Caring Across Generations: A New Movement
By Lucero Castañeda, USSA La Coalición Chair and student as University of Oregon.
One joins a collective effort, and many follow. A movement that is lead by a mother, a father, the elderly, and a child, is a movement and a struggle for all. A movement like such, is one that must be lead with passion, dedication, commitment and love. It is a movement that must be lead and owned, ACROSS GENERATIONS.
Rhiannon Springall, the Community Labor Liason for United States Student Association (USSA), Alexandra Flores-Quilty, a member of Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), and Lucero Castañeda, La Coalición Chair for USSA, jumped into a car drove 450 miles from Eugene to San Francisco to attend the Bay Area CARE Congress – a place where we knew we could see change happen.
The previous week, Rhiannon Springall and I proposed a resolution to the USSA Board of Directors that endorsed the Caring Across Generations campaign that passed with nearly everyone voting in favor of it. You can imagine the excitement we felt as we drove all day to have the opportunity to meet the campaign organizers, the caregivers, the care recipients, the youth involved, and everyone in between during the Bay Area CARE Congress, which was held August 20-21st.
As Saturday began, we were all set and extremely eager to learn more about and participate in the CARE Congress. The USSA and SLAP team, including Chris Hicks the National SLAP Coordinator, dove right into the weekend with a campaign overview of Caring Across Generations at Mission High School.
Caring Across Generations is a campaign to transform long-term care in the United States for our loved ones who count on the support of caregivers to meet their basic daily needs, the workers who provide the support, and the families who struggle to find and afford quality care for their family members. 2011 is the first year of the “age wave;” every eight seconds, an American will turn 65. In the coming years, more and more of our elderly population will need care, just as more workers will need quality jobs. At a time when new solutions to ongoing crises in care, jobs and immigration are desperately needed, people from all walks of life are joining together in a new movement for change. Caring Across Generation works to protect the policies that support our loved ones to live with dignity, and to create the policies that will allow us to be a nation that takes care of one another across generations. There are five policy elements, the “Five Fingers of the Caring Hand,” that help address the many dimensions of the care crisis and create the support system we need.
Having a greater understanding of the “Five Fingers of the Caring Hand” and being able to see the impact it could have in peoples life was truly eye opening. The youth who attended the Care Congress broke off into a group to discuss how youth could engage this campaign uniquely, which included: United We DREAM, GAP, Jobs with Justice, SLAP, and USSA. The youth had a chance to engage in an activity where we took time to think about and share our personal stories and our connection to the care industry as individuals and what had brought us to the same room.
The Mission High School gym was where we re-united with all the Care Congress participants. It was breathtaking to see the room filled with so many different faces from across different generations, corners of the nation, and so many organizations being represented. The room was arranged by tables, each table was its own discussion group.
I had the privilege to be part of a group of women from Casa Latina de Seattle. This group of women was comprised of every angle within the domestic work industry including, child home caregivers and elderly home caregivers. For the next few hours we had the pleasure of listening to several speakers address different points of the campaign, including Ai-Jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and Sarita Gupta, Executive Director of Jobs with Justice (JwJ). Throughout the evening there were several spaces where we discussed various questions regarding the campaign and next steps. That night I left the table inspired by these women because learning about their struggles as immigrant domestic workers and seeing them strong in action was astonishing and knowing how this campaign could change their lives and their families as well as their work environment.
Inspired and thrilled, we made our way to the Youth organizing Strategy meeting. Once there we brainstormed options and tactics the youth and students could use to get involved and participate in the Caring Across Generations campaign. Later that evening the youth joined members of the NDWA in a creative direct action workshop. The room was divided in groups and each set off to create their example of a direct action for a campaign through the means of a skit. Needless to say that there was a comical, free flowing, vibrant energy in the room, especially from the members of the NDWA.
The youth ended the night by meeting together and solidifying a work plan that we could take back to our campuses and organizations in order to continue this work, including endorsing the campaign, sharing it with other youth organizations, and the most exciting next step to host a Care Congress on our campuses, where we could bring awareness and visibility to a maximum.
Sunday night, August 21, after our good-byes and a great dinner, the youth our friends, new and old, parted ways but the movement is only beginning and our voices loud and strong are yet to be heard.
A special thanks to Jobs With Justice, the Student Labor Action Project and the National Domestic Workers Alliance for making our participation in this Care Congress possible. Currently there are 15 Care Congresses scheduled to take place over the course of the next 12 months. Your campus could be the next to host a Care Congress! The next one scheduled is October 23, 2011 in Los Angeles California. For more information and personal stories, visit caringacrossgenerations.org.
