Vote for Mamas w/ Liuba Gretchen Shirley

dollars a year to the economy. This is not a women's issue. It is a family issue and economic issue. It's an issue that affects every American. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Katie's Crib. Today we are getting into it. We are talking all about paid family leave, universal childcare, really big topics that need a lot of help. So here to help us talk about that is the one and only Luba Gretchen Shirley. She's the founder and CEO of Vote Mama, which is the first pack in the

country to support democratic moms running for office. Luba has spent her career leading organizations to empower working families both at home and abroad. She previously worked for the u N Foundation. She was selected as a Global Champion for Women's Economic Empowerment by You and Women. Together with You and Women, she launched the I Am Parent campaign for Parent to Leave. In two thousand eighteen, Luba ran herself for Congress to represent New York Second District in the U.

S House of Representatives. She also became the first woman to receive federal approval to use campaign funds for childcare. Guys, how cool is that? Following her historic win, candidates across the country have followed her lead and petitioned their state and local governments for the same right. Luba currently lives on Long Island with her husband, Christopher and three children.

Welcome to Katie's Crab, Luba. I have wanted to do a podcast about this topic and all the things we're going to talk about for a long time, and I'm so happy that you're here. But first, let's just hear about you as a mom, Okay, like, like not all the incredible not that we can even separate them because they're so intertwined, but you have three children. I do.

I have three crazy children. Yes, Nila is going to be seven on Sunday, which is shocking and She had her her fifth dance recital last night, and I cried like a fool. Yeah, she got a trophy for five years of dance, so she's going to be seven. I have no idea how that's possible. Wow, you're looking fierce as hell. Let me tell you, because I'm sure you're not sleeping and running around like a crazy person. Okay, I'm not sleeping. I actually have a bit of a

cold and was up nursing the entire night. So it was it was fun, It was awesome. Nicholas just turned five, and Andrew is thirteen months. So, Andrew is your pandemic baby. You and I connect on this. When was he in the pandemic line up? In April, the height of the pandemic, when had just really started. So I was thirty seven weeks pregnant and they were telling everybody not to go to the grocery store, not to leave your house, it's

not safe. And Nicholas broke his leg and we ended up in the hospital exactly when they were saying it's not even safe to go to the grocery store. They literally kicked me out of the hospital because I was too pregnantly said it wasn't safe. I had to sit in the car and my husband went in with Nicholas and then uh Andrew was born two weeks later, so height of the pandemic. For twenty four hours of labor, I wore a mask. I wore a mask too, but

only three hours. Holy crap. So okay, so all three of your births have been are they all been long? So Mila was twenty three hours of back labor, ended up in an emergency c section. She was supposed to be all natural, no drugs, had no drugs. And then literally after twenty three hours and she refused to come out and it was complete back labor. And then Nicholas because he wasn't back labor. Honestly, I was like, this is easy, this isn't like her, and I didn't really

realize it was in hard labor. So I bounced on a yoga ball at home with Mila, who was bouncing on her little yoga ball, and I I think it was probably like nine o'cock at night. My mom's friend came over and she's like, you know, your contractions are five minutes apart. You need to go to the hospital. We parked the car at nine and he came out at time forty four. Holy crap, you just made it. Yeah, and it was a V back. It was a v back. Yeah. And then Andrew was the longest, which they always say,

the third is the wild card. Yes, I have heard this, which I don't think we've talked about on Katie's crim at all, but yes, there's this thing that says you can sort of assume that the first is going to be laborious and difficult and and unknown, the second is going to be easier than the first, and the third couldn't go either way. The third was probably and I have to I can't even I can't beat him sitting.

He was probably the least traumatic birth, which is weird because it was, but it was the least traumatic, but the longest. I mean, so you births twenty three hours in a mask? What is your housband's name? Christopher? Was he allowed in the room at that time, because I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like changing by the day, by the week, whether or not your partners or any plus ones were allowed in the room. Yeah,

he was, thankfully um for for weeks exactly. They were changing it every few days and they weren't sure, and I when they said that we weren't going to have a partner, I went into full on panic, both because I knew what it was like to give birth. I had two pretty traumatic births. The last time I had complications after Nicholas, and it was it was just a whole um, the whole thing. So, I mean I was

hospitalized for four days after Nicholas. I ended up with an infection and retained placenta and all sorts of things. So what does that mean? So there were pieces of your placenta that didn't come out in the after birth and so they were still in there, which makes you really sick. I ended up with a hundred and five fever. So then like two weeks after Nicholas was born, I had a hundred and five fever. I was admitted to

the hospital and ivy meds for four days. When they sent me home with iby meds in for another nine days. Oh my god, I thought of like that alone, I going alone, Like I was having like an actual panic attack. And I remember calling every elected official I know, and I was like, you have to call you have to call the governor. We have to take care of this.

So literally I was on the phone with every elected official in New York and Governor Cuomo actually put out a statement and said every every laboring woman gets to have one support person. So I was gonna have my mom, Adula and my husband. I had my husband. It was fine. I was just glad to have him um. And it was weird because my kids didn't meet Andrew until we came home. They didn't get to meet him in the hospital,

which was a very strange scenario. And they kept playing here comes the Sun, I'm the I'm the speaker over in the hospital because every time someone was discharging COVID they played that Oh my god, wow, you can never the Wow. That song has such like deep meaning for you.

That's wild. Were you so terrified at the end of your pregnancy of I mean I remember just when I found I got pregned in a week before shut down, and it was you know, they just didn't know how it affected pregnant See, they didn't know how it affected pregnant women. They didn't know how it affected a baby. Like it was all like the wild West. It was so insane. Yeah, I was. I was not calm. I was very nervous. I mean, I I didn't know what

was going to happen. And I was literally telling my kids this morning driving me into school, and I was saying, we should we should actually do a recording where we talk about what this last year was like for you, so we remember it because this was historic. And I'd be interested to listen back to when you were, you know, were five and six and what it was like for you when you think back a year ago, were already beginning to know process this and come out of it

a little bit more. And but a year ago, nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew anything. It was scary as hell. We were going into a hospital, we were having you know, a baby in the middle of a pandemic, wearing a mask. I mean I remember them taking the mask off, giving the oxygen and putting the mask back on. It was it was scary. I mean, there's really no way you had no idea what was going to happen if you were hearing horror stories of infants getting it

and babies getting it. And Andrew with the whole family ended up getting in November. And Andrew and I actually not the worst, but you know, we got through it. In April when he was born, and that was all okay. Oddly enough, my mom, who's you know seven now, I was worried the most about her, thinking she she probably had the best of everybody her and my husband probably head of the best. Um. But yeah, my mom got it first, and then we all got it. Andrew got it,

I got it, kids did, my husband did. Nicholas was fine, had no symptoms. Mila had a headache and was just tired. Um. I got a very high fever and was very, very sick for probably like sixties and were you able to breastfeed through it? Like he was awake for maybe an hour of the day. I slept from the majority of the time. The two of us just slept and nursed.

And they get the antibodies even you know, when you're sick, especially he can now, and the antibodies from having COVID and the hell from from me having the vaccines, getting the antibodies from the brest of life. But it's the best thing you can do. Amazing, how cool. I never even considered not nursing during it. So shifting gears, how did you get into politics? I've always been political. I

mean I was volunteering on county ledge races. When I was three years old with my mom, I was stuffing envelopes and you know, our local elected office, and so I was always political. I studied politics and undergrad. I never planned on running profice at this point in my life. I thought I'd run at some point when I was older, when my kids were grown. I was living in the city. I went to n YU for for undergrad and grad. I had Mila at that point, and I was not

planning on moving back to Long Island. I grew up here, but I was pregnant and I did not have access to paid family. And then I remember putting my name on waitlist for child care centers and never making at all. And I eventually about a year and like Niel, I was about a year old and my husband is not from Long Island, South African and we made the decision to move here, and we did it for free babysitting. And I remember thinking, oh my god, this is it.

I'm gonna get mommy trapped. I'm gonna get stuck on Long Island as a suburban mom, and what am I going to do when I want to start full time working again. I was consulting part time. I had a baby, I had a second baby, was not planning on running for Congress. And Peter King had been in office since I was twelve and had consistently voted to her people in my districted across the country. I was watching his voting record, watching his complete support of Donald Trump and

the horrible things he was doing. I started an Indivisible group, and literally every morning I would be up nursing Nicholas and on my phone writing an action alert. You know, this is the particular issue. There was a new executive order every other day. I would write a whole list of all this is the background, this is what we're going to call King's office about. And then King came out and support of the Musliman and I called his

office and I said, I'm having a protest. It's like to come in and speak with him, and they said, sure, show up at the opposite three thirty. I got there three thirty. They had locked the doors and sent the staff home, and we had about four people protests. And I called on Monday morning and he agreed to meet with me because I had so many people protests that he told the press later that he met with a leader of a resistance group. Oh god, not a mom

in his community, a leader of a resistance group. And I went in. I brought three people from the district with me, three friends, and I said, look, I'd like you to hold a town hall. I'm glad that you're meeting with me, but they're hundreds of people who've been trying to get meetings with you. Right he was blocking everybody on Facebook. He wouldn't talk to anybody. So he told me flat out that holding a town hall would only diminish democracy. And that was pretty much it for

me at that point. I organized the town hall. I had a six ft cardboard cutout of Peter King. He of course didn't come. We invited him. I held the town hall for him, and then people started saying, are you going to run against him? And I said, no, you're crazy. I have two tiny babies, I'm nursing. There's no way I can do this. And I remember people really saying, what can we do to convince you to run right now? And I laughed and I said, well, I need childcare. My mom is a teacher. She was

still working then. She's retired now, thankfully, But I had them with me all day, and then she'd come home at three thirty and she would watch them, and that's when I would start my consulting work. Oh my god, Luba, this is insane, but I I didn't think I would do it, honestly, and I just kept watching his votes, and then he voted to take healthcare away from seventy four thousand people in our district alone, and I just got pissed. I got really really pissed. And I know

you're not supposed to be the angry woman. I was the angry woman, fully so, and nobody took me seriously. I was a young woman. I had a one year old and a three year old. I had never run for office before. Our our Democratic chairman literally told people that I was like Tracy Flick, you know, the Reese Witherspoon character, and election an election of course, of course, the young blonde girl nobody nobody looked at seriously shapped

it off. I ended up out raising Peter King. I raised more than two million dollars with new corporate knocked in two fifty doors, and he had always won by four to forty something points. He only won by six points this time, and he decided to retire afterwards because he didn't want to go through that again. Wow, unbelievable. I have to tell you a lot of fun. You had a lot of fun. So you've always been a political person. Your mother raised you to be super a

where and involved. Is it this situation and this experience that made you start vote? Mama, tell me about the pack and why. So we have we have a foundation and pack. Our pack is the political arm We work to get democratic moms elected from school board to Senate.

We fund them, we mentor them, we trained them. We have this incredible advisory committee, people like Representatives Katie Porter Moore, Kim shriyor Terry Stool, Grace Meang, We have the Tenant Governor's Stundate, State Senators, all of these amazing people who sit on our advisory committee who help us mentor these candidates. But it's really about providing them Mama's net work, making sure that they have the support. Um we you know

I had. I had one of our county supervisors who's an alumni, called me the other day and she said, you know, I really need to talk to their mothers at the same the same level of elected office. Can we put something together? So I literally started to reach out to all of our city council members, all of our county county legislators and exact and we're putting together a Zoom happy hour just so they can talk to each other. That's awesome. So we're working to get these

moms intopice. The foundation side is working to actually break down the structural barriers to make it easier for them to run. Through our foundation, we're working to pass campaign funds for childcare in all fifty states. That is our research arm it's our nonprofit, nonpartisan arm. Our long term goal is to get universal child Here pasted our short term goals campaign funds for childcare, because this breaks down the barrier. It makes it easier to elect more moms.

But we're working with legislators to pass family friendly legislation to normalize what it looks like to actually talk about this legislation with an economic lens, because that's when people start to take you seriously, and that's when they start to listen. When they understand that this legislation is not just the right thing to do, but the economically smart thing to do, you start to get crossover. You start have to get through Republicans and Democrats talking about it.

So during my campaign I had the babies with me. Literally every day till three thirty I was giving speeches with Nicholas and the baby. We're up nursing with meal and running around next to me. There's no playbook for how to run profice, but there's really no playbook for how to do with small children. There's no one to reach out and say, hey, how do you do this? What's the schedule? Like, how do I manage this part of my life with this part? We have so many

millionaires in Congress. Literally more than half of our representatives are millionaires, because Congress is not set up for working Americans. You have to be wealthy and connected to even jump start a race. Most working people don't have the ability to that. I remember being told, you have to raise a hundred thousand dollars before anyone takes you seriously. I had a nonprofit background. I don't come from a wealthy family. I had no idea how I was going to do that,

and I did it. It It was a hundred and twenty six in the first two months, and then I hired staff. I had campaign manager, and then I got to find instructor, and we kept building and growing and raising the money. But it was sheer, just determination. But so many people don't have that ability to even start. So during the campaign, about five months into the campaign, I still had both babies with me all day, and I put a request into the Federal Election Commission and I said, can I

use some of my campaign funds for child care? Frankly, everybody said it was political so aside. They said, you're crazy. You're going to get attacked as a woman, as a mom. I was already getting attacked for being a mother. Yeah, you were like, yeah, They were like, don't, don't do this.

But the reality is when you're running and you have school loans and you're trying to figure out how to pay your bills, and then all of a sudden, you're supposed to pick up the cost of childcare without a salary, because when you run for Congress, you don't get any salary. You can't work another job full time for It's like coming three full time jobs plus two babies. So I didn't have the ability to pick up the costs of

child care. I put this request in and I remember driving down to d C with with Mel and Nicholas, and we knew that Glamor magazine was going to cover it the next day. It was a bipartisan, unanimous decision. Every press outlet in the country covered it. Fox News said it was the one bipartisan thing they could agree with, which till this day still shocks me. Wow. But it changed the way that people are in profits. Fifty on federal candidates have now used their campaign councer childcare, men

and women, Republicans and Democrats. Almost seventies state candidates have done this, and so we're actually working with the Vote Mama Foundation, which I'll tell you about in a little bit, but we're where can you break down the structural barriers? So we've been working to get campaign funds for childcare now passed at the state level for all state and local candidates, because my FBC ruling improved it for all

federal candidates. But each state has different laws. We're changing this and we've actually got eleven states to approve legislation. This is amazing. We are breaking down the barriers. The goals got all fifty states three so Connecticut just passed the House and is after the governor. They're about to become the twelfth state to pass legislation. This is incredible that people can use campaign funds for childcare. Um Vote Mama is trying to normalize what it looks like to

run as a mother besides just trying to get childcare. Like, how how else is vote Mama helping to do this? So I wanted to pack right after my campaign, end it because people do not look at moms and take us seriously, like the donors don't, the press doesn't, voters don't. And the only to teams that is to normalize it, to actually see more moms running for profice. You know, they're all of these organizations across the country that work

to get women elected. The reality is, at a time we're forty four years old, eighty six percent of American women or moms, and yet just six percent of our congress members or moms with kids eighteen or younger. You need people in office who understand these issues at a visceral level, and our policies have failed American families for generations. So I launched Obama. I wanted to be able to

support moms running and help them in every way. So normally, when you get into a race and you fell out a pack endorsement application, you have that interview, you pretend everything is perfect. I've raised all this money, I have all these endorsements, I have all this wonderful campaign staff and support, X, Y and Z. Give me money, you get a check and they move on. I wanted to be a different organization. I wanted to be the pack that when you come and talk to us, you can

literally break down crying during your interview. We've had that happened many times. You can talk to us about what support you really need. I mean, we've helped candidates do everything from literally find a babysitter to pick out a car seat, to put a finance when together, to hire a finance director, to teach them how to do call time, to put a policy piece together. You need a complete wraparound support, and we support Democratic women on the pack side,

from school board to Senate. It is so important to build a bench, and this is something that Republicans are really great at. They work to build a bench. You know, you look at two thousand eight, the Tea Party took over school boards. Fool boards are easy seats to win. They're usually you know, many cases uncontested, and then you can use them as jumping off points to your next go to the next level, right exactly. School Boards are critical.

There have been people there are so many in Gwynette County who sat on the school board for forty seven years. Seventy percent of school board members are white only kids in the district, and you end up having people who are not there to be champions for the kids in the district. You need a champion for the students. Those school boards are critical. Council races are so important, mayoral races, counting led races. So much of the policy that affects

your life every day happens at the local level. We need to get moms in there those levels because it's the policy is important, and also because it helps build a bench so that when you have somebody running for a better office, they already have all that experience, They've already gone through all of these other seats. Because when they feel ready to run, they can run for whatever seat is most interesting to them, whatever policies they're most

interested in working for. That's the seat that they should be running for. It shouldn't be something that hurts you. It should be something that literally you use that lived experience to become a better legislator. We're twenty seven and healthcare. We're the only country other than Papua New Guinea in the world without paid family need. Why is that? Why do you think that is? Why do you think people

are against universal childcare and paid maternity ly? Why? I think you told us what percentage of women are What is it? Six percent percent of all Congress members are moms with kids eighteen or younger. That's it. So it's just not a priority for anybody else. It's a priority of tax cuts to the top one percent, but it's not a priority to have universal healthcare. We had universal childcare during World War Two. They passed the Landom Act.

They set up three thousand universal child care centers. The women could join the workforce. Second the war was over, men came back, sent women home. They've disbanded three thousand child care centers. We almost had universal child here again Nixon vetoed it and said, we don't want the government to be too involved in the family life. The reality is childcare is one of the most basic economic issues. Before the pandemic, we lost fifty seven billion dollars a

year because of the lack of childcare. If you don't have so many in office who understands that you're not going to have policies that actually helped working families and the realities by the time you realize how screwed up our policies are in this country. As a mother, you're too busy trying to survive, to survive new motherhood, to survive keeping your job. You don't have time to go out and fight for systemic change. I mean, I understood this very very well. I knew how bet our policies were.

But frankly, I thought I would have access to pay leave, but I thought I'd be able to get into a child care center. Neither were true. Neither. I mean, I remember there was a woman who was in there when I was looking at one of the child care centers, and she knew that her boyfriend was about to propose. She literally calculated when he would go, when she would get married, when the baby, when she would do you

know how long? How many forward advanced three years down the road, and she put her name on the way list three years. I was six months pregnant. I was screwed. Yeah, so you have to move home to Long Island and pray that your mom is available and at a financial place where she can, like either retire or only work part time so that she can help you part time. It's awful. I moved back to Long Island for free childcare so that my mom could watch my babies, and

I changed my entire work schedule. For the first two years, I worked only in the evenings. I was home with babies. She came home with three thirty, and then I would work from three thirty dinner time, I put everybody to bed, and then I'd work all night. Hmm. It seems just so herculean. It seems such a huge amount to climb. And I'm so impressed by you trying to fight this, and I pray that we see it in our lifetime. In your opinion, what's the top country that you would

like the US to model after. What other country has their fucking priorities in the right place? Nor Nordic countries have. I mean Germany. Germany is great, Canada is better, England is better. But Nordic countries, it's interesting they have about of their legislators are are women, So I always wonder if it's the fact that they have more women in office. We actually have good policies there, or is the fact that they have good policies there that they have more

women in office? Yeah, what is it the chicken or the egg? It comes first. I don't know, it's research I want to do. Actually, because they have things like real paid family leave, paid parentally for both moms and dads. I mean, there's so many one countries that have paid paternity leave. They should, they should, they need to. That's when you actually have men who are connected to their child and their wife and the identity shift and like making a good human being and all of these things.

Nordic countries I've heard. Is this even true that like there's paid maternity and paternity leave for up to a year in some cases more. Oh so it's possible. I mean, these are thriving countries that are doing well, and it's it is possible. Why is it not possible here? We don't prioritize spending on children. We have so many children live in poverty. One in you know, one and four women will go back to work ten days after giving birth.

You're still bleeding ten days after giving birth. Yeah you're still in the diaper, Yeah, you're still in pageant. Going back to work you know, I had a friend who went back to work because her husband was a contractor didn't have health insurance, so her her job paid for the health insurance because if they had gone on the A c A, it wouldn't have covered enough of the medicine that he needed. He had a heart condition, wouldn't

cover it enough, so she went back to work. She's spent all of her salary plus like four dollars of his salary just to paper childcare. One of our accounty legislators, Rebecca Mintiell, who we helped elect in Georgia, she spends almost three of her income as a to legislator for child here for her four children. You need more people like that in office? Is they're the ones who are going to prioritize actually taking care of families in this country.

Do we think that more women and mothers are in government because they have an amazing maternity portunity, paid leave plan or is it the opposite? And I also want to know what are the benefits in these Nordic countries. Have we seen what the benefits are to supporting families in this way? Yeah? So my theory is that it's easier to run for office in many of those countries, the cycle is not as long. There's publicly funded elections.

In many cases in the US, when you run for Congress, in particular, the Dietrich will want you to start running in January of the off cycle. Literally, that's two years almost a running for profice and you have to raise millions of dollars. If you had publicly financed elections and a two month election cycle, it would be a completely

different story. You know, you look at New York City council races right now, they have public funding, they have matching, you know, grants, So all of a sudden and all of these seats are been have I honestly can't even tell you how many candidates, you know, you look at one particular seat, there twelve candidates running. Because it's easier, the barriers to entry are now a little bit very easier, right, You don't need millions, and you don't need two years

of being able to work. In other countries, it's easier to run for office, and more people will even step up and do it. It's it's difficult, especially for state level seats. In the US, it's difficult to get working parents, especially working moms, to run for office. There are some state legislators who get paid a hundred dollars percession. You know, in in Virginia you're getting paid seventeen thousand dollars. In George, I think it's maybe thirty thou dollars. But I mean

these are not livable wages. It's very difficult for somebody q is a working parent to somebody who is not independently wealthy. The people who usually run for state seats independently wealthy are independently wealthy, retired old, much older, so that they actually have the ability to It's a weird schedule, and you need to be able to take lots of time off from your regular job. But it's not a

full time job in many places. There's so much, like, so many structural changes that we need to change to make running for office something that working parents can do. What advice do you have to any of our mother's listening who may be fired up run? How do they do that? Contact bot mama. That's the first thing. Our pack website is about Mama dot org. Our foundation website is about Mama Foundation dot org. I will tell you that running for office is not as difficult as it seems.

It's it's hard, it is all consuming. You give up your whole life to do it in many cases, especially if you're running at the better level. But I remember getting into the race and thinking, oh my god, Peter King has been there since I was a kid, who knows Everything's so smart. The first debate I had with him, and he had never debated a candidate in the last

eight years. I remember driving to the library and I remember too an entire box that kept abysmal in the back of the car, and my mom and my husband were driving, and I always like stick to my stomach, and they asked the first question and he opened his mouth and every nervousness, just all of my nerves just drifted out of my body because he didn't know the answer, and he just genuinely did not care about the constituents.

And so you think that these people who are in office are smart and powerful and have all this experience. And women have to be asked seven times on average. And this is not for mom. So if you're a mom with young kids, you have to be asked like thirty times. But women have to be asked seven times on average before they even consider running, and most will start thinking I should run for town counsel or school board. Men will say should I start with the House through

the Senate. Wow, you are probably more qualified and know more about the issues and care more than the person you're going to run against. There are so many people who are there because it was the right timing or the political alliance is aligned. They're not there because they work their butts off. There are some people who are there because of that, but there are also a lot of people there there because they knew the right person and they were there at the right time. Sure, sure,

run for office. That's that's my advice. Call us. We will help you, and you should run. What about mothers who want to create change but are really terrified of the time and giving up their whole life. How is it possible to be a mom and create change without dedicating all the things that you did. Yes, you should volunteer for other women, for other moms who are running for office. Again, contact us, reach out, throw a fundraiser. The most important thing that you can do is to

raise funds to help get these moms into office. Unfortunately, until we have publicly finance selections, you show strength through fundraising. Again, nobody took me seriously until I started to outraise King. Once I started to outraise King, everybody was like, oh, Ship, who's this woman. You can raise money, you can have the power, you can hire the stuff, you can actually

get out there and talk to voters. Unfortunately, that's what's the most important part right now of running profice is you need to You need to be able to raise the money to run a campaign. It's hard to do. It's very hard to do. So you can help throw fundraiser, if you can help knock on doors, if you can help make phone calls, text bank, do anything for other women or other moms running exactly for other moms who are running for seats that you think you can flip. Volunteer.

Volunteer to raise funds and to get out and talk to voters. It's the most important thing you can do because no one can do it on their own. I have the most incredible volunteer team, and because we had such great volunteers, we were able to knock on more than two doors. I remember thinking in the beginning, how are we going to contact all these voters? We did it because we had an incredible crew of volunteers. Wow.

So impressive. What strategies can moms used to gain confidence and talk themselves into going for a higher office position. So I will tell you in the beginning, when I started fundraising, I had a really hard time asking for max out contributions. I felt guilty. I felt like I was asking for money for me and a candidate who was running California who was getting all these max outs. I said, Torris, and how are you doing this? And she said, you have to stop thinking about it as

money for you. It's an investment in your community. You are not running for yourself. You're running for your kids. You're running for your kids friends. You're running for your friends. You're running for everybody in your community. You're there to be their voice. So if you don't worry about you know you yourself, like, what you look like, what you sound like, but you are there to be an advocate for them, and you realize that you're trying to build

a better community, it changes. There's a perspective shift in this. The first televised debate I had with King, I was very nervous. As long as you care, that's all that matters. I remember walking out of that debate and my campaign manager who always had something to say. Remember her looking at me and she said, I have I am speechless, I have no words. And I remember walking up going I think I did terribly. I felt like, you know, I was emotional all of this. I watched it the

next day. I bought a glass of wine. I sat down my mom and my husband. My mom couldn't stop laughing. She had to keep pausing it because she was laughing so hard. She's like, it's like watching you in the kitchen yell at me about politics, and it was you just go in there and you yourself. And I will tell you that every mom who I've ever met who's run with young kids, none of them are doing it

as a political crement. They're all doing it because there was one particular issue that they reached out to their representative about that said you know, I need help with this, and either they didn't get any response or they got a really nasty your response, and they said, you know what, I'm gonna do this, I'm going to be the change. Exactly how can we influence change in this country? Do you think we're going to see Luba? I feel like

we're the similar age will our daughters have paid maternity. Yes, yes, I don't know if it will be good enough, but it'll be a start. My daughter is about to be seven, and I think about what her life will be like. I remember when Donald Trump was selected, and I remember sitting on the couch watching the numbers roll in, and Nicholas was nursing and he was a couple of months old, and I remember looking at Nila, who was just too and thinking this cannot be the first president that she remembers.

This is a man who probably boasts actually assaulting woman, and he's the president. And I have a two year old, and everything that I've done over the last on what five years now has been specifically because I don't want my kids to grow up in a country that treats people this way. It will change if we keep working

to help good people run for office. If you work to get good people in topice, people who care about the issues, people who are going to fight the good fights, who are going to stand up for people who are going to pass legislation that actually helps working people in this country, it will change. It's not going to change overnight. I mean, you look at right now with with Biden's

American Family's Plan it's not your personal childcare. But it's the first time we have a president talking about childcare as an infrastructure issue. You know when I when I ran, anytime I talked about paid leave or childcare, someone would always say, stick to the bread and butter issues and

ignore the women's issues. Oh god, if we had similar labor force participation arts to countries like Canada and Germany that have paid family that have subsidized childcare, we'd have five and a half million more women in the workforce. We'd add five hundred billion dollars a year to the economy. This is not a woman's issue. It is a family issue and economic issue. It's an issue that affects every American. And for the first time we saw presidential debates where

they were talking about child care and paid leave. So there is already a ship and because of this pandemic, because if everything that has happened over the last year, you finally are starting to see people understand that it's an economic issue, it's an infrastructure issue. People are finally beginning to get it. But even the American Families Plan

doesn't go up hard enough. I was going to say, what do you think of the American Family's Plan, So it's not universal childcare, it's universal pre K. Basically, what they say is affordable is capping what a family spends on childcare at seven percent of their income. Biden's plan only hast what a family spends up to seven percent if you're making one point five times your state's median income.

So if you live in New York City, you make a hundred and two thousand dollars a year, which sounds like a lot, you could be spending fifty dollars almost sixty dollars on childcare if you have two kids in childcare, sixty percent of your own If you live in Georgia and you're making like eighty and your two kids in childcare, you're still spending about your income on childcare. That's a percent camp It needs to be for everybody. It doesn't need to be for people only making up to one

point five times. So that's the first thing I think needs to change. Um. The second thing is there needs to be more funding. This does not provide universal childcare for so many kids in this country. It doesn't go far enough, and it's a great start, it's a down payment, but even it doesn't even provide enough funding to to get Patty Murray's original bill passed. So that is I'm glad that we're talking about it. I mean, I've never even seen a president talk about it that haven't be

in the foreground. So that is great. It's a start. The family leave policy is literally only twelve weeks. And you you've had baby, you understand that that's nothing. Not saying oh my god, when my friends being like, oh my god, like three months and my my company is never going to make it without me for three months, I'm like you, guys, three months is fucking nothing. Even still, you haven't like healed correctly, your stomach abs are not back for babies. Eyes are barely open it up. Your

baby's eyes. Yeah, I know, it's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. I mean many countries have a year and more, but there should be bare minimum of six months. And you look at you look at childcare. Okay, childcare has been a failed industry forever because parents are spending so much money. But then you look at the child care workers. The people who own child care centers, they operate on razors thin margins. So people who work at child your centers

are overwhelmingly women. Of color, and they're getting paid, if they're lucky, ten dollars an hour. So, for instance, if you work in a kindergarten, you get paid thirty dollars an hour. If you work in a child care center, you're getting paid ten dollars an hour. Half of our child care center workers literally live on public assistance. They can't afford to even send their own kids to save childcare. So this is an industry that does not work without

proper investment. We need to invest in in childcare the way that we invest in kindergarten through high school. It needs to be a public good. What are some straightforward, easy to understand resources that parents can refer to in order to learn more about candidates and all the causes they stand for. Go to our websites. You can start there the Foundation website. We'll talk to you all about

policy and exactly what we're doing. There are tool kids, we have social media toolkits, we have legislator toolkits, we have candidate toolkits. We have everything that you need on the Foundation website, the pack website, you can apply if you're running for office, but you can click on all of our all of our candidates, all of the people that we're supporting the moms across the country and learn about them and learn about their races and support them. Guys,

don't you here. I just think this is all so inspiring. I mean, you're all are really walking the walk. Finish this sentence. Parenthood is hard and incredible. You can't really separate them. My husband, we were in the grocery store the other day and we had all three of them with us, and somebody came up to us and it was a man, of course, and it's like, I don't miss those days. And my husband's like, I don't know if I'm gonna miss these days. I don't think I'm

going to. And I looked at only I'm gonna miss these days Like it is physically like somebody actually said that. They're like when you have young kids, it's like all it's all physical. It's physically consuming, you're trying to protect them, and then as they get older, it's much more emotionally consuming. I haven't gotten to that art yet, but I'm gonna miss these days. I it is hard as hell. It is literally all consuming, but it's the most incredible thing.

I Mean, you get a front rosie to the most incredible thing ever. You're literally raising tiny little people and getting to see them grow from these babies into these people with their own thoughts. You know, my daughter one of my favorite moments of my campaign, she was three at the time, and we were at the governor. Governor was signing the paper mean Ye Villa, New York. It was New Year's Eve, and she said to me after he finished speaking, she said, Mama, are you're going to

get up there and speak? And I said, no, baby, it's not my event. And she ran up to the podium and she asked me to pick her up, and she gave a speech and her pepper pig dress and it's all. My favorite photo from the entire campaign is Milia speech because she learned that that's normal. Ah, how awesome. I don't know. I love parenthood. It's crazy and amazing. That's beautiful, Luba. I cannot thank you enough. Thank you

so much for coming on Katie's crib. I've learned so much today, And you know, I usually feel pretty heartbroken about this stuff and feel like it's just such a mountain to climb, especially paid family leave, and especially are horrible universal stile care issues, and I just feel like vote Mama for everyone listening Vote Mama. It's Vote Mama dot org and Vote Mama Foundation dot org. You can go to to really look into all the candidates, learn

about them. You can figure out how you can get help if you're interested and dangling your tosias in figuring out how to run, and also figuring out if you don't want to run yourself, how you can help, how you can volunteer for Vote Mama, or volunteer for some candidate in your area, or help fundraise or help knock on doors, all of these things. We've got to work together as mo moms to get some real structural changes happening. Oh gosh, it's a it's a mountain, but we gotta

we gotta do it, guys, we gotta do what. We gotta do it together. Thank you so much Luba for coming on. Thank you, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Thank you for everyone for listening to Katie's Crib. If you like the episode, please share, subscribe, tell your friends, and also I want to hear from you always so you can always find me at Katie's Crib at Shanda land dot com. Thanks all for listening. Bye Bye Katie's Crib is a production of Shonda land

Audio in partnership with I heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shanna land Audio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite ships. You never know. I'm me Ride into the Door.