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Melissa Harris-Perry: Last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order containing more than four dozen directives aimed at increasing access to childcare and improving conditions and pay for childcare providers.

President Joe Biden: Under this order, almost every federal agency will collectively take over 50 actions to provide more peace of mind for families and dignity for care workers who deserve jobs with good pay and good benefits.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, the president has been promising action on the national crisis in affordable and available childcare since his first year in office, but building the coalition of supporters necessary to move meaningful legislative action has proved challenging. Of course, building power for action is precisely the work of organizers and activists who stand outside of elected office but work to open the lanes where policymakers can drive change.

One of the key players on the issue of childcare is led by our own Dorian Warren. Dorian is co-host of The Takeaway series Deep Dive, and he's co-president of the national nonprofit, Community Change. Earlier this week, Community Change hosted a National Day of Action on childcare. Dorian, thanks for being here.

Dorian Warren: Thanks for having me, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's start with your National Day of Action. Tell me what your goal was and what it was you all were up to.

Dorian Warren: Sure. Last year, we held the first Day Without Child Care out of frustration that Congress was basically stringing us a long time and again in failing to include childcare in major federal legislation. As you know, Melissa, our childcare system was in crisis even before the pandemic. Today, it's really a tough decision for providers just to stay open, to stay operating. The cost of parents continues to rise. As we know, the childcare sector is still short 60,000 positions nationwide.

That affects everything from our economy to the ability of parents to have quality care for their kids. This year, we, with 700 providers around the country who closed their doors, did our second Day Without Child Care, more than 50 events across the country, to raise the issue of the necessity of quality, highly paid childcare jobs and the ability for parents to afford it to keep pressure on Congress and the president to address this serious issue.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You and I are both parents and so I feel like the issue of childcare is way front of mind, very clear. We have two days every single week without childcare. It's called the weekends. Right?

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I feel like in certain ways, there are populations who get it just absolutely clearly, but is it simply that it becomes a thing for folks who aren't struggling with the cost or with the accessibility issue, where it just fades from memory? Why is it so hard to build a coalition around this?

Dorian Warren: I would have to go back to the founding of 1619 to really talk about this because this country has always relied, particularly on Black women to provide free, unpaid care for our nation's children. Today, if you look at the childcare workforce, it's overwhelmingly Black and brown women. We fundamentally don't value that work as work. We believe as a country, unfortunately, that care should be free and should be privatized to your individual household, as opposed to having a nationwide view of, "Okay, this actually not only supports our economy--"

By the way, we suffered $122 billion in lost wages because we were unwilling to fund the true cost of care last year. This is a question of both race and gender and who we value to do the work. It's also an issue of how are we going to make sure our economy actually thrives.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm wondering, as you're walking us through that, there is also what can feel like an odd disjuncture between the fact that for an individual household, childcare is almost just brutally, breathtakingly expensive. On the other hand, childcare providers make very low wages. How can that be possible?

Dorian Warren: Because we don't value care. In fact, we know childcare providers make, in many cases, minimum wage or something close to minimum wage. We actually have an organization called Childcare Changemakers, which is a project to organize providers and parents together. We have over 35,000 in our organization who are lifting their voice to say, "One, childcare providers should get a living wage, and actually, I'm a son of an educator as you are too." As a son of a public school teacher, my mother was able to make a good wage but also because she had a union.

We're saying childcare providers should be valued. They should be seen as professionals, especially because I have a two-and-a-half-year-old as you know. I give her over to care providers every morning and trust that they will take good care of her. She is my most prized possession, but the providers aren't paid what they're worth. It's about wages. It's also about accessibility in terms of the cost. Childcare should not cost more than a seventh of a household budget.

For many families, it's something like a third. Now, how can you put food on the table or pay for diapers or pay for school supplies, all the things, if you're spending a third of your income on childcare, not to mention the skyrocketing cost of housing? We have to make sure that costs are accessible and affordable, and we have to make sure that providers get paid a living wage. There are some at the state level, Melissa. There are some really bright spots here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to go back to a federal policy that seemed to be alleviating some of this burden. It was the childcare tax credit that emerged in the context-- or the way that the childcare tax credit was being distributed and dispersed, which emerged during the pandemic, where instead of waiting until the end of the year at tax time, households were getting a monthly stipend directly into their bank accounts. How in the world did that go away?

Dorian Warren: To add more context, the child tax credit was expanded under the American Rescue Plan in 2021, where every parent, no matter your income, even if you had no income, you got a couple of hundred dollars per child per month, no strings attached. That's very important. Parents were entrusted to spend the money as they saw fit. Many, many parents we know spent that money on childcare. It was expanded for only six months in 2021 before it expired, which essentially meant two things.

One, we were able to reduce child poverty to historic lows in this country, and especially Black, brown, Indigenous child poverty. Second, because Congress let it expire and did nothing to keep it permanent and [unintelligible 00:07:14] actively chose to throw millions of children back into poverty at the beginning of 2022. This is a question of political will and, frankly, political power.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Dorian, we've talked a lot about the problem. I want to talk about some of the solutions. What are some of the bright spots, as you called them, in the states around addressing the childcare crisis?

Dorian Warren: As we know, Melissa, when the federal government doesn't act, it often requires local and state action, and that requires, guess what, community organizing. I want to point to two places where we've seen some really significant bright spots to solve the crisis of childcare, given the federal government's inability to do so thus far. In New Mexico, in 2022, 70% of voters at the ballot said yes to a constitutional amendment. Hear me now, a constitutional amendment. They amended the state constitution, guaranteeing a right to childcare for every resident in that state.

That is remarkable. It's the first of its kind in our country's history. To add to that, it is also fully funded. There is a state land grant that is going to put into a pot, $150 million a year permanently to fund and make sure that this constitutional amendment is real for families that need childcare. I'm very, very excited. There's a group in New Mexico called [unintelligible 00:08:38] that have been working for over a decade on trying to win this constitutional amendment through many failures, by the way. Two or three failures before they got there last November.

Then I'll just point out in Minnesota, that state is poised to make an ongoing investment in childcare and early education of more than a billion dollars right now. There's some bright spots here. We know we have the ideas, we have the solutions. The question is about the political will and the political power to get it over the finish line.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, at the federal level, what is possible? Because I'll say President Biden has been talking about childcare, I think, more than recent presidents, from the first year. Maybe some of it just sounds like making promises, but it does feel also to me, he's at least keeping it in the discourse. What can the federal government do to make real changes in this issue?

Dorian Warren: Two things. One is, as you already pointed out, to make the child tax credit, which was expanded temporarily in 2021, permanent. That would put cash in parents' pockets immediately and at a monthly basis to be able to afford childcare and many other things that kids need. Second is the administration in Congress at the federal level could invest, make that choice to invest billions of dollars in childcare.

In fact, the Biden administration has invested more than $40 billion in childcare to put our system on a more secure footing, but that is not enough. We know that we need probably something like $100 billion or $200 billion a year to fully fund really what we've never had before. By the way, in the early '70s, President Nixon vetoed the idea of a national childcare system. It is time for us to solve this at the federal level. We need a national childcare system fully funded so that no parent has to worry about, is there money or are there highly qualified teachers and providers to care for their kids.

That is the task ahead of us is to keep pushing for me, to keep organizing, to ensure there is a federal solution while we do this organizing at the state level to really show the rest of the country that this is possible.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What do you say to folks who say, "My tax dollars shouldn't be paying for your kids"?

Dorian Warren: I would say three things. One is, we should be investing in all of our children in this country because the actual payout in a generation is much more-- there's the old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Early investments, and we know the most important time in a child's life is zero to five. This should be a national priority for all of us to invest in our children at the earliest of ages. It is a public good.

Second, it enables people to work. For all the people that care about so-called work requirements and notions about, are people looking for work, oh, people are looking for work. Folks are always looking for work. If you have to take care of your kids, or if your kid is sick and they can't go to a childcare center, you got to stay home. You can't work. Money for childcare actually enables. It's a multiplier effect. It enables people.

Unfortunately, because care disproportionately falls on women and mothers, this really affects women around the country. It enables women to go to work. Last but not least, it is the way to end child poverty in this country and ensure that in a generation we have smart, capable adults who are able to thrive. I would say this is in all of our interests because all of our [unintelligible 00:12:13] linked to the future of all of our children.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Dorian, I want to shift gears a bit because even as we're talking about what is possible, of course, the possible is constrained by some of the realities happening in the federal level right now. There's another impending crisis; the debt ceiling. You want to weigh in on this?

Dorian Warren: Listen, since 1960, Congress has raised the "debt ceiling" 78 times, 49 under Republican presidents, 29 times under Democratic presidents. The debt ceiling is essentially, just so listeners can understand, it's like when you go to a restaurant and you place an order and you give your word when you place your order that you're going to pay for your meal. That is the promise you make.

Essentially, what the Republicans and Congress are saying is that they have placed the order for the meal and the kitchen staff has started to prepare it, and then they're going to get up and walk out. That is unacceptable, especially because we have raised the debt ceiling many, many times over this country's history. Since 1960, the Congress has raised it 78 times, more so on the Republican presidents than Democratic presidents.

Under the previous president, frankly, Republicans were fine raising the debt limit without pre-conditions three times in 2017, 2018, 2019. Ultimately, this is about the federal government paying its debts. Congress has required the executive to spend money, and the president is required and obligated to do what Congress has said and spend that money and not default on the debt.

I would argue, and many constitutional lawyers are now beginning to make this argument that this is required by the 14th Amendment to pay our debts. This should not be a negotiation. There's a separate process for negotiating over the budget. Debt ceiling should not be held hostage, the ability for the government to pay what it has promised to pay because of, frankly, cruel attempts at spending cuts.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about those attempts at spending cuts. What are Republicans looking to slash?

Dorian Warren: The things that affect low-income people the most. Because we've been talking about childcare, to give you a sense, one of the proposed budget cuts would essentially hurt childcare providers. They would cut 101,000 childcare slots funding for 101,000 childcare slots around the country. They would cut funding for 200,000 headstart slots that especially affects Black and brown women.

That is just one [unintelligible 00:14:51] cut benefits for SNAP or the food stamps program, for instance. This is really, really cruel politics on the backs of low-income people, and especially low-income people of color. They are using the debt ceiling as a negotiating tactic to try to push through cuts to vital, vital programs. At the end of the day, Melissa, this is actually really about taxes. This is about taxes and the ability of the federal government to create revenue.

Why I'm saying that is because if we had the revenue to pay and we could have the revenue to pay for our obligations, we could do this. To make it plain, the corporate tax rate in 1960 was 50%. The effective corporate tax rate by 2018 was 9%. In fact, half of all large corporations pay no federal taxes at all. That is infuriating. It is unnecessary. It's frankly un-American in my view.

This is the conversation we should be having about what we all owe to each other, what we should all be paying our fair share, especially rich folks, and especially corporations that would create the revenue necessary to ensure that we can meet our budget and pay for what we promised to pay for.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I am stuck in this moment, the work that you do, in the context of community organizing and activism. On the one hand, we were talking about trying to expand the possible, make new arguments for our sense of community and collective care and the context of childcare, but then I have to turn to, hey, should we even keep the lights on and pay the bills? How do you even start to think about expanding the conversation when it feels like so much of the fight is just to hold the line?

Dorian Warren: Much of the fight is to hold the line, but we also have in recent memory some experience of what happens when we do make big, bold ideas of reality. We were in the midst, and I would argue we still are in the midst of a once-in-a-hundred-year global pandemic that made a lot of people sick, that killed a lot of people, that crashed the economy. We said, collectively, that we were going to do something really big.

The American Rescue Plan in 2021 really put cash in the pockets of families. It allowed spending and resources to go to cities to provide immediate help for people, whether on rent and housing assistance or as we've talked about, the child tax credit. Cities were able to create funds for essential workers who were doing the work in dangerous circumstances so that we all could survive the pandemic, those of us that have.

I think we have the experience in muscle memory in just the last two years. By the way, Melissa, I would add there's been something like $4 trillion to $5 trillion allocated by Congress and the White House in the last two years if you add up all of the money spent under four bills; the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act. When we have the political will to invest in the country, to invest in, especially marginalized communities, we are able to do it.

I think we have to keep our foot on the gas, so to speak, around these big thought ideas. Again, I've said we have the solutions, but it takes organizing and shifting political will to really put this country in a different place.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dorian, stay with us. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to have a little bit of Dorian Warren's farewell to team Takeaway.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we're going to round out our conversation with Dorian Warren. Dorian is co-president of the national nonprofit, Community Change. He's a political commentator. He is co-host of the Deep Dive series here on The Takeaway. Let's just face it, he's been my friend for a really long time. Dorian, thanks for sticking with us a little bit longer.

Dorian Warren: Thank you for sticking with me, Melissa, and thank you to you and the entire Takeaway team for your service and making us all smarter every single weekday morning.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, I appreciate that. I don't know if we're making folks smarter. I know we are certainly getting more and more tired. [laughs] It's a lot of hours here on this show, but I have to say that one of the heaviest lifts in some ways, in terms of production and all of that that we did together as a team were the Deep Dives. I loved them. I loved how they sounded because our control room did such an amazing job making them sound terrific.

Also, I just really enjoyed an opportunity to talk with you about one topic for a whole hour. We did a bunch of them, but I'm wondering, do you have any that really stand out for you, any moments in the Deep Dives or topics that you remember?

Dorian Warren: I have so many moments. What comes to mind immediately, Melissa, is we did a Deep Dive on housing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: After the assassination of Dr. King, President Johnson signed the Fair Housing bill into law.

[playback begins]

President Johnson: It proclaims that fair housing for all, all human beings who live in this country, is now a part of the American way of life.

Dorian Warren: In a movie, this is when credits would roll over swelling music and the audience could feel the thrill of justice achieved, but this is no movie. This is federal policy, and winning passage of a law is just the first step.

[playback ends]

Dorian Warren: We did a Deep Dive on water, and that one was one of the most fascinating to me because we explored it from so many different angles. That's the advantage of having so much radio time to explore one topic, issues of water scarcity and water access and water affordability. What does the next 10 to 20 years look like in terms of climate change?

[playback begins]

Speaker: In a community with the highest population of water shutoffs, with the only access to one Laundromat, tells you that for the Laundromat to be closed down and be converted into a full co-op, that says, "This is for the people who are coming, not for the ones who are here." It also tells you that green plants that grow in black dirt can get water, while Black children cannot.

[playback ends]

Dorian Warren: That Deep Dive on water really, really resonated with me. I learned so much, and I know you did too, and I hope our listeners did too. Then, of course, it was exciting for me to go with The Takeaway staff to the Poor People's March and really take a deep dive into poverty, and talk to some of the best organizers and movement leaders in the country about this notion, frankly, of abolishing poverty, and the fact that we can do it.

[playback begins]

Dorian Warren: There's actually a sense that people have been waiting for this moment because it's been too long, the last two years in the pandemic, for people to come together to lift their voices around these issues. The issues of poverty and racism, climate change, but with a moral view. This isn't a policy event.

Speaker: We must meet in the streets. We must meet at the ballot box. We must meet at the political suites of this nation.

[crowd chanting]

Dorian Warren: From where we are standing, I only see literally a sea of people with signs in a range of movement shirts, who have all shown up today to basically tell the political elites in this town, in Washington, DC, "We are here. You work for us. You need to do your jobs."

[playback ends]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm interested in, as you have straddled these multiple spaces of media, of movement organizing, of the academy of teaching in classrooms, how it's affected how you think about change-making.

Dorian Warren: Well, let me start by just saying I just love and appreciate you so much for taking the big risk of essentially expanding your classroom and democratizing your classroom, Melissa, and making it accessible to broader audiences. I know Takeaway listeners are going to miss you and the whole team dearly because of what I think of when I listen to The Takeaway and from all of the other media projects we've done together. I always feel like I take a SmartPill after listening to you.

You bring your whole self to this endeavor, in terms of your training as a political scientist, in terms of your own work in the community. I've always tried to do that, as well as thinking about media platforms as an expanded classroom. I just want to express appreciation for you really riding alongside me, and I hope you feel the same, these last several decades. Yes, decades.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I know. Stop telling people how old we are.

[laughter]

Dorian Warren: Really, approaching all of our work with an honest sense of curiosity. Of course, we're grounded in some really sound values, but really a spirit of curiosity. That is what I think you have done and just your service and your sacrifice, frankly, to this country, to all of our communities, for Takeaway listeners this last while. We're all going to miss you and the entire team, and just the integrity, the integrity, you have brought to making radio every single morning at very early hours, by the way.

We've all have had the privilege to hear voices and people that we wouldn't hear, that don't have platforms on CNN, for instance, but who have something to say and contribute, and to make us all smarter, and frankly, better citizens.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dorian, you're my friend. You're my co-conspirator, and you are, without a doubt, one of the most extraordinary leaders that I've had the honor and the pleasure to work with. Look, Takeaway or no Takeaway, it ain't over for us.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're coming-

Dorian Warren: That's right.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -and hold that two-and-a-half-year-old of yours very, very soon. All right, folks, thanks for indulging us. Dorian, thanks for spending some time with us again. Dorian Warren is the co-president of Community Change and co-host of the Deep Dive series on The Takeaway. Remember, you can find all of those Deep Dives archived on The Takeaway website at thetakeaway.org. We got housing, water, sex work, all the things. Go and take a listen. Dorian, thanks so much for being here.

Dorian Warren: Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Takeaway team. I love y'all.

 

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