With all that’s at stake in each state, you may be startled to learn that most legislatures remain boys’ clubs, with women so severely underrepresented that the political process suffers.  (No need to single anyone out, but let’s just say that at 9%, South Carolina is a great place to be when you can’t wait long for the ladies’ room!)

Guest blogger Laurie Kretchmar, media director for The 2012 Project, delivers an impassioned plea for women to seize the opportunities open in this year’s election below.  Read the original post via Care2 here, and heed her call to consider running for state office.  There’s still time to jump into a race…and there’s clearly still a deep need for informed, engaged, experienced women (why not you?) to shape the policies that affect your family every day. 

On video

I’m a sucker for those movies. But I have a love-hate relationship with them because inevitably, in order to lionize the hero, they have to make all the other teachers in the school less than heroes. They have to make the principal a bully. Movies need a good guy to cheer for and bad guys to boo over. Así es la vida. That’s the way it goes.

Chester Upland, a poor and predominantly minority district, is a long way from Hollywood, but it does have a star in Sara Ferguson.

She’s a teacher of literacy and Math. She’s a good teacher who loves her students passionately. But that’s not why she was interviewed on the Ellen Show and the Ed Show. That’s not why President Obama invited her to sit in the First Lady’s box to hear the State of the Union address.

She came to the President’s attention because she has been the face of the sad saga that has become Chester Upland School District.

She’s passionate about her students, yes. But she’s the first one to tell you that she’s only a representative of her colleagues who all love their students passionately.

She’s proud to be one of them. She thanks her union for supporting them in their struggle during the funding crisis in her district that resulted in 204 teachers and 64 education support professionals being told a few months ago that due to budget cuts by Governor Tom Corbett there just wasn’t enough money to cover their paychecks. Sorry.

The first story of Chester Upland is about those 204 teachers and 64 education support professionals and their union getting together to discuss a crisis that meant closing the doors of their schools located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. This was not a layoff.

This was the result of the meat cleaver the Governor took to state school funding support without knowing (at best) or not caring (at worst) what that state funding support meant to the poorest school districts which simply did not have the property tax base to make up the difference.

The way the axe came down on Chester Upland’s students would have meant locking the doors and wishing the children luck in finding a new school. Except the heroes of Chester Upland, those teachers and support professionals and their union decided, without permission from anyone, not to let that happen.

“We are adults; we will make a way,” Sara Ferguson told her local paper this month. “The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.”

They decided to keep working even though the district told them they could not guarantee them they would ever be paid. The heroes of Chester Upland understood the risk. Their union understood the risk. But the heroes of Chester Upland were not about to give up on their students or the community that was counting on them.

They also weren’t going to sit idly by and hope that someone rescued them. They got to work through their union to get the word out as to what the Governor’s cuts had done to poor children.

They talked to the press. They got the attention of some big national programs like the Ellen Show and the Ed Show. Sara spoke with calm, but with all her heart why she could not abandon her students and why she and her colleagues were going to stay and fight for them.
Her union did a full-court press on state politicians. They called on the public to put pressure on those politicians to find a solution. And finally relief – albeit temporary relief – came in the form of emergency aid that should carry the district through (hopefully) the rest of the year.

Politicians were shamed into keeping the doors open in Chester Upland by brave heroes who stood by each other to show a united front to their students and send them the essential message: You are worth fighting for. The parents stood with them. The public stood with them. Teachers and support professionals all over the country stood with them. But the rest of the story is left to tell.

The rest of the story is about a school funding system could allow such a thing to happen in the first place. What message does it send to poor children that their schools are funded so poorly that their teachers have to offer to work without pay while rich districts would never face such a dilemma?

Chester Upland and its brave employees dodged a bullet that was aimed directly at them and their students. But why did they have to?

Adequate and equitable school funding is a civil rights issue. Neither Chester Upland nor any school district in the country should ever again be the victim of the gamesmanship of a governor, mayor or any politician. We will be fighting this fight again and again until we address the funding systems in our states that allow Haves and Have-Nots within our public schools.

Chester Upland is blessed with many lion-hearted professionals who stood ready to sacrifice for their students. But the fight must not stop there. Unions and parents and civil rights groups and people who care about justice for all students have to roar like lions until the politicians get it. Every child deserves a great public school and it takes dollars to make that happen. The cold, hard fact is that it will take cold, hard cash to get to a happy ending for every school and a happy beginning for every student.

My sister Americans:

The state of our union is strong.  Electing women to fully 51% of public offices has ushered in a new era in our great experiment in democracy. Legislators now put the common good ahead of their personal power and individual gain.  We, men and women together, make better policy decisions and make them faster than in any prior administration.  As a result, the cost of government has decreased dramatically and we have more funds available to put to good use in making our country smarter, healthier, more competitive, and happier than ever before.

In the past year, the U.S. Congress has passed legislation to make all of our lives easier, more meaningful and more fulfilling.  First, every U.S. worker is guaranteed seven days per year of paid sick leave. If you wake up with the flu, you can stay home and still pay the bills.  If your child comes home with strep throat, you can take her to the doctor and not risk your job.  You can count on getting your annual physical and lab tests, your dental checkups and your children’s vaccines without running the risk of losing your income, or putting off necessary medical care.

Second, paid family leave has become the law of the land. Your members of Congress know that people are born, people die, people get sick and recover, or get injured and get well.  The people who show up every day in our factories and our offices are the self-same people who are having babies, adopting children, caring for their chronically ill parents, their injured spouses, or disabled family members.  We have created a caring economy.  We can attend to the business of America while giving those who need it the care they require because we know that, throughout our lives, there is a time to work, and a time to care, a time to be born, and a time to die.  One day we are the caregiver, the next day we are the family member who needs help.  By accepting this reality and crafting public laws in harmony with it, we share in both the effort and the benefit, in covering for the absent worker, rocking the new baby, or holding the hand of a dying loved one.  We can’t do it all alone.  But from now on, we can do it all together.  Every American will have access to six months of family leave, and receive two-thirds of their wages until they can return to work.

If mothers or fathers wish to spend more time with a young child, they can count on earning Social Security credits for the period they spend with children younger than five for a maximum of six years across their lifetime. Until now, this critical period of personal investment eroded financial security after retirement.  Attributing half the median annual income to a stay-at-home parent will ensure that retirement benefits are not totally inadequate for those who contributed their care work rather than their compensated work to our collective well-being.  At long last, we have instilled family values into policies which actually value the family.

As if that weren’t enough to induce whiplash across this great country of ours, starting now, employed women will make as much money as employed men. Gender will no longer be an excuse for income inequality.  Fair pay puts more money into the economy pushing up job growth, and effectively ending our recession.  Fairness increases opportunity for women and for everyone.  Also, banks and financial institutions, until now directed primarily by men, are prohibited from taking excessive risks with other people’s money.  Therefore, invested savings will no longer be the private casino of a few.  Thoughtful and prudent administration by the most talented men and women will finally end the seesaw effect of market volatility.  When you save for retirement or your child’s education, the money you are counting on will be there.

Finally, workplace flexibility, alternative schedules and tele-work will become the rule rather than the exception. All parents who wish may enroll their pre-school children into accessible, affordable, high-quality childcare, whether it’s for standard business hours, a few days a week, or during a night shift or weekend.  Families will have both the support and the freedom they need to devise a routine that works for them, and to modify it as children get older or circumstances change.   Parents can pursue professional goals while being the mothers and fathers they want to be.  You will always be able to find clean and private places to breastfeed a baby, and other clean and private places to change a diaper.

And from this day forward, the number of women’s restrooms will be doubled in all public buildings, so that no woman ever, ever, has to stand in line again.

Thank you, citizens, for electing men and women in equal measure with a passion for public service and long range vision. Their commitment to our mutual well-being has made this possible.  We can look forward with confidence to generation upon generation of the greatest prosperity and the greatest opportunity possible.

God bless you and God bless the United States of America.  Good night.

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

And we need your ears too! Tweet with us @MomsRising in conversation on Twitter starting at 9:00 PM EST tonight.

If you don’t tweet, please join the conversation right here on the blog! Leave your comments under this blogpost during and after the speech. Let us know what you heard and what you think of the speech. We’ll be reading every comment–we want to know what you care about, what you think about the President’s remarks and what our national priorities should be for families in 2012.

Photo by Emily Welsch.

“My grandmother was a domestic worker,” said actor Harold Perrineau (Lost), co-host of the #BeTheHelp Children’s Art Party presented by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) in Los Angeles this Saturday. “Today, we love the nanny who works with our family. We’re thrilled to support efforts to bring fairness to this important workforce.” Perrineau then smiled as his daughter raced by with a noisemaker in the kid-friendly playroom at the Treehouse Social Club.

Perrineau and his wife Brittany hosted the event along with fellow Hollywood parents Gina Torres (Suits) and Ann Lopez. In addition to the many excited children like Wynter, they were joined by Torres’ husband, Laurence Fishburne, Elisabeth Rohm (Law & Order), Kathleen Robertson (Boss), producer Chris Cowles, NDWA co-founder Ai-jen Poo, Aquilina Soriano of the Pilipino Workers Center, and Sarah Benor and me representing Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Association, a national network of families who employ domestic workers.

After jamming to a live band and enjoying glitter tattoos, children at the party painted large fabric panels with images and words that expressed their love for the nannies in their lives. These panels will be sewn together to create a banner that will be carried at the Children’s March for the CA Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (AB 889) in Sacramento on January 24th. This historic legislation, if passed, will end historical exclusions of domestic workers from most U.S. labor laws.

Ai-jen Poo talks with Harold Perrineau and Elisabeth Rohm.

The event is part of NDWA’s new #BeTheHelp campaign, launched in December to inspire viewers of the film The Help to take simple action to improve the lives and working conditions of domestic workers. NDWA has invited the entertainment community to help bring the real-life concerns of domestic workers into the pop-culture conversation, and Hollywood is answering their call.

Just last week, Octavia Spencer, one of the stars of The Help, used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to recognize today’s domestic workers; and in December, Participant Media partnered with the NDWA to release a series of videos featuring domestic workers discussing their work. The videos have been viewed and shared by over 80,000 people so far.

On Saturday, Perrineau, Torres and their friends joined this growing family of supporters who understand that the love, dedication and expertise domestic workers bring to families is invaluable. #BeTheHelp is an opportunity for parents and children to celebrate and honor these relationships.

To learn more about #BeTheHelp, visit www.domesticworkers.org. To learn more about how families and employers of domestic workers are involved, visit www.domesticemployers.org.

Originally posted on Huffington Post.

So reads a very small headline in the December 7th Washington Post.  The brief item states that a 38-year-old Texan mother of two was “unable to qualify for food stamps for months.”   She walked into the state welfare office, initiating a seven hour standoff with authorities, during which she shot her 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.  The she killed herself.

A spokesperson for the welfare office said the mother “didn’t submit enough information.”

Perhaps they feel like they have enough information now?

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

A bona-fide mega-wealthy rich guy is Nick Hanauer. He’s got millions and millions and says he wants politicians and pundits bent on protecting his millions and millions to cease and desist calling him a Job Creator. He’s had great ideas. He’s taken big risks. He’s made smart business bets. And God bless him for it. But he says, “I’ve never been a job creator.”

He says if any jobs were created by his ideas and risks and bets, it’s because there were customers for what he was selling. Without customers, there’s no one to buy your product or service. And if customers don’t have jobs and decent pay to go along with those jobs, they can’t buy what you’re selling.

Customers with a paycheck create jobs. And when customers lose their jobs and their paychecks, giving all the tax breaks and tax credits and tax loopholes in the world to the mega-wealthy won’t create a consumer.

In fact, giving the mega-wealthy more may actually mean you’ve given them some loophole that pays them to create jobs… in China.

It may mean tax rules and loopholes lead Big Business to see it in their best interest to lay people off and ask those who remain to do the work of two, or cut the pay or their benefits of frightened employees who know that there’s a waiting line of unemployed who are giving up hope that they will find something. Anything. Including your job.

In short, the mega-wealthy are going to protect their bottom lines, and even as we speak, they are fighting for more and more ways to maximize their profits, jobs be damned. If profits increase by moving jobs to another country where they can pay people starvation wages while damaging someone else’s environment with impunity, why wouldn’t they do it?

One can make the case that the American worker is as much a victim of mega-wealth as the beneficiary. Any second-grader could do the math. The rich have been getting richer, and as tax breaks for big business and big wealth have exploded beyond reason, jobs here have been shrinking, not growing.

High employment and millions without a good paycheck are the problems to be solved here. Not how to filter more riches into the pockets of the “haves”.

Five million good people; people who were working hard; people who want to work hard again, have not been able to find a job. Their unemployment benefits are about to run out.

President Obama has proposed an extension of their federal unemployment benefits – benefits that are providing no more than modest food on the table and a roof over a family’s head. But he can’t get the votes he needs from the folks who would take a bullet for the Job Creators.

Here’s something that may seem counter-intuitive to the “Rich People Are Job Creators” security detail.

People on unemployment benefits are not rich people. But every penny they get in these vital benefits is spent on something that creates a job for someone else here at home. The grocery store clerk. The electric company meter reader. The gas station cashier. People on unemployment insurance aren’t taking European vacations.

They’re living check to check while they hit the pavement, ready to take any honest job that comes along. And every dime they spend on what they need to get by until the next job interview is spent in their communities, keeping their friends and neighbors working.

Five million men and women are in danger of losing these modest benefits unless Congress acts on the president’s proposal.

Some (ironically the “Rich People Are Job Creators” guys) want trade offs, demanding cuts in public projects and services to “balance” the dollars it will take to extend the unemployment benefits.

from Mother Jones

Cuts that would lay off special education teachers, construction workers, health care workers, public safety workers, park rangers, cancer researchers, librarians – their cuts would result in the loss of government and contract workers, perhaps in the millions.

This is crazy. We would throw millions of men and women out of good, middle-class jobs to extend the unemployment benefits of millions of men and women looking for good, middle-class jobs?

Alternate proposals to ask the mega-wealthy to even approximate a shared sacrifice in a modest tax increase are met with screams that we must put our patriotic muscle behind protecting our national Job Creators.

Indeed, mega-wealth has been protected by policy design, part of that design being to scream only carefully crafted words like Job Creators to replace less poetic verbiage like Rich Guys Who Don’t Pay Their Fair Share. To be against the protection of mega-wealth is to be against America. For thirty years, politicians have been more than patriotic.

For thirty years, the current rules have benefited the top 1%, of Rich Guys. The current rules have made it possible for the top 1% of incomes to go up 275%. Middle-class incomes went up 40% in that time period. Poor incomes went up 18%.

I say the Job Creators are the 99% who clip discount coupons from the Sunday newspaper so they can get 4 cans for $1. Job Creators are the middle-class and the poor and the folks scrapping by on unemployment checks who buy shoes for their kids and oatmeal and a bus pass. They’re customers.

And this country would be in a whole different position if we had understood that the middle-class and making sure they have what they need to stay in the middle-class – a decent paycheck, a good public school for their kids, retirement security – is what made this country an economic power in the first place. What’s happening is a travesty, and I’m trying not to become violent.

I believe in the peaceful, political process, and I’ll do it.

I will call my member of Congress to support the President’s plan to extend unemployment benefits and funding for more jobs. I will talk to my friends and neighbors to call their members of Congress. But I wish I could do more.

I wish I could slap every single one of those pundits, pontificators and politicians who’s forgotten that the primary Job Creators in this or any other country are millions and millions of ordinary, middle-class hard-working people with good jobs.

Lily Eskelsen is the Vice President of the National Education Association, publisher of the education blog Lily’s Blackboard as well as a contributing blogger to MomsRising.org. Prior to her prominent position at NEA, she had a successful decades-long career as a teacher. Among her many achievements, she was named Utah’s Teacher of the Year in 1989.

Moms and dads are working hard to make this a joyous holiday season and year. Every cent counts when it comes to the basics, like putting food on the table and buying winter clothes and shoes for growing kids.

Unfortunately, our budgets are possibly about to get even tighter.  Ouch!

If Congress doesn’t extend the payroll tax “holiday” by the time it expires at the end of this year, most paychecks in America will shrink. [1] What tax “holiday?” This tax holiday was put in place in 2010 to stimulate the economy.  According to the New York Times, if the payroll tax holiday were extended, “the average working family would have close to $1,500 a year more to spend, according to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.”[2] And, on the other hand, if Congress refuses to act, then middle-class families are going to get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time. [3]

Raising taxes should start with millionaires and billionaires, and with the many giant corporations that somehow manage to evade all taxes, but not with struggling families. [4] Yet, some Grinches in Congress are standing in the way of real economic recovery for working families and for our national economy.

*Tell your member of Congress to extend the payroll tax holiday so that working families can put food on the table and also give the economy the boost it needs!

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/extendpayrollholiday/

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/extendpayrollholiday/

[3] http://action.momsrising.org/go/1392?ak_proof=1&akid=3026.2.5f_n57&t=10

[4] The Washington Post

[5] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

[6] The Fiscal Times Goldman Sachs Report

[7] Moody’s Analytics

[8] Mother Jones

[9] New York Times – August 2011

[10] Washington Post

Prepare to be impressed with yourselves, girls.  The US Census Bureau just put out new numbers on maternity leave and employment which show we’ve spent the past 40 years investing wisely in ourselves.  First time mothers are more likely to have at least an undergrad degree by the time they give birth, now at an average age of 25.  In fact, if a woman delays her first birth until age 30, she’ll probably join the 43% of mothers with a college degree.  Teen pregnancy has dropped from 36% in 1970 to 21% in 2007.  Births to women over age 35 have gone up by a factor of eight.  Delaying pregnancy and gaining education are two of the best things women can do for themselves and their children, and we’re doing it.

Just about three quarters of new mothers are employed before they give birth.  More than half are working full-time.  Sixty-six percent work during their pregnancy, but among the over-30 first-time  mothers, 80% worked while pregnant.  Overall, women are working much longer into their pregnancies.  Once they deliver, about half receive some kind of paid leave, but how much pay and for how long is not recorded, as there is no requirement that they receive any paid maternity leave at all.  College-educated, older, and full-time employed mothers are the most likely to use some form of paid leave.  Having only a high school diploma, working part-time and being a younger mother are characteristics suggesting paid maternity leave is not an option.

If a woman was employed before giving birth, there’s a 59% chance she’ll be clocking back in by the time her baby is 3 months old.  Almost three quarters of new mothers are back 6 months after, and nearly 80% are back one year after the birth.  Obviously, those most dependent upon their own earnings  returned to work the most quickly, but those lacking a high school education are not likely to return to work even when the baby celebrates his or her first birthday.  Women with college degrees or higher, and who had some paid maternity leave, are likely back by the five month mark.  Most women who go back to work do so at the same employer, and 75% of them work the same number of hours they did before becoming mothers.

Taken all together, pregnant women are now more likely to be better educated, older, and employed when they give birth.  They go back to work in a matter of weeks or months after delivering, and they mostly stick to their pre-baby work hours.  Considering how a baby turns your life and your household upside down, that’s nothing short of extraordinary.  Notwithstanding the fact that the employment world was most definitely not designed with us in mind, and still stiffs us on wages, we continue to show up, work hard, deliver the goods, and push ourselves, all while keeping the lid on the pot at home.  All this, and without the supports the rest of the modern world sees fit to provide, like paid leave for both parents without regard to income level, decent childcare, part-time employment standards, alternative schedules, and the ability to ask for a flexible schedule without fear of being fired.  Not to mention pension credits for the years spent caregiving.  And yet, mothers are the ones who say they feel guilty.  Astonishing!  Where’s the public outrage?  Do you feel even just the slightest bit taken advantage of?

“Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

Children are welcomed as important members of the community with child safe zones, play areas, and in one case, even a stroller brigade.

What is so difficult about having work that pays a living wage, health care that is affordable and providing our children with quality early education.

The numbers are dismal in our State of California. We have received among the lowest grades in the country for meeting the basic needs of our children. According to the Children Now Report Card, California earned a D+ in health coverage, a C- in early learning and development, a D in K-12 education and a C+ in infant health.

We have some powerful advocates in State Government with a commitment to quality, affordable, accessible early education, and keep the issue top-of-mind in legislation and in budget battles. The voices of parents and teachers and advocates have been heard and heeded. Still, the future we want for our children, our communities and ourselves is still out of reach.

Parents have a chance to step out into a very public and nationally televised platform. Unlike hearings and working groups that take place during traditional working hours, parents can participate after work hours and on the weekend.

Children rely upon each of us to speak out on their behalf. At the rally in SF I saw a mother with her child holding a sign, “Too Small to Fail.” Let’s speak up.