Ai-jen Poo and the Fight for Domestic Workers’ Rights
By Luna Yasui
I rarely circulate mass emails at our office. But after reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s New York Times profile of Ai-jen Poo, “The Nannies’ Norma Rae,” I found myself doing just that. Founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Ai-jen was the lead organizer behind New York’s domestic workers bill of rights.
Her vision of a new form of organizing that unites organized labor, civil rights groups, feminist organizations, and immigrant rights advocates forged one of the few successful workers rights campaigns in recent history.
Ai-jen’s work was seeded by an Open Society Foundations NYC Community Fellowship nearly 10 years ago. The Democracy and Power Fund and Equality and Opportunity Fund are currently proud cofunders of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Did you read the Times article? What did you think?
Until September 2012, Luna Yasui was a program officer for the Equality and Opportunity Fund of the Open Society Foundations.