someone turns sixty five every eight seconds in this country and as our elderly population grows so does our needs to build an economy around our future in this episode three leaders in the age justice movement we are not getting any younger in fact the american population is getting older by the day working travelling and living longer that's us people are the fastest growing age group in the country by year tw nine the national population of those aged sixty five dollars and over will be twenty per cent of the country while in silicon valley some people with power money are preoccupied with living for ever for the rest of us care is with any luck and o chair now we've talked with care workers in the past on this program about their drive for justice on the job but what about the other piece of the equation those who need care the rest of us what would an justice platform look like for politician say so that elders could age with dignity if they weren't tech billionaires today's guests have some ideas alice fisher is founder and director of the radical moves went penny cook is president and c e o of the pioneer network and rachel mccall is campaign director of the new york caring majority welcome to the program all right so we'll start with unpacking your organizations a little bit  so with you as a pioneer network what do you do so upon your network has been a nonprofit we've been around for twenty two years now really to change the culture of aging by looking at the culture of long term care and really trying to change the culture of assisted living communities in nursing homes to make sure that elders are respected and that they do receive the type of care and the type of quality of life that they want and deserve in rachel caring the new york caring majority is a coalition new york state of home care workers and domestic workers the caregivers you mention but also elders or seniors people with disabilities and the massive population of unpaid family caregivers especially women all of whom are joining forces to fight for a caring economy that works for all of us all right and finally radical aging radical age movement is of new not for profit we're only three well almost four years old and  our premise is that all of the ills that older people are dealing with all of the issues stem from one thing and that one thing is age prejudice now i want you to unpack grab a little bit more and then i want you to tell me what's radical about radical and ok because people do not see older people as part of everybody they're kind of like the other you know that's not me those are all people older people don't get the fair allocation of any resources they have to fight for every dime in new york city people over sixty five dollars or just about twenty percent of the population we get less than one half of one percent of the budget goes to senior services total senior services and every year we have to fight for that half of one percent of the radical group and the radical part is that the people that came together to do this when we were deciding on a name most of us were radicals and radical age women came up and everybody was like that's it that's it that's it because i don't think that a lot of this would have been so prominent in the news and everything if it wasn't for the fact that we are we are as a group of people laugh out of boisterous always demanded what we felt we needed and now it was off turn and i was in the group of people i said well if you don't like what's going on with your parents guess what you're next and so even though people will say all the time i never want to get old that's not going to happen that's what my ninety nine year old grandmother says right this nd i happen to also refer to the old people in line in the  talking about people with disabilities disabled people i mean it's a huge gamut how can one approach work for such a diverse group age justice like all forms of justice as you're referencing can only be approached from an intersection all framework by talking about the ways in which age or aging intersects of course very directly with disability and with disability justice and disability rights movements but also with economic justice with racial justice with feminism with environmental justice with every other freedom struggle of our day today and of the last many centuries and when i think about what we're called on to do right now it is to build coalitions and to build partnerships that are intergenerational are multigenerational multiracial cross class usually led by women but that create the opportunity for seniors  elders or older folks as well as disabled people to at the center and to be the protagonists of of the struggle because our movements so often have struggled to actually prioritize access and accessibility combined with the stigma that alice is referring to we find ourselves even within some of our social movements reproducing some of the very same dynamics of disposability that you see in the wider society in relation to older folks and penny anything  you know i think it's so important when we're talking about ages and we also do talk about the intersection of abel ism and i think that age isn't able ism go hand and hand that prejudice against people when they have some sort of disability whether  physical and now obviously we know as people get older there's more propensity to have some sort of disability and so just as the idea that when we're not able we're sort of diminished in our society i think that is even exemplified more as we get older and so that's a huge issue i mean you've all touched on it but i just want to underscore you just talked about able the word able which i think in our economy means able of everything old people are looked at as we contribute to society we just which of course is not true but that is the perceived image ageing isn't the problem the problem it's the way that other people perceive us and assigning descriptors to us because they're all cultures that do this differently and we're not just talking you know bali or someplace i mean western europe does some of these things a little bit differently doesn't it who wants to address models that are useful for us well i think that one of the things that we always look at is what is going on in other countries and you're right that in other countries when we're talking especially about care and support as people are growing older those those services are provided to people and it's not that it's an extra service this is a service that is part of life you know from from birth to death there are services in place in europe for people to have that care and support and that's something that in our country i think when you reach a certain age you're right alice that i mean is looked at as taking that you know we have to give elders these services that they're just not entitled to them because they're aging and growing older there any chance that with demographic shifts we could shift some of this in the native american communities do it differently often do it differently in the black community that's a little bit more respect for elders yeah maybe it's a problem  many i think people screwing it up i think for us the reason we call ourselves the caring majority is essentially resting on this assumption or this logic it's the recognition that if indeed this has been a problem a systemic problem for a very very long time in the united states we have we've turned we've turned a corner with the beginning of the elder boom which began in a statistical gor to stick we've turned a statistical corner alice you mentioned ten thousand a day ten thousand people a day turn sixty five dollars now and that's left at the rate of one every eight seconds meanwhile the direct care and home care sector is the fastest growing occupational sector in our khana me where workers continue to not make living wages and then it's women more broadly at every level of our economy who are picking up the pieces and making ends meet we call ourselves a majority because if we can manage to build a movement that combines that mash massive population of seniors with that fast growing workforce with virtually every woman in the united states who is providing some form of  uncompensated care for children or for elders we would have unstoppable power to transform our economy on every level we see this as actually a really really powerful strategy for bringing about some of the transitions in our economy that we need to see and i think you mention this but women also live longer than not just right karen but they live in the longer what's your vision of how we would do this right you talk about how we would mobilize right but what's your vision of what an age justice society would look like at the federal level starting at that starting at that place it's many of the ideas that are already starting to percolate in this political moment it's medicare for all but a medicare for all that includes this sector that what we call long term care long term services and supports this is the services and supports that are designed for seniors and people with disabilities to be able to access all kinds of care support usually in the home and ninety percent of us would prefer to receive those services in our home rather than in an instant and usually and that's currently in the conversation about medicare for all so very very big wins that we've had recently  that actually began in new york after many many years of seniors people with disabilities folks in the caring majority pushing for single payer to include long term care we finally just got it included both in the new york state health act the new york health act which is new york single payer bill and bernie sanders and privilege i appall have now included it in medicare for all at a federal level so there there's finally something beginning to shift in the conversation and a level of inclusion of of our communities and of our sector that also would mean that medicare for all would be a truly free essentially like a feminist new deal new deal that would actually transform the ways in which care and care work is understood and valued in our economy so medicare for all and i think by extension things like a feminist new deal or essentially a green new deal that recognizes that care work and care jobs are green jobs are jobs that can never be automated that can never be outsourced and that a sustainable economy or a caring economy is one in which we bring care and caregiving from the margins to the center we need platforms that have that understanding at every level both from the social safety net to the jobs dimension if you go to the things i would add to that is just a few weeks ago i testified at city hall on the topic was women aging into poverty and there's a lot of causes we do live long or one of the major causes is caregiving young women leave their careers or their jobs to care for their elderly parents thinking that when they're done they will go back to their careers and when they try to go back guess what they are to a wall and nobody wants them in the workforce that alone that one statistic alone shows how awful it will be if we cut medicare we cut medicaid we cut social security and now we don't even allow these people to the work force the other thing i would like to add is that a really huge reason that's driving all of this is long jeopardy and that was how i started to get interested in this is like what effect as long jeopardy have on our society well it's an enormous every demographic has changed sixty five years old today is not sixty five years old a new mothers generation and certainly not a grandmother's generation and yet everybody from sixty five to one hundred and five is lumped into the same category so you're thinking your retirement policy is a problem oh everything everything what is retirement well we would never twenty five year old right we've never learn twenty year olds with forty five year olds and that's what you're talking about where lumping sixty five year olds with a ninety year olds one hundred year olds and i think when we're talking about populations we have to look at individuals and we can look at certain cohorts for instance or we can look at where people are in their life experience but i don't think we can lumped people together now because of their age we still have so many programs where eligibility is over fifty five dollars over sixty over sixty five dollars well what is right for a sixty five year old person is not right for a one hundred year old person really we should just be looking at the person and not about eight but this go back to policy for a nd my hearing lift the cap on social security payment mean what are some of the practical things we could do here if we're thinking of helping a politician to create a platform that would show their commitment to age justice what would they have well i think the st thing is including long term services and supports into any platform and that's been an issue that is is is ready to be part of the conversation and i think with medicare for all we're finally hearing about that because when we talk about the services and the care and support that people want and need as they're growing older it's a lot of these things that are included in long term services and supports that people just don't have access to so i think that's one of the st issues and the policy discussion house everybody knows when you fill out a form they want to know your age for some demographic study or how easily every day i get notices about famous people turning one hundred it's not an anomaly anymore and so all of this has come together and created this need and made it public and made if you will more people in this country the number one cause of bankers city is health care is paying for health care it's really so if we get this right what's the story we tell the future our nation our society was faced with what many called a crisis they were using a lot of really catastrophic language to talk about it the the age way in the benefits and all of our wealth as a nation is going to get sucked dry but a movement came together and it was a movement of people across the life span across geography across class across race led by women who recognize that actually this elder boom that we're experiencing right now the corporations and politicians might be describing it as a crisis but it is in fact an unprecedented blessing and if we and we were talking in the past ten or and so we figured out how to transform this demographic shift into the unprecedented window of opportunity and we transformed our economy and our society and our democracy on every level we now live in cities that are designed truly for all of us and not just for able bodied twenty somethings and as a result all of us have the dignity that we need wonderful thank you all for coming in one a pleasure to talk with you alice show penny this is a lot of law to show i don't know about you but i am feeling much better about my future even if i discrimination must be ended to releases from the individual burdens of growing old here's ashton i call my book a manifesto because in manifest it was a call for radical social change and we're not going to change attitudes towards age and aging in th society without a collective movement was about getting older is hardly all have our fears whether of getting older or getting sick or ending up alone and those fears are legitimate and real but it never dawned on most of us that the culture in which we age can make those things easier or harder and this society makes things much harder by placing the burden on the individual even though an enormous we're all hostage to this range of external forces over which we have little or no control we think that if i have wrinkles i can't get a date you know that's my problem if i can't go up the stairs i need to eat more spinach whatever we blame ourselves for aging instead of comparing notes coming together which we all need to do in order to learn about each bias because then you see oh these are not personal problems these are widely shared political problems and they require a collective political action a radical aging movement to change the way we as individuals and as members of society see agent aging in a more realistic and a more nuanced and a positive manner that gets rid of the notion that age people less valuable less important less visible it's not ok it's got to change joe took a trip to the bronx to learn how one home care agency is serving aging communities and the needs of those who work with them by providing quality care through quality jobs  the hardest work but we don't get paid for what we do you know it took awhile for us to get at least fifteen dollars an hour when i feel that we deserve more because in reality where there are more than the family were there more than the nurses this is not for everybody you know a lot of us take the training but we don't make it you know we go to our clients when we see what it's all about and it's no not this is not for me you know taking care of somebody that you don't even know them even speak to you not correctly them to do it for you so we're there to make sure that everything that you're supposed to do according to what the doctor says according to what the nurses says but yet you know that you're following through so at the time a cooperative home here was started the home  industry was really not a good industry it really was an industry that was sort of riddled with worker abuses and we wanted to start corporate home care to really demonstrate there was another way to create home care jobs and to train workers and invest in workers and that if you build quality job the workers would then be able to really deliver quality care  really impact the economic development in the bronx predominantly so cooperative home care associates is a work around to have which means that anyone who works for the co operative can also be an owner but you're not required to be an after an individual has worked for a cooperative home care for three months they have an orientation and then after the an orientation to work on a ship and after the orientation they make a decision about whether they're going to buy into the company and if they opt to become a worker owner the price of one share is a one thousand dollars home care workers do not make a lot of money so what ends up happening is that after they pay the initial fifty dollars the cooperative lends them the remaining one hundred and fifty dollars and then that's incrementally paid back over a five year period so that it's not cost prohibitive for the home care worker when you are  owner you have the right to run for the port that is the single biggest factor in work ownership and benefit because really home care workers are the ones who are the majority in the governance of this organization and i see it a lot in worker owners there's a sense of pride in terms of the work that they're doing and wanting to see corporate homecare be successful as the years went by and fighting eleven anyone trading and everybody fighting for position yet we have more respect now that they do respect us you know we're no longer as up home attempt like that said you know we're there to make sure that you're there on we take care blessing being a worker and who are part of is one dollar part of our model i think in general having a culture around participatory management and an open door policy where we want workers to come in and express what's going on for them in their jobs in their communities is also part of this equation and respecting and valuing the work force and understanding that we need to invest in the workforce for them to have quality jobs so that they can go out and provide the kind of care that some of new york's most vulnerable populations need today in two thousand and nineteen we have over tw