Taking the Care Movement’s ‘Big Tent’ on the Road
Plus: What I'm doing now til Nov 5th.
Last month, on a sweltering summer day, I stood in a parking lot adjacent to a suburban Raleigh, N.C. playground, and the crowd around me was fired up about care. This was the seventh stop on the Care Can’t Wait bus tour, an effort by Caring Across Generations to rally supporters in swing states around care as a voting issue, partly by having advocates tell their personal stories.
I met many people at this stop, but I was particularly taken by the experience of Sam Stites, who traveled three hours to be at the rally. Sam is in his 20s, and about five years ago, as the only child of a single mother, he took on a role he wasn’t expecting. Shortly after graduating college, he became concerned about some of his mom’s behavior. She’d relocated to Asheville, NC, after he’d left home for college, a city, and state he’d never lived in. He decided to move in with her to figure out what was happening and to be her primary caregiver. She was eventually diagnosed in her 50s with early onset Alzheimer's. Navigating a challenging and isolating health diagnosis led him to become a vocal advocate for caregivers.
“Alzheimer's, specifically, is a disease commonly present in people in their 70s and 80s and 90s,” Stites told me. “A lot of the care infrastructure is built for that age group. So my peer caregivers were themselves my mom's age.”
Both age gaps led him to be more outspoken about connecting with other caregivers in his area and online—specifically with young adults caring for parents with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Stites’ mom passed away in 2022, about four and a half years after her diagnosis. While caring for her, he maxed out his student loans, to the tune of $40,000, while going to grad school online so that he’d have enough money to care for them both. He describes his mother's illness as heartbreaking and devastating, and he continues to advocate after her death because he wants people to know “how much purpose that experience gave [him].”
“I feel closer to the human experience,” he told me. “I wouldn't trade that experience of providing care as lonely as it was. It made me a stronger person.”
Stites is part of the “big tent” that Care Can’t Wait, a coalition committed to 21st-century care infrastructure, is trying to build. He is what I call an unexpected care messenger for the movement. Men and childless people in their twenties aren’t who you expect on stage at a care rally. But stories like Sam’s show that becoming a caregiver can happen to anyone at any age.
When I asked Ai-Jen Poo, the founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NWDA), what’s been most surprising about the tour, she told me it was the diverse swath of people.
“What has been amazing has been the range of people who've joined us and how naturally people are connecting with all of the policy goals of the Care Can't Wait coalition,” she said. “People are seamlessly connecting disability care with child care, paid leave with aging. It feels like a natural reflection of our lives, which are lived intergenerationally.” She also noted that this isn’t just advocates who are connecting with each other. People in power are taking notice of care advocates as a political block to be taken seriously.
North Carolina had the most elected officials in attendance at any bus tour stop. The decision to come to North Carolina, Poo said, isn’t just due to its purple political hue. “We have known and heard about people fighting for care here and wanting to live here and fighting for their communities to reflect their realities,” she said. “This is a care movement state.”
Jenn Stowe, the executive director of the NWDA, points out that the group has been organizing in North Carolina since around 2017. Like other Sunbelt states, she said, people in North Carolina are “disproportionately impacted by the lack of care infrastructure” due to weak labor laws and underfunding by the state legislature.
This is why Stowe sees the long game for North Carolina and elsewhere in the country as “creating a surround sound on care and our campaigns. We're moving at every level. We're moving at the federal level and the state level because we know how important it is to use state campaigns as pressure for eventually what we want to do at the federal level.”
I asked Poo and Stowe how things have changed among their network of care advocates since President Joe Biden exited the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. Both are quick to point out that President Biden has done more for the care agenda than any other president, with Stowe referring to him as “the caregiver-in-chief.” But the change is still welcome.
“I think with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, there is so much excitement," said Stowe. “It's palpable. We can all feel it. We are able to see the excitement around care with voters that weren't necessarily paying attention like they are now.”
Poo described the shift in mood. “There’s a need for some joy and to feel seen and to feel hope. It has been so welcome, almost like a major release of energy.”
But it isn’t just the fresh faces that have care advocates jazzed. Poo is also pleased with Harris’ and Governor Tim Walz’s past records of support for care issues.
“They have been care champions and they have worked on these issues their entire careers, both of them, and it comes from the heart, and it's embodied in their personal experiences,” explained Poo. “From day one [of the Biden-Harris Administration], Vice President Harris was talking about leave, affordable child care, retiring with dignity, and the dignity of work. All of these values underlie investments in care that we've been fighting for, for a long time.”
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My Election Day Sprint!!!
Alright, folks, there are 40 days until the election! I’m challenging myself to do TWO election related actions EVERY WEEK from now until election day. My personal goal is to be able to look my kids in the eye on November 6th and say with my whole heart that I fought for their future. Here’s what I recommend and what I’m up to.
Start a “civic pod.” It’s an idea from
’s book, Democracy in Retrograde, which can just be a text or Whatsapp group of local like-minded people who are staying up on election news and any local, relevant volunteer opportunities. It’s always great to have a buddy to go canvassing with or a friend to flag a crucial article when there’s so much noise out there. I named mine Moms will Turn NC Blue!My main activities will be canvassing with the Durham County Democrats/Harris Campaign here in Durham by door knocking. I did this on Saturday and it was fun and energizing and the campaign is SUPER well organized.
I’m also volunteering with Bull City Votes/Durham Drives to register voters and drive people to the polls during early voting and election day. I may take the first day of early voting off to drive people to the polls and will volunteer all day on Election Day. I helped register about a dozen Duke students on Friday and shared info on polling locations and new Voter ID laws. Looking forward to do it again.
This Saturday, September 28th at 1pm come join me and public school supporters making signs in support of state superintendent candidate Mo Green!
- and I hit our fundraising goal for NC statehouse races!!! Procrastinators rejoice though, because there is now a matching grant going so you can double your impact. We’re up to $5300 so it’s not too late to give!!!
Triangle friends: the first meeting of a local Chamber of Mothers chapter is October 10th! It’s being co-led by two AMAZING Double Shift members, so don’t miss out on this great organizing effort that will be going long past the election.
I know not everyone can do this much election-related stuff, but I believe everyone can do something! Please share what you are up to between now and Nov 5th to give Double Shifters inspo and ideas.
Washington state will be blue anyway, but I've got my Kamala sign out front, I gave money (annoyingly leading to 10 texts and emails per day asking for more money), and I volunteered to register voters. I'll do a letter-writing campaign to swing states as well. This is the first time I've felt motivated to do anything besides vote myself. What you're doing is quite inspiring!
Feel energized just reading about this! Thank you for sharing Sam’s story