Childcare Heros Are Playing Key Role in Pushing Change

This story is connected to the sanctuary movement nationwide and most central in communities of color such as in Philadelphia.  However it points to the need for this kind of support in our own communities such as young farmers, and participants from Petaluma in Marches and activist meetings.

“When a radical woman becomes a mother, she often finds herself left behind by her mostly childless peer group,” Victoria Law and China Martens wrote in their preface to the book Don't Leave Your Friends Behind. “Various social justice movements and radical left philosophies challenge us to create personal and social change but often provide no support for mothers who try to do so.”

This is an old story.  As a young radical union activist and single father in the tumult of 1970 at UCSB, we organized, you guested it,  a campus wide child care center.  We should learn from successes of the past.  This article contains a good review of some of these and it could be central to the new sanctuary movement that promises to be a bulwark of new resistance to authoritarianism.

Childcare as movement work is not a new concept, comprising a core element of the popular “survival programs” of the Black Panthers. As Nick Chiles summarizes for the Atlanta Black Star, “The free breakfast for schoolchildren program was set up in Berkeley, California, in 1968 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. It was the first significant community program organized by the Panthers, and perhaps the most well known. By the end of 1969, free breakfast was served in 19 cities, under the sponsorship of the national headquarters and 23 local affiliates. More than 20,000 children received full free breakfast (bread, bacon, eggs, grits) before going to their elementary or junior high school.”

We must build a resistance.

  Childcare Groups Are Playing Key Role in Pushing Change and Fighting Trump | Alternet:



'via Blog this'