From Election Action for Caregivers:
Take action to ask Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris to strengthen their support for caregivers.
There are over 53 million unpaid family caregivers in the US, plus 11 million stay at home parents. It’s URGENT that the Biden/Harris Campaign recognize this essential work with fully-refundable tax credits. Ask that they express their support in the Presidential and VP Debates.
Actions Continue reading
Urgent Request! Support effort to get out the vote of millions of unpaid caregivers!
Sign on to Letter asking Biden/Harris Campaign to
expand their support to include all caregivers
We write to urgently ask your organization to sign onto the attached letter here to Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris asking them to strengthen their support for caregivers. There are over 53 million unpaid family caregivers in the US, plus millions providing unwaged care to children. These millions, if we vote, could make the difference in the election outcome, including but not only in critical swing states.
Large numbers of organizations have signed on to support the American Family Act (Senator Harris already a co-sponsor) and the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act which propose fully refundable tax credits, as well as an Open letter to governments – A Care Income Now!. Support by Senator Harris and Vice President Biden for these bills and policies would be a boost and incentive for millions of impacted people to get out and vote.
Sign online here or email electionaction4caregivers@gmail.com. If you are not a member of an organization or are not able to confirm your organization’s endorsement, of course personal endorsements are also welcome. Please help circulate this letter, and let us know if you would like to become more involved in this effort.
Margaret Prescod, Global Women’s Strike/US co-coordinator and Women of Color/GWS
Peggy O’Mara, former editor and publisher Mothering magazine
for Election Action for Caregivers
Read and share the letter and fact sheet online at medium.com/@electionaction4caregivers Continue reading
Please see this Washington Post op ed, Yes. Balancing work and parenting is impossible. Here’s the data, which mentions the Wages for Housework Campaign, links to the Global Women’s Strike and calls for what we have been advocating for decades. A two-parent family chronicled balancing waged work and caregiving work for their children during lockdown and found:
“The [on-duty] parent was interrupted 45 times, an average of 15 times per hour… Numbers like that help illustrate why sustained concentration while working from home is so difficult… Congress should expand the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to include everyone doing additional care work because of the pandemic and to provide essential workers with financial support for the care of their dependents. Compensating care work directly and equitably, as feminist projects and groups like the Wages for Housework campaign and the National Domestic Workers Alliance have long advocated, would also give caregivers the ability to negotiate with their employers over establishing boundaries between work and home life, while crediting the economic value of caregiving in ways that might transform the post-pandemic economy.” (see full article below)
The article couldn’t be more timely as we mobilize to get support for the Worker Relief and Credit Act (WRCR HR5271). It is introduced by Rep Gwen Moore (WI) and Rep Marcia Fudge (OH). The WRCR would redefine workers to include unpaid family caregivers and students. It would make Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) fully refundable and available to more people, getting cash directly into mothers’, other caregivers’, and students’ hands. It would help alleviate poverty, particularly of Black, Indigenous and Latina caregivers, by 30%.
It reflects in part the global call for a Care Income for People and Planet put forward by the Global Women’s Strike and the Green New Deal for Europe.
Endorse Share on Twitter #Money4Caregivers #CareIncomeNow
Click here to endorse the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act
The pandemic demonstrates how caregivers serve as frontline and essential workers, filling the gaps in our health care system. Even before this crisis, around 43.5 million Americans worked as unpaid caregivers to their children, aging parents or adult family members with a disability. The WRCR Act updates the definition of work to recognize the uncompensated care these individuals provide, which is estimated at $500 billion annually. from the Letter to Leadership re. the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act (WRCR HR 5271)
Policymakers are starting to take note of what we’ve always known – that mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers are also essential workers, counted on for everyone’s survival but not paid for this work.
The Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act, WRCR HR5271, introduced by Reps Gwen Moore (WI) & Marcia Fudge (OH), would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to make it fully refundable and available to more people, including mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers, and get cash directly into mothers’ and families hands. It redefines workers to include unpaid family caregivers & students.
For more info and to endorse the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act click here or sign below & email it to us. Please share on social media: Facebook Twitter #Money4Caregivers #CareIncomeNow
Highlights of WRCR HR 5271: Continue reading
FOR TWITTER: Money 4 Mothers & Other Caregivers must be in every Stimulus Bill! https://bit.ly/Money4Caregivers #Money4Caregivers #CareIncomeNow #ChildBenefitNow @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer @McConnellPress @senatemajldr @RepGwenMoore @RepKarenBass @repmarkpocan @RepJayapal @AOC @RepLawrence
FOR FACEBOOK: Money for Mothers & Other Caregivers must be in every Stimulus Bill! https://bit.ly/Money4Caregivers #Money4Caregivers #CareIncomeNow #ChildBenefitNow @NancyPelosi @chuckschumer @mitchmcconnell @GwenSMoore @RepKarenBass @repmarkpocan @Pramila.Jayapal @OcasioCortez @Rep.BLawrence
Mothers and other unwaged primary caregivers are counted on for everyone’s survival, especially but not only during this pandemic, yet we are never included in relief/stimulus legislation. Instead, we’re disrespected, especially those of us on welfare or other benefits struggling the hardest to survive. Our economic contributions are hidden, so we keep working even when ill, and without financial means we can’t escape domestic violence and face having our children taken away, as poverty is treated as neglect.
But we too are essential workers making a fundamental social contribution to survival, health and the economy – we have earned our right to stimulus money! ● More healthcare is provided by unwaged caregivers than all healthcare institutions worldwide ● $470 billion is the value of unwaged caregiving for adults (not even including care for children) in the US (AARP) ● 34 billion hours per day is how much women & girls spend on caregiving work worldwide ● $143,000 a year is what US moms would earn if we were paid for all the jobs we do, with overtime, according to Salary.com ● Yet, women & children are 73% of the poor in the US ● There is plenty of money: The US has 607 billionaires; the top eight richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as “half the human race”. The US military budget keeps rising and pays for bases all over the world… It’s about time caregivers are prioritized not only in the US but worldwide. This helps ensure health everywhere.
Full list of demands here • Take Action: Tweet at Congress & share on social media • Sign & Share our Petition • Sign up for action alert texts here
While we were glad to see the child benefit of $500 per child under age 17 in the latest stimulus package, on top of $1200 in cash assistance per individual, that payment must be made ongoing rather than one time only.
As the House and Senate negotiate stimulus packages now and in the coming weeks, it is vital that they include measures to put money directly in the hands of unwaged caregivers who are on the frontlines of caring for our families, birthing and caring for children, doing the caring work every day that is essential to the survival of our families, communities, and the planet, through this and every disaster. As family and community caregivers we are the anchors and the lifeboats for our loved ones, children, the elderly those who are impoverished, disabled, in ill physical or mental health. Those of us who are immigrant, and/or Black or Brown, including Indigenous, are at greater risk. Increasingly mothers and our children are a large percentage of the homeless, and mothers are the fastest growing population of people being imprisoned.
If money doesn’t go directly to the primary caregiver, women will be put at even greater risk of domestic violence and will lack the means to escape it. Studies have shown that primary caregivers getting money directly is the best insurance that the money will benefit the entire family starting with children. Because unwaged caregivers are not now getting a paycheck does not mean we are not working!
Even as legislation is passed to send checks to people in the US, from what we understand, those who have not filed taxes or don’t have a Social Security number, meaning the most impoverished among us, will get nothing. According to the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, there are 140 million people in the US at or close to the poverty line, and 73% of them are women and our children.
Money for Mothers and our Children Continue reading
Adapt and post this email to each contact form or email below, and to your own Senators and Reps.
See action alert and background that you can draw on in your letter.
Dear Rep./Senator _________,
I am a [mother/grandmother/unwaged caregiver for….] and am deeply worried that the COVID-19 stimulus bills are not including us, even as we are being counted on to take on the massive work of keeping our families and communities together in the face of a health and economic crisis. Of course we love our families, but love does not pay the rent. The point is that it is vital that the stimulus proposals include measures to put money directly in the hands of unwaged caregivers such as myself who are on the frontlines, doing caring work every day that is essential to the survival of our families, communities, and the planet, through this and every disaster. Those who are immigrant, and/or people of color are at greater risk. And for those of us who are or may become victims of domestic violence we not only need access to shelters, but we urgently need cash assistance to help us and our children get out of danger.
In other western countries, governments pay a non-means tested child benefit or family allowance. We contribute $470 billion or more to the economy, according to AARP. We are working, we are workers, our work keeps all of society functioning. Where is the money that we and our children deserve? Continue reading
