Rising Up For Justice: Dignity for Domestic Workers

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FEATURING JENN STOWE - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Jenn Stowe, the Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance  joins us. Prior to joining NDWA, she was Deputy Executive Director at Priorities USA, the primary presidential super PAC working to defeat Donald Trump. While at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, she led the strategic creative direction for many of its campaigns, including its now popular “Stand With Black Women” framework and branding. She also serves on the Priorities USA Foundation and Run for Something boards. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: You've done so many different things. You are now leading as executive director, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and it's in the title “Domestic workers,” who I think we can probably safely assume are primarily women of color. They're often immigrant women. They are low-income women, and across the country they do often what's invisibilized work? How is National Domestic Workers Alliance, how does it set its goals for domestic workers? 

Jenn Stowe: Yes. A lot of times folks will say 10 years ago or even 15 years ago, people would say, what is domestic work? You know, what does that mean? What does a domestic worker do? The National Domestic Workers Alliance is a national organization. So we are an organization of nannies, house cleaners and home care workers, and we have over 70 affiliate organizations and chapters who work around the country and organize for dignity, respect, and fairness for the 2.2 million domestic workers in the US. 

And Sonali, what you said is absolutely right. Domestic workers are majority women, majority women of color, often immigrant women, and they're working inside private homes. And so, it can be incredibly difficult because we know that oftentimes work is defined by its visibility. So, there's no list of workplaces there is no list of workers. And so, so much of our work since we were founded in 2007, has been about moving domestic workers from invisibility into visibility, really as a clear industry of workers that really deserve to work with dignity and respect and who deserve wages that allow them to sustain their families and take care of their families.