SO 9 Episode 10: Ai-jen Poo – A Woman Who Cares

Two Old Bitches: Stories from Women who Reimagine, Reinvent and Rebel

Ai-jen Poo is a woman who cares. That caring shapes her activism as a next-generation labor leader, a gifted organizer, campaigner, advocate and author. Ai-jen is also faithful. At the threshold of the second half of life –she just turned 50— she has spent the last 25 or more years dedicated to growing a domestic workers’ movement. Always crucial yet routinely undervalued, family caregivers are more and more essential as our nation ages, as we age. Ai-jen founded and leads the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a network of more than 70 local affiliate organizations and chapters and over 200,000 members that, in 12 short years, passed Domestic Worker Bills of Rights in 10 states and two municipalities and brought over 2 million home care workers under minimum wage protections. In 2011 she launched Caring Across Generations to unite American families in a campaign to achieve bold solutions to the nation’s crumbling care infrastructure. A leading voice in women’s movements, five years ago Ai-jen along with two other amazing women leaders, Cecile Richards and Alicia Garza co-founded Supermajority to build a powerful women’s voting bloc to ensure our freedoms and priorities, an effort needed even more today in light of the recent elections. The author of the celebrated book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America, Ai-jen’s brilliance, imagination and hard work have earned her a MacArthur “Genius Award,” a seat on the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation and a walk on a Hollywood red carpet with Meryl Streep. If like us you could use a fix of possibility, dare we say hope, in these dark days, join our conversation with Ai-jen, starting with her explanation of why campaigns are like love affairs.

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