Care Work is Climate Work: A Series on the Green New Deal

Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies, moderated a discussion with four leading organizers in the fields of teaching, nursing, domestic labor, and disability rights. Panelists explored how climate impacts are already changing what it means to be a care worker, and imagined how their sectors should be transformed by and for the Green New Deal.

Dara Baldwin is the Director of National Policy for the Center for Disability Rights, Inc. (CDR). The (CDR) is a not-for-profit, community-based advocacy and service organization for people with all types of disabilities. In her position Ms. Baldwin is responsible for the legislative work, from research and writing comments, testimonies, letters and reports to assisting with advocacy outreach and working with Congressional staff, the Administration, coalition partners and others on multiple issue areas for improving the lives of persons with disabilities.

Aquilina Soriano Versoza is a founder and Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, a nonprofit serving and organizing the low-wage Pilipino immigrant community in Los Angeles. She has served as Executive Director of PWC since 2000 and has been working in the Pilipino community for more 15 years, both here in Los Angeles and in the Philippines. She studied her BA in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Aquilina is serving as the current President of the Board of Directors of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Co-Chair of the Filipino Voter Empowerment Project and has been chosen as one of the Frederick Douglass 200 Abolitionists.

Emily Comer is a teacher in South Charleston, WV and a member of AFT and West Virginia United Caucus. She was recognized as one of the Time 100 most influential people for her efforts leading up to the 2018 teacher strike.

Nella Pineda-Marcon, BSN, RN-BC, works as a clinical nurse at the Mount Sinai-St. Luke’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department. She has been a proud union member of the New York State Nurses Association for over 25 years. NYSNA is the largest nurses union in NY State with over 43,000 members. Nella currently serves on the Board of Directors of NYSNA and is the Chair of their Climate Justice and Disaster Relief Committee. She has volunteered with other NYSNA-RN Relief Network nurses on several medical missions. Her climate activism began while on a medical mission to the Phillippines in 2013 when she witnessed firsthand the massive destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan.

This event was sponsored by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Communication and Information, the Leap, and the Institute for Women's Leadership.