Waking Up The Caring Majority

A report on activist Ai-jen Poo's recent speech at NYU Law School.

Getting older in the legal profession presents challenges. Partners at law firms sometimes get asked to leave their partnerships or even their firms if their business declines as their ages rise. Law professors get squeezed out of faculties, pressured into taking buyouts as they approach retirement age. Older lawyers must fight against negative stereotypes and a loss of dignity.

The difficulties associated with aging affect not just lawyers but all of us. Yesterday, at NYU Law School, noted labor organizer and activist Ai-jen Poo addressed this subject in the 21st Annual Rose Sheinberg Lecture. She spoke to a packed room about the role of elderly home-care in America and the struggle to bring quality care to the elderly, including the need to legitimize the workforce in this “shadow” industry by improving wages and benefits. She based her remarks on her recent book, The Age of Dignity (affiliate link).

Ai-jen Poo is not a lawyer, but her work as the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and co-director of Caring Across Generations very much implicates the law and legal profession. She’s also no slouch: she’s the winner of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (aka a “genius grant”).

The lecture began in a unique way: Ai-jen Poo asked those in attendance to turn to someone sitting near them and share about someone they care about. I spoke with a middle-aged woman named Los who relayed to me her fondest childhood memories of growing up in Jamaica. She told me, in a beautiful Caribbean accent, about how she and her siblings would race to the car whenever her grandparents would surprise her family with a visit. Los shared with me that she lost her mother a couple of months ago and still carries her mother and grandparents with her every day, to the point that a simple trip to the grocery store can bring her to tears. It is through this type of experience that we remember most easily. “Who do you remember most fondly?” Ai-jen Poo asked. (Los, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I won’t forget your story).

Ai-jen Poo shared her own contrasting experiences in finding care for her grandparents. The difference between her grandfather dying unhappily at age 93 and her grandmother being alive and well today, is the quality home-care her family was able to find through a woman named Mrs. Sun, who cares for her grandmother in Southern California on a daily basis.

According to Ai-jen Poo, an average private room in a nursing home costs $87,000 a year — a sum impossible for many to afford. With 90% of Americans saying they would rather age at home, we should place a greater emphasis as a society on home care over nursing-home care. This requires addressing the problem of some two million home-care workers without minimum wage protection, earning an average hourly wage under $9.

These issues are currently the subject of litigation. The Department of Labor is trying to extend wage and overtime protections to home-care workers, but lawsuits from home-care agencies have stymied implementation. Ai-jen Poo and her colleagues are fighting to help raise awareness about the plight of home-care workers, trying to bring their industry out from the shadows and give them and their important work the recognition they deserve.

Sponsored

If you’re interested in getting involved, you can obtain more information at caringacrossamerica.com or on Twitter: @aijenpoo @caringacrossgen #WeAllCare. In the struggle to allow all Americans to age with dignity and security, lawyers and law students have an important role to play.

Annual Rose Sheinberg Lecture [NYU Law School]
The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America
[Amazon (affiliate link)]


Sean Billings is a third-year journalism and history student at New York University. He joined ATL in January after interning at Creative Loafing in Charlotte, North Carolina. After graduating in May 2016, he aspires to write feature stories for a men’s lifestyle publication. He can be reached at seanmbillings@nyu.edu. You can also follow him on Twitter: @Burgerkingbeezy.

Sponsored