleaning, and it's been really kind of taken for granted in our culture that women will just do that work on top of everything else. As a profession. It's always been associated with women of color, many of our first domestic workers were enslaved African women. And then Ever since then, it's always been black, brown, Asian native women doing this work immigrant women, it's the part of our workforce with the largest concentration of undocumented immigrants of any industry. But that history of racism, and the legacy of slavery has so profoundly shaped our workforce from day one. And the kind of signature moment of this was in the 1930s, when Congress was discussing the New Deal labor laws, the the labor laws, that would be the foundation of our country's rights for workers. Southern dixiecrats refused to support those bills if they included farm workers and domestic workers.

Baratunde Thurston  12:21  

What's the dixiecrats,

Ai-jen Poo  12:23  

a southern member of Congress, essentially. And that exclusion, explicit exclusion of domestic workers from those labor laws really set the tone for how this workforce would be treated, and how it would always be treated as less than real work. And so, so many laws exclude domestic workers at the federal level. And what we've tried to do is, state by state and city by city, organize and establish rights, we call them domestic workers bills of rights, the first one passed in New York in 2010. And now we have 11 statewide bills of rights for domestic workers and two in the cities of Seattle and Philadelphia. And one thing that's really powerful about this story is that Virginia just became the most recent state this year, just a month ago, to pass a domestic worker Bill of Rights. And it's the first state in the south to pass a bill and it was championed by two amazing black women, including one senator McClellan, whose grandmother was a domestic worker, and was probably working at the time when the New Deal excluded her. So it's just a kind of incredible full circle of what we can do when we build movements when we organize when we follow the leadership of black women to really change the course of history.

Baratunde Thurston  14:07  

Can you give me some examples of what is in a domestic workers bill of rights? What are domestic workers historically excluded from what are they fighting for and winning? Today,

Ai-jen Poo  14:20  

domestic workers in the 1930s are excluded from the right to collectively bargain and for my union. And so the National Labor Relations Act which gives workers the right to join a union and bargain collectively. Also the Fair Labor Standards Act which established the right to minimum wage and overtime, excluded domestic workers initially and many generations of incredible women before us organized to try to win inclusion and in the 1970s thanks to the efforts of a woman named Dorothy Bolden from Georgia who led the National Domestic Workers Union in the 60s, she was really successful in gaining inclusion for most domestic workers in minimum wage, and overtime protections. And we've tried to build off of that to win more and more. The state bills, make sure that they're, they're all different because every state's labor laws are a little bit different. But in New York, we won protection from discrimination and harassment, minimum of three days paid leave

Baratunde Thurston  15:33  

three days per what period of time, over a year, minimum of three days paid leave for a 365 day year. That seems like a very modest ask.

Ai-jen Poo  15:47  

I mean, it wasn't what we live in, in with I'll tell you that much. But, you know, in Massachusetts, we were able to win parental leave maternity leave for domestic workers. So every state's a little different. And, and I would say that it's all a work in progress. And that organizing is essential, because even when there are rights on the books, it really requires that we assert those rights and enforce them. And it's hard to do that in an industry where everyone is so spread out. I mean, you could go into any neighborhood, and not know which homes are also workplaces. There's no list. There's no registry, there's no sign. And so how do you enforce rights and improve conditions in that context, it takes really well educated organized workers who understand what their rights are, and have the ability to assert them.

Baratunde Thurston  16:49  

You describe a bit of your upbringing, I got glimpses, and you're spending your life organizing with domestic workers. How do you reconcile or address the fact that you're not a domestic worker?

Ai-jen Poo  17:09  

I believe that domestic workers deserve a powerful, excellent, impactful organization. And I want to be a part of building that. Because I believe that if we are to have a country that is equitable, that puts the well being of women and people of color at the center, that we're going to need domestic workers to have a really strong and powerful organization to get there. In some ways, this idea that the people that our systems have failed the longest are in the best position to lead the way forward is one that I just really believe and has been reinforced for me time and time again. So if I can be a part of building the platform and the vehicles for that to happen, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.

Baratunde Thurston  18:17  

As you try to recruit more domestic workers to these efforts, what are some of the great challenges?

Ai-jen Poo  18:27  

I mean, most domestic workers are really just struggling to survive. And especially now, it is a full blown depression for this workforce. People keep using the word recession, and I'm like, what, it's a full blown depression, and we have 40% of our workforce is unemployed. A huge number undocumented living in fear of being separated from their families, and those who are working are working for less money than they were before the pandemic. And it was already poverty wages coming in. The average income of a homecare worker in America is $17,000 per year. I mean, I don't know a single town or city in this country where you can survive off of $17,000 a year, let alone raise your family. I remember one early meeting in the pandemic, where we had a zoom call with domestic workers and one of our members held up her phone to the zoom camera to show us that there was literally one cent left in her bank account. So just the day to day struggle to survive is both the challenge and also the opportunity because I do think that for domestic workers, when we start to talk to them and engage and listen, I think it's it's becomes very clear very quickly, why we need to come together and and what is there to lose really in the end So there are many challenges, but there are also many, many openings. And right now in particular, I think we are in this a new New Deal moment, honestly, where more deeper, impactful change is possible than my entire 25 years of organizing. Literally, it's stuff that we've been chipping away at, for decades, I feel like is really like just right there. Right right there. And so I'm of the mind that we have to take every bit of power, every relationship, every ounce of hope and determination that we have to win big for our communities right now. And, and I think domestic workers are ready, and we have more participation on our membership calls than ever before in a pandemic. So I feel I feel excited, and I feel hopeful.

Baratunde Thurston  21:09  

We'll be right back.

Want you to define some things for me, and certainly for our listeners? Can you define what the new deal was in terms of US history, and then describe this new new deal that you see the potential for and what's new about it?

Ai-jen Poo  21:47  

I think that every few generations, there are these moments where social movements in our country, like the labor movement of the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s, catalyze a big opening, for structural change, meaning changes in our systems and our policies that shape our lives. And their moments where we update our democracy for the next several generations to make it better. And what the labor movement of the 1930s did was catalyze this moment, it was also a time when we were coming out of a depression and economic crisis. And there needed to be a massive reset. And the new deal was a moment where we put these foundational sweeping policies in place to try to reset and adjust our economy and our democracy for the next phase. And it was social movements that created the context for that workers, everyday people organizing, and it's always been the case. This is our moment, where the movement for Black Lives, the re energized, intersectional, women's movement, all of our social movements, that have converged in really powerful ways that mobilized unprecedented numbers of voters to turn out to the polls last year, we have created the context, in addition to a pandemic, and the economic fallout of it for another reset. And so that's what I mean by new new deals like this is our moment to reset our frameworks to better match our values and our vision for the future. And movements created this moment of opportunity. And movements have to kind of seal the deal and get us across the finish line to

Baratunde Thurston  23:56  

if not the finish line, at least another significant mile marker,

Ai-jen Poo  24:00  

another, not the finish line by any stretch. That is correct. I stand corrected.

Baratunde Thurston  24:09  

I love the this image. I'm such a technical, technological person. And the idea of updating our democracy was like that's like an iOS firmware update a new version of Android update the democracy firmware, let's go. Let's use the terms, economy and democracy often in pairs. What is your view of the connection between the economy and democracy?

Ai-jen Poo  24:38  

These two things really do go hand in hand because whoever has power in our democracy is going to design policies in the interests of those people. Right. And the more of us engage in our democracy, the more of us can have a say over the kind of economic policy See, that shapes our lives and our work and our wages and our ability to take care of our families. It's, it's all connected. And the flywheel has been going in the wrong direction. And we have the opportunity to, to flip it and have it be more of a virtuous cycle where we the people, we engage, we vote, we organize, we elect, and we move the electeds to pass the policies that we need, in order to live well, then we go back again. And we continue to organize and build our power and vote more. And that is how we make sure that our policies, including our economic policies, work for all of us.

Baratunde Thurston  25:53  

Yeah. What are some of the national domestic worker alliances, accomplishments that you're most proud of?

Ai-jen Poo  26:00  

I'm proud of this Virginia bill, because it is the first bill of rights in the south. And it just feels so important and symbolic. I'm really proud of the work we did last year to provide emergency cash assistance to domestic workers who were impacted by the COVID crisis, we distributed more than $30 million to over 50,000 domestic workers who were impacted by the crisis. And I am incredibly proud of this portable benefits platform. It's so in the weeds, but we built a benefits platform called Aleah. That helps domestic workers get access to benefits for the first time. And that feels really exciting.

Baratunde Thurston  26:47  

What makes it portable. What does that mean?

Ai-jen Poo  26:50  

Oh, portable benefits just mean that they follow you. So they're not attached to one job they're attached to you. So if you clean 10 houses, you can have all 10 of your clients contribute to your benefits fund. And then you get to pick what benefit you want to apply the money in your fund towards a lot of people pick pay time off, but there's also other kinds of products that you can pick.

Baratunde Thurston  27:14  

That's amazing. I had a thought about your portable benefits package. Everybody should have that? Why do we lash our benefits our health insurance to one particular job that that's never quite made sense to me, just as a human being. So if you can bring that innovation will apply that update hopefully, across the whole economy and update our economy operating system as well.

Ai-jen Poo  27:39  

I would love that. It's so funny, because we were contacted by blues musicians in Chicago, who basically were like, Hey, could this work for us, because we really need this too. And I just think more and more of us all the time, we fall through the cracks of an outdated safety net, which is why we need to update that system. And this is a model for a model, right? for how we might think about that.

Baratunde Thurston  28:08  

So we have this term in the United States, the working poor. You've been working with people who were excluded historically, who are denied access to standards to rights to the ability to organize, what are your thoughts about the term and also about the people who are in part, at least defined by it.

Ai-jen Poo  28:32  

It breaks my heart that we need to have that term that that term is even a thing. But it is a thing. I mean, there are millions upon millions of people who work incredibly hard every single day, and still can't pay the bills. And there was that incredible study that happened way before the pandemic that showed that more than half of all Americans didn't have the ability to survive a $400 unexpected crisis. And that to me, in a country like ours, with so many resources, so much talent, so much abundance, in every way. The fact that that is the reality of work in America is just, it's crazy to me. It is crazy to me, and until we fix that. I don't know that we can get to the future that we want in this country. So I guess what I think about that term is that we need to work really hard to no longer have that term in our vernacular.

Baratunde Thurston  29:48  

This idea that we have a group of people called the working poor, suggests that folks can work maybe two full time jobs and still not have enough money. To survive? Has that always been the case? Is it is it gotten worse?

Ai-jen Poo  30:06  

I wonder if it was always a thing for some communities and black communities in immigrant communities, there was a way in which parts of the economy were created, where it was acceptable to pay people a lot less, to work very hard. And the narrative was associated with race and gender, because we are somehow less, or somehow less than fully human, less than skilled. Less than right, that there was a narrative that was very much racialized and gendered, that enabled the creation of jobs in our labor market that were essentially poverty, wage shops, jobs that you can survive on. And I think it has gotten worse. It has to do with the concentration of power in the hands and in the interests of a tiny, wealthy elite, and corporations. And the reality is that working people have generated a ton of wealth, productivity is off the charts, people are working, and they are not benefiting. And every year, they benefit less from the productivity and the profits that they generate. And we have, over time, worn away at our safety net. I mean, in the 90s, when I first started doing this work, it was seen as marginal, you know, just kind of on the edges and the shadows of our economy. Today, when I look around, more and more people work under those same circumstances of unpredictable hours. You don't even know sometimes who your bosses who work for nap, you don't have benefits, you don't have job security. And you're piecing it together. And it's kind of like the domestic work of vacation of work in our country. And it's kind of like people of color, women of color. Saw that first. And what we've had is a gravitational pull downward for everybody else. Well, people who benefit from the status quo benefit more and more.

Baratunde Thurston  32:41  

Why do you think that is such a real way of life in this country right now.

Ai-jen Poo  32:49  

Because workers do not have enough power in our economy. And the way that we build power to do those things is by coming together and organizing and building movements. And, and we've done it in the past. It is not an accident that manufacturing jobs went from in the 1920s and 30s, dangerous poverty wage sweatshop jobs that a lot of immigrants did. Two jobs that so called became the pathway to the middle class, right? They became good jobs where one generation could do better than the next and you could own a home and support a family. And that was not an accident that was organizing. That was workers building power.

Baratunde Thurston  33:42  

You're putting agency back into the historical narrative there, we're gonna think maybe it was learned that it just got better. Because America is a great place where things get better all the time. And there's a missing player in that story, which is workers organizing to make it better.

Ai-jen Poo  33:59  

And to be clear, also multiracial organizing workers coming together across race, and community, and religion, and culture. To find power and community and each other and with each other. That is the unstoppable force.

Baratunde Thurston  34:18  

Yeah, I can understand why a worker would want more money, more security, more safety, more benefits. That's good for the worker. Why is it good for the business owner, the larger society, the random politician, for the rest of us.

Ai-jen Poo  34:41  

The beautiful thing about care work is that investing in it is like such a win, win win. If we make, for example, Home Care jobs, good jobs, It not only benefits those workers and their families, but it makes it possible for everybody else to get back to work. Because we all need care. I mean, this pandemic has pushed 2 million women out of the workforce, disproportionately women of color. And largely because of caregiving challenges. And it has revealed that care is essential that we cannot work if we do not have childcare. And if we do not have support for our loved ones with disabilities, if we do not have care for our elders, it is fundamental to like infrastructure, we think about infrastructures, bridges, and tunnels and broadband. But what could be more fundamental infrastructure than the ability to make sure that our families our loved ones are cared for so that we can work? I call these jobs job enabling jobs, because they make it possible for everything else to work and everyone else to work? What if we could allow for every care worker who wants to do this work to do so and feel like they are respected and sustained in this work and also take care of their families too. Such a simple, simple idea, but so powerful.

Baratunde Thurston  36:25  

We all need care. We all need care, and the idea of care as infrastructure should trademark that. That's pretty good. Thank you. I'm really trying to get members of Congress to see it that way. So what have you learned about our economy, through all your years of organizing what stands out most to you?

Ai-jen Poo  36:51  

I am still 20 years and I first started organizing domestic workers in 1998. And I'm still shocked and appalled that this work of nurturing children and the potential of our babies, making sure that they're safe. The work of supporting the independence and quality of life of people with disabilities, the work of making sure our elders can age with dignity, that that work is some of the least valued most underpaid work in our economy is still shocking to me. Because it is so profound, and so fundamental, our economy and what we value is upside down.

Yeah, what would right side up look like? One, that we wouldn't need this term essential work, because we would understand that everyone who is working is essential. And that all work would have inherent dignity, where you could hold your head up high, and be proud of what you do and know that your contributions were valued, and that your humanity was recognized. That's what right side up look like? Well, thank you for your work on behalf of those workers. On behalf of us all. You've given me so much to think about it, and I appreciate your time. And your labor. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Baratunde Thurston  38:55  

As I was listening to and talking with IGN, I kept thinking as well. I'm not a domestic worker, I'm not in the working class. I can pay my bills. Thankfully, fingers crossed badly. So why do I care about all this? Because I know we can't do this alone. Because even with my privilege, I have been at the edge. I have had to borrow money from friends to pay rent. I have been behind on debt payments on those student loans. I have felt the insecurity of exorbitant health care expenses that I thought would be covered by my insurance, only to find out that they weren't. So wherever any of us is on that spectrum, I think we have an interest in making sure everybody's taken care of. And I know that the types of things that we need to do together are bigger than my own individual financial security. I can't build a road all by myself and we can't Take care of each other all by ourselves, as I just put it care is infrastructure. And in a sign of progress, I think it's been nice to hear our own President of the United States and his infrastructure proposal, use that similar language and try to fund more domestic work in this idea of infrastructure funding. I feel good even hearing some of the challenges, because it reminded me that we are a part of potential waves of historic progress that we're in this moment. And that progress only comes because we work we organize. I know we hear this phrase a lot. The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. People bend that arc, preferably large numbers of them with very strong bungee cords. And we bend it by organizing by working hard by cooperating with one another, to get all the things we all deserve, which includes work with dignity. Next week, co op organizer to Mila Medley shows us what an economy built on cooperation looks like.

Now, our printer Sam's going to tell you what to do. And you better do what they tell you. I'm just gonna put it like that, you know, I just don't want to be on Sam's bad side. So seriously, do everything Sam says.

Unknown Speaker  41:33  

Think about someone in your life who's cared for you. Think about the value of that relationship. It could be a family member, a neighbor, a childcare provider, or some other caregiver in your life, give them a shout out, call them and just let them know that you appreciate them. being ethical employer even at home. The National Domestic Workers Alliance has a sister organization. It's called hand in hand, and they offer support to employers of domestic workers. Check out the resources on their website, domesticemployers.org to learn how you can ethically employ someone in your home. If you're curious about the portable benefits I just mentioned, here's two platforms that we've found promising opolis and the portable benefit network. share these options with others in your network. So many more people can vote with their dollars and push for portable benefits as a part of a more equitable working future. Lastly, support them domestic workers Bill of Rights after winning domestic workers bills of rights in nine states in two cities. The National Domestic Workers Alliance is leading an effort to pass a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Follow the link in the show notes to add your name and support.

Baratunde Thurston  42:39  

If you take any of these actions, please brag about yourself online using the hashtag #howtocitizen and send us general feedback or ideas for the show to comments at howtocitizen.com speaking of that domain name, we have one and we're using it visit howtocitizen.com to sign up for our newsletter. We'll learn about upcoming events, or even more stuff than that. And if you like the show, spread the word. Tell somebody if you don't definitely just keep it to yourself. Appreciate you. How to Citizen with Baratunde is a production of IHeartRadio, podcasts and dust live productions. Our executive producers are me. Baratunde Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart and Misha Yusef. Our producers are Stephanie Cohn and Allie Kilt. Kelly Prime is our editor. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. And Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original Music by Andrew Eapen. This episode was produced and sound designed by Sam Paulson. Special thanks to Joelle Smith from IHeartRadio