What can MOM determination accomplish? What does MOMentum look like? What does MOM POWER look like in 2024? We’re discussing that AND MORE with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and co-founder of MomsRising, a movement of more than a million people working to increase family economic security, stop discrimination, and build a nation where everyone can thrive.
In this episode, Diana and Kirstin have a very candid conversation about how an unexpected health crisis Kristin experienced as a first time mom led her to join forces with other powerful moms and create MomsRising
What happens when your infant child has medical needs you need to tend to, but there is no paid family medical leave in place? You get pushed out of the workforce, an that is exactly what happened to Kristin. It was this event, which Kristin appropriate calls an unforeseen “health crisis” that pushed Kristin out of the workforce. She found herself unemployed, taking care of an infant and going down a rabbit hole where she went looking for answers about what moms were facing in the United States.
In this powerful conversation they also discuss:
- Why moms’ voices and stories matter
- What’s at stake in the 2024 elections
- Why we should be vigilant and fight disinformation
- Why “parental rights” movements like M4L are not winning
- MomsRising’s efforts to mobilize moms all over the country
- …. AND MORE!
You can follow (and join) MomsRising — (they’ve got members in all 50 states!) by going to MomsRising.org/join
LISTEN WHEREVER YOU HEAR YOUR PODCASTS OR BELOW:
If you liked this episode make sure to check out:
Ep. 19 The Power of Black Moms with Monifa Bandele (MomsRising.org)
Ep. 35: Reimagining Schools without Police with Beatriz Beckford
Ep. 42: Representation, Storytelling and Motherhood with S. Nadia Hussain
Ep. 46: Why the Time to #SolveChildCare is NOW with Nina Perez
TRANSCRIPT OF THE CONVERSATION IS BELOW:
00:08 – Diana Limongi (Host)
Welcome to Parenting and Politics, a podcast for parents who want to make a difference, where we look at parenting through a political lens. I’m Diana Limongi. Today, our guest is Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the executive director and one of the founders of MomsRising. MomsRising is a movement of more than a million people working to increase family economic security, stop discrimination and build a nation where everyone can thrive. Now, full disclosure. If you’ve heard the podcast before, know me, you know that I’m a big MomsRising fan and I’m also employed at MomsRising now, which kind of makes Kristin my boss, really. But, Kristin, welcome to the podcast, I’m so excited you’re here. So, yeah, before we begin, I ask all my guests when I say parenting and politics, what comes to mind?
00:52 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Power, that’s it: Power. Parenting, politics, power.
00:59 – Diana Limongi (Host)
I love. I love anything of alliteration and power. Yes, and we are going to talk about mom power, so I love that you said that. So I want to start with your personal journey, because it’s a powerful one. And, quite honestly, I think you’re incredibly humble because when I when I’ve asked you before to share how Moms Rising became Moms Rising and what led you to kind of build this, I think I think you’re a little hesitant to share your story. But I really think it’s important for people to kind of understand where you started and how this movement has grown to become a movement of a million moms and everyone that loves them from all over the country. So let’s talk about why is mom power important? But before we talk about why mom power is important, tell us how did MomsRising become what it is?
01:54 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Well, one of the ways we’re here is that we are co bosses together, and I just want to have a moment, a spotlight on the powerful work that you’re doing, bringing moms together, bringing moms to places like the White House, the US Capitol, to share their stories and to show that our stories together add up to equal big change so that the legislation that we have at the highest levels reflects and respects who we are and what we need. So I just want to celebrate the co-bossness of me, of you, of the Moms Rising team and of the Moms Rising members across the country, because it’s all of us together that really makes a difference, which is why I always get hesitant about sharing my personal story, but I will, because you asked me, I heard you. So when I was younger and my first child was born, he had a primary immune deficiency. He didn’t have any IGA. I learned a lot of things about the immune system. There’s only five types of main immune system components in your body and when you’re missing one it’s a big deal. So he didn’t have any IGA and his IGE, which is the anaphylactic allergy mediated portion of your immune system, really went wild trying to compensate for it.
03:17
So I had a child who not only was getting sick quite regularly, but also was anaphylactic to eggs, nuts, fish, soy and milk, even through nursing, which meant I couldn’t eat any of that either, and so this was an unplanned health crisis. I had no idea. Nobody expects to have a health crisis, right. So I’ve got an infant who’s very sick and I didn’t have any paid family medical leave. Like hundreds of thousands of people in the United States of America, I didn’t have paid family medical leave. Now, we all know this is not the norm on the planet Earth. The majority of countries have paid family medical leave, but not us in the United States of America. So I joined all of the moms, of the dads, of the caregivers who were pushed out of the labor force. I lost my job when I had an unplanned health crisis. Now, at that time we didn’t have the Affordable Care Act yet, so I also lost my job-linked healthcare.
04:14
I was very lucky and that my husband had healthcare that stayed covering us, but I was raised by a single mom. She raised my brother and I as she went to school, as she worked, as she juggled all the things. And an unplanned health crisis like happened with me if it happened with my mom would have meant a catastrophe, an absolute catastrophe. So imagine me sitting home alone, pushed out of the labor force and with a really sick infant, and I was like what is happening in the United States of America, reflecting on what would have happened with my mom, because luck alone should never determine if a family can thrive. I’ll say that again
Luck alone should never determine if a family can thrive, and luck is what kept us afloat in that serious health crisis.
05:05
When I was pushed out of the labor force, and so I did what any person would do when they are lonely, sad, have a sick infant and confused. I called the US Census and I said how many moms are there out there like me who have been pushed out of the labor force when they had a baby? And you know what they said. They said we don’t know. We don’t track unrenumerated or unpaid labor in the United States of America. Call the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics because that’s what you do when you’re depressed and a new mom and if you’re me, I’m a little bit strange, as we now know. And they said we don’t track that either, but we can tell you that families with a stay at home parent are seven times more likely to live in poverty than families without one. And you know we see these images of like famines would stay at home parents. Like you know they’re eating bonbons by the pool or something. That is not what’s happening with families would stay at home parents.
FIND OUT ABOUT MOMSRISING HERE.
06:09
And so that was my first real look into the extreme invisibility of motherhood, the extreme invisibility and discounting of the work of care, and it turns out that the extreme invisibility of the unpaid work of care has a massive negative impact on the paid work of people who are caregivers. So being a mom is a greater predictor of wage and hiring discrimination than gender, and because of structural racism, moms of color are earning as low as 46 cents to a white dad’s dollar for Latina moms and 52 cents to a white dad’s dollar for black moms, and that’s not okay, right. And so it was kind of like I had a kid with an unplanned health emergency, as I was raised by a single mom and realized that I fell down this kind of rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland, where each time I looked for different pieces of data about what was happening looked for you know what was happening in my life and the lives of parents across America, I learned something even weirder and even stranger. So I started writing articles about it and I started writing books about it and ultimately Joan Blades, who also co-founded Move On, read a book that I wrote called the F Word Feminism and Jeopardy Women, politics and the Future, and there was a whole chapter on this disaster of motherhood in America.
07:38
And she called me up and said let’s co-write a book on just the motherhood part. I had to expand it, and so we co-wrote a book called the Motherhood Manifesto, and we had a lot of editors and a lot of people who were engaged, and then that book turned into a documentary film, and then that documentary film turned into a lot of viewing parties, and so we decided that we wanted to contribute the funds from the book and the film to an organization that had been working on these policy areas and an opening avenues for moms to be heard. And we did a survey of six groups, then 12 groups, then 32 groups, then you know on and on, and it turned out that there was no group opening avenues for the voices of moms to be heard about how to build a nation where everyone can actually thrive, how to catch us up with the modern realities of what’s happening in America and on the planet. And so moms’ rising was started with the blessing of over a hundred organizations, with a handful of people, and that handful of people have turned into over a million today. So that’s the story.
MomsRising moms fighting for SNAC and WIC!
08:41
It was very long. Thank you, listeners, for sticking with us. It was a long story and, yeah, that’s it.
08:50 – Diana Limongi (Host)
That is so powerful. We’re talking about power. Power is going to be all over the episode today. Let’s talk about the wins for a little bit, right, because we talk about, like you mentioned, fmla and paid leave is an issue near and dear to my heart, because paid leave was kind of like my intro into this world of advocacy.
09:12
Because when I was pregnant I was like, oh, I work for this very prestigious university, but guess what? There’s no paid leave, so I was going to have to take 12. I was allowed to take 12 weeks off, but without paid right, yeah. And when I had that realization, I didn’t have the realization of, oh, I’m going to have to give my entire paycheck to infant child care in New York City because it’s super expensive. So I feel like sometimes, as moms, we feel like change is not happening fast enough. Like we just mentioned, fmla, we still don’t have a paid leave. How old is your son? Because mine is 12 and yours is older. So it almost feels discouraging. Sometimes I think right, but then we also have wins. So can you give us a win to kind of keep us on that powerful, inspiring path?
10:08 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Yes, I have so many wins. I’m so excited that you asked this question First. One of the wins is that there are mountains of research showing that solutions are possible to the crisis that moms and parents are facing across America. So when we talked about the wage gap and this is important, this is part of the wins, people there are so many studies showing that you can close the wage gaps by building a care infrastructure, and those policies are exactly what we’re just talking about right now Paid family medical leave, affordable childcare, access to healthcare and fair pay. Those policies together actually close the wage gaps between moms and non-moms and between gender discrimination. So this is a win that we know that solutions are possible. And it’s so much of a win that Claudia Golden just won the Nobel Prize for Economics for figuring this out. So I just want to raise that part of our wins is that a national understanding has changed. The national dialogue has changed.
11:11
When we first started at Moms Rising, nobody believed us. In fact, we had to not share all the stats because people thought we were lying. Even though we had mountains of rooms of research In polling, people thought, oh my gosh, it could not be this disastrous for parents. We’re like. It actually is disastrous for parents. We were not allowed to say because it boomeranged against us. There was nobody saying you’re not allowed to say this, but people literally thought we were lying for years when we said the United States of America is the only industrialized nation in the world without any form of paid family medical leave. So the first win is that everybody knows that the crisis of paid family medical leave is one that uniquely phases America and that we can solve. And when we solve it we do things like close the wage gaps, Stop that maternal wall. This is huge. So that’s one win.
12:04
Second win is legislative. Oh my gosh. So we have helped more than a dozen states pass paid family medical leave. So what we have right now is we have states marching toward the US Capitol, putting pressure on the US Capitol like hello, we can do it in states, so can you nation. And we want a national policy because we don’t want people to have to win the geography lottery or the boss lottery in order to have this important policy. And we know that when we pass this policy, we actually lift businesses, lift taxpayers, lift families and lift business. I’m saying business twice, because we double lift businesses.
12:46
So we know from states that have passed this policy and this is a win too, the data coming in. So from states that have passed this policy, like California, there’s a 40% lower need for TANF and SNAP if you have access to paid family medical leave. When a new baby arrives, child care costs more than college. So if you get pushed out of the labor force just when you need your wages the most, it’s very hard to get back in the labor force when child care costs more than college. So that’s why we see these taxpayers’ savings and lower long-term needs for government programs like TANF and SNAP, and a 40% decrease is huge. We see businesses also winning because they have employee retention, increased productivity and they have to pay less money in recruitment and retraining. We see lives saved, which I count as a very big win, because maternal mortality and infant mortality are decreased when there’s access to paid family medical leave. So we see a ton of wins coming out of the states.
13:47
Other wins we have been passing, both at the state and the federal level, very important incremental changes in expanding access to child care. We have some big wins in some states and we’re still fighting in other states. Again, here too we really need a national comprehensive child care policy so that, importantly, it’s not just making child care more affordable, it’s also making the profession of child care one that has a universal living wage and a career and wage ladder for child care workers. Most child care workers are moms. We’re one and the same in terms of the cohort, so we have a lot of those policies.
IF YOU LOVE THIS CONVERSATION MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT MOMSRISING’S MONIFA BANDELE SPEAKING ABOUT THE POWER OF BLACK MOMS!
14:27
We saw the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act pass within the last year. We saw the Pump for Nursing Mothers Act pass within the last year. We saw one year healthcare coverage for all birthing people pass in the last year. We also saw expanded healthcare coverage for young adults in the last year. We are seeing a lot, a lot of wins, both at the state and federal level every day.
Do we have the transformational change that we all need Yet? No. Is it time to say the momentum, the momentum, the mom power has been growing, as we call our members of Congress, as we sign those petitions, as we reach out to our leaders yes, that momentum is growing. It’s time to double down on standing up, because it’s no longer a question of if, but when we will finally pass national paid family medical leave because of the voices of your listeners, of organizations like Mom’s Rising and more and of all of us together bringing our power to bear.
15:25 – Diana Limongi (Host)
Let’s just drop the mic. That was a lot and yeah, I think we need to talk about the wins a little bit, because it can get a little, you know, a little hard, because these are hard times to relive in it. Okay, so now we’re going to shift the conversation a little bit because we talk about moms, we talk about power. We know that moms are also doing a lot of the purchasing and a lot of you know the stuff that’s really important in our homes and that for our economy. But we can’t have a conversation about that without recognizing that recently we’re seeing dangerous rhetoric that is using the idea of it’s not mom rights, but they’re called parental rights.
16:06
This idea of parental rights has been used in the past to you know, I think. Wasn’t Nixon using it to veto our universal childcare? Darn it, really just awful. But we’re hearing this idea of parental rights to do things like ban books and change the way we talk about slavery and question curricula and question teachers and oppose things like social emotional learning, which you know is critical for young kids and for our older kids. Everyone needs that kind of support in schools, and they’re also supporting laws that hurt our LGBTQ students and families, which is really distressing. So how are you countering groups? I don’t want to say the name of the groups.
16:56 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Mom against liberty. I’ll say it. I can’t even say what their proper name is, that they call themselves, but I’m just going to call them moms against liberty there you go which?
17:05
which which, when we did an analysis, we found out, are not actually majority moms, they’re majority men. So, okay, this is such an important question and I love that you asked it. First of all, we’re winning there too. So in the last election cycle, of the 170 school board races that they endorsed in, they lost 70 percent. Because when we have pulled parents real parents 80 percent want accurate education, 80 percent want to support LGBTQIA people, 80 percent want bodily autonomy, 80 percent want our children to not have fewer freedoms than we had growing up. And I’m about to tell you I think all of them are like what are you moms against liberty doing? And I will tell you what they’re doing. It is not actually a mystery.
18:03
Sadly, when Donald Trump lost the White House and yes, he did lose, despite all of the disinformation that has been spread Steve Bannon, who was his strategist in chief for a long time, was on multiple news outlets saying the way back to the MAGA contingent getting into the White House was through the school boards. Why? Why is it through the school boards? It goes back to that word that we started out this segment with power. There is huge mom power. There are 76 million mom voters in the United States of America. So what the MAGA Republican extremists have done is they’ve thrown wedge issue after wedge issue at the wall to see what sticks. It’s kind of like when you’re making spaghetti and you throw spaghetti at the wall with your kids to see if it’s done, to see if it sticks. They’ve been doing that, throwing wedge issue after wedge issue I call it hate spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. The goal is to wedge apart the mom voting base in order to garner more votes for MAGA Republicans. They’re going for the extremist of extremes and a low of a low. Well, we’re here to tell you it is not working. Their tactic is ridiculous and moms are seeing through it. And we have the evidence that moms are seeing through it by what just happened in the elections just a couple months ago, in November, where they lost again. They lost 70% of the races. So they’re not going to go away and it is up to all of us to really, really really be on the lookout for disinformation.
19:44
What is happening? And again I expected to get weirder and weirder as we get closer to November 2024. What’s happening again is they’re throwing wedge issues at the wall to see what sticks. Those wedge issues are not based in actual, real information. We’ve heard some wild things that they’re saying is happening that are not at all happening. I won’t even repeat them because I don’t want to accidentally spread disinformation. But if you are listening to TV or your social media or any outlet and you hear something that sounds really, really, really, really weird, consider the source. This is our goal that we all need to have moving into the 2024 elections. Consider the source. Figure out what is the source of that information, because the level of disinformation as our democracy is under attack is unprecedentedly high. So that’s the big thing that the moms against liberty are big disinformation spreaders. They’re not even all moms, they’re not even majority moms, and we all need to be on the lookout, as moms, for disinformation and bust that disinformation with our friends, families and neighbors too.
20:56 – Diana Limongi (Host)
Yes, that’s going to be a big theme and it’s really scary with AI and deep fakes, and it’s really, really frightening. So thank you for that reminder that we have to be vigilant on what resources and also figure out how to talk to. I’m thinking specifically. I know there’s been a lot of disinformation in the Latino community. I see it with older adults, like people my parents are in their 70s, like with Facebook and YouTube, and once they get one video, it just keeps going because the algorithm sends them similar videos, which is really the frightening. It’s like a self perpetuate, you know. Just keeps going and going. So what are you doing, kind of like on the ground in those places, Because we know that they’re incredibly savvy about where to target right, I know some of it I feel like should be like top secret, but I guess the main top secret is moms are awesome and powerful and apparently the majority of people don’t realize that.
21:53 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
So that’s why we can win when we raise our voices. But what are we doing? So, moms rising, as you know, has members in every state in the nation. So we are active on the ground and it would be great if you could share some of your victories, that you’ve done on the ground and what you’re seeing. We’re active online. We’re active reminding moms to vote, especially low frequency mom voters, reminding them to vote and how and where to vote, and that we can bring our kids with us to vote.
22:22
One of the myths is that we have to get a babysitter in order to go vote. But no, you can bring your kids to vote and it can be fun. So, moms rising has a lot of activities that people can do with their kids to vote. Make voting part of the family fun. Make voting a dance for you. Check out what are you going to do for your voting walk up song. You know I’m already thinking about mine, you know. So part of what we’re doing is preparing for the 2024 election, but we’re also still pushing in Congress and in state legislatures. But what are you seeing as the most fun ways that moms rising is engaging right now?
23:00 – Diana Limongi (Host)
Well, I will tell you what I love about the way we work with moms and, just for everyone listening, I am a full time staff person at moms rising but I was a mom that was part of moms rising as a mom rising volunteer sharing my story, and I found moms rising or moms rising found me because I was angry at the world because I was going to get paid leave. So that’s kind of how I entered the moms rising universe many, many years ago over a decade ago I think. But one of the things I love about moms rising is that we really try to meet our members where they are. You know, I always tell the moms that I work with. You know, if you have two minutes to kind of share this petition with your friends via text, like you do that and that is enough. And if you have an afternoon to join me because we are having a postcard party, then that is awesome. And if you know you’re a mom who has the resources and the time and the guts to kind of run for office, hey that is awesome too. So I love the fact that we have kind of like this smorgasbord of ways and we will support moms in any way and I also tell moms do what you can with what you have, right?
24:13
I think a lot of times there’s so much guilt in mothering, guilt because you know you’re a working mom and you aren’t there for your school kids, so you know. So I want to eliminate, and I think that moms rising work really hard to work with our members, which I love. But, yeah, we do a lot of like fun activities, like when we bring moms to DC and we remind them that they have the power to call their legislators, like I always like telling them they work for you, they should be taking your phone calls, you know, you should hold them accountable. I think there’s a lot of power in even building those conversations and building those opportunities for moms to realize that they have the power, because I think a lot of times, because of the way society is built, we’re being told that we don’t have power, which is like which baloney. I think. So yeah, but I you know I haven’t heard of the walk-up song. I’m excited to hear it Now. There’s gonna be like dancing on this, on these voting.
25:09 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
We’re calling together something like a mama palooza we haven’t named it yet For right before the November election we wanna have a big concert, a big get out the vote fun for moms and kids. You know, you can either participate online, turn on your video and we’ll be there dancing with mom musicians Hello or you can come in person. So that’s some of the stuff that’s in the mix. I’m glad you mentioned the postcards. One of the things that has me fired up, excited, inspired, is that we already have over 6,500 volunteers to write and send get out the vote postcards mom to mom. I mean, that is a lot, right. So in the last presidential election we had 77,000 get out the vote volunteers in some way, shape or form.
25:57
And you’re exactly right, we’re an aggressively welcoming rainbow of ways that people can engage. So being a get out the vote volunteer, it could be everything from just committing to telling three friends to vote and showing them how, to writing 200 postcards or 20 postcards or 10 postcards to low-frequency mom voters, to coming out in person to a rally or possibly even a dance. There’s lots of different ways that you can be engaged and we know people are busy, so we don’t judge about what level of engagement people have. Sharing your story also about why voting matters to you is gonna be a big component, or why any of these policies matter to you as a big component as well. So, yeah, we have lots, of, lots of, lots of ways for people to get engaged coming up this year, in 2024. And I’m so thrilled about it. Are you so pumped? I’m pumped, I’m ready. Boom, we’re gonna do this.
26:52 – Diana Limongi (Host)
So I’m gonna repeat something that one of my recent guests said, which is Maria Teresa Kumar, who said that in 2024, everything is on the line. Do you agree and I’m sure you do so can you expand on what is on the line for moms specifically?
27:11 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I was about to say I sadly agree, like with great sadness. I agree. I feel like every election we’re like this is the worst election ever. You really need to engage, and actually it has been true. So I’ve worked in politics for quite some time, even before mom’s rising, and it is worse every presidential election in terms of what’s on the line.
27:36
What’s on the line this time? That is appalling and it sounds almost like too weird to be true is that we have a candidate, donald Trump, who has said that his first order of business is vengeance and to basically be a dictator. That is not only uncool, that is not only a reason for a mom time out, that’s also a direct threat and attack on our democracy. And so, in order to pass any of these policies, which we know, president Biden has supported all of the policies that we’ve talked about. He supported them publicly in the Build Back Better package. He supported them, pushing them through Congress. We lost by one vote on many of these policies and he has worked really hard I’m including to do a care executive order, president Biden to push these policies forward. As a former single parent, biden knows himself what’s at stake for parents very clearly. So we have one side that has been pushing for these policies. We have another side who is saying they wanna overthrow democracy and be basically a dictator, which is appalling.
28:45
Again reason for a mom time out Like hello, we’re a democracy, so we need to maintain our democracy in order to push any of these policies through. And we have somebody who’s running for office who’s a direct threat to making sure everybody’s vote can be accurately counted, to making sure that all of the separations of powers between the executive branch, judicial branch and congressional branch are respected. Like we have a big problem. So everybody, please vote and, right now, check that you’re registered to vote. So go online. You can go to mom’s rising and check if you are registered to vote. Sometimes people are pushed off the voter rolls, so the biggest thing to do right now is check that you yourself are still registered to vote and make sure that your friends, family and neighbors are registered to vote too.
29:38 – Diana Limongi (Host)
And like now, like don’t wait until October, because the deadlines and the deadlines are different in every single state, which makes it super complicated. I’m sure that whoever came up with this made it complicated on purpose because you know they think if people don’t understand them, they’re just not gonna do it and we wanna prove them wrong. So now, january, first order of business check if you’re registered and invite your friends to register, super easy. I think at some point, at some point where we’re not like trying to save democracy, we should figure out, you know, automatically, you know, enrollment for 18 year olds, right, like, should it be that complicated really?
30:17 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Yeah, and there are some great bills in Congress that would help protect our democracy, but we can’t pass them until we have people in power who also support democracy in, you know, the house, the Senate and the Oval Office. So we need your vote, people. We need your vote and pick your voting walkup song. I haven’t picked mine yet, but this, for whatever reason, gets me fired up, gets me pumped for elections. Like to pick a different walkup song each year for like what I’m gonna play as I vote. You know what year is gonna be. Does one come to mind for you? I don’t know.
30:51 – Diana Limongi (Host)
I have to think about this. It’s probably like a J-Lo, let’s get loud, or you know something like that. Yeah, I have got to mention Reaper Rights because I think a lot of times people think Reaper Rights isn’t a mom’s issue. But we know that. What is it? Six out of 10? Yep, yep, that’s the abortion of moms. And you know, an unplanned pregnancy for a mom who already has, for example, two children, a single mom or someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck, that can really put a mom and family in poverty. So, being able to make those decisions about your reproductive rights you know you’re how many family members you’re going to have like that is extremely important and it’s not something that we often associate with moms. But you know, like as a mom, like I want my birth control.
31:49
You know what I mean. So I just and I know that mom’s rising is doing a lot of great work and a lot of organizations do a lot of great work because this is something that literally keeps me like I have a daughter who’s six and I’m like, no, like what is happening. I don’t want my daughter to have to, you know, have less rights than me, which you know we hear a lot about. But it shouldn’t matter also where you live, like we’ve been hearing stories about the mom in Texas who had to leave her state to get critical care. Let’s not even talk about the fact that moms should be able to choose. Women should be able to choose whether they have kids or not, but also medically necessary, right? We’re at the point where politicians are making decisions not based on fact and science because they don’t have the facts or the science right. They don’t know the last thing. Those are not the people that should be making decisions that are medically Sorry. So I just I wanted to point that out because I think that that’s super, super important and you’re doing, we’re doing great work. I say I say you because I’m not on that team, so I feel like, but we have wonderful colleagues working on Reburial Rights too, but I don’t want to end on that sad note.
33:08
So, kristen, you already mentioned the postcard parties and the petitions and you know, as time passes into our 2024, we’re going to keep talking about all the ways and moms can get involved. I share that my personal platforms, I share that on the podcast and everybody. The postcard parties are so much fun. I want to say, even even before I was a mom’s rising staff member, I had postcard parties and they’re a lot of fun. You just get together your friends, markers, colors, like it’s great. So I want to invite everyone to join mom’s rising. You go to mom’s risingorg slash, join and get started with mom’s rising. But I want to ask you, what keeps you hopeful?
33:52 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
What keeps me hopeful is you, it’s us, it’s hearing the stories of parents being heard and shaping the national narrative and shaping national legislation, and seeing the victories step by step. One thing that’s important is that the news rarely reports good things, but when we’re at mom’s rising, we see good things happening all the time. Again, we haven’t reached the transformational change we need so everyone can thrive and we are not going to give up on fighting for that. But along the way, we see every single day that your voice, your experience, your contributions, your needs are so powerful and so important to be heard, and so really being able to see the changes that we’ve made so far and the changes that we can make if we keep rising which we will keeps me going and fired up and ready to fight for all of our rights. What about you? What keeps you going?
34:57 – Diana Limongi (Host)
You know, I’m not going to lie, it’s been a little hard. It’s been a little hard. 2023 was really hard. I think what keeps me hopeful is when I see so I work with moms one on one, you know, kristen, with the fellows and with a lot of storytellers, and when I see moms kind of come out of their shell, own their power, we’re going to end where we started, talking about power.
35:23
But you know, at the end of a cycle, when a mom has just spoken in front of Capitol Hill and shared her story and called for members of Congress to work on X issue, then after that experience, they tell me if you had told me I was going to do this, I wouldn’t have believed you. I cannot believe that. I just did that. I cannot. You know, that is so powerful because it’s just it’s amazing to see that transformation. It’s amazing to see someone step into that power.
LISTEN TO THIS GREAT EPISODE: Representation, Storytelling and Motherhood with S. Nadia Hussain
35:53
And you know what? I know that those moms go back to their communities and they kind of spread that so that other moms can step into their own power. So I see it as like these ripple effects of moms building power. So that’s what keeps me hopeful. It really, you know, and I have the moms sending me text messages saying, hey, I spoke at this thing, or I spoke up in my meeting at the school board, or you know. And I’ve had moms say to me I want to thank mom’s rising because if it hadn’t been for that experience, I wouldn’t have had the hotspot to open my mouth and, like you know, express what, what I thought needed to be said. So that’s what keeps me hopeful every day really.
36:36 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
I love it. Same same same. I love it, I love it.
36:40 – Diana Limongi (Host)
Well, kristen. Thank you so much Everyone. Kristen is very important, very important person and she’s always meeting and making sure moms voices are heard and she’s also work. She was in Washington state, but she’s always on East Coast time, which I’m always amazed about, talking to all the very important people in Washington and making sure that they hear moms and, you know, holding them accountable, I think, which is really important. So thank you for your time. I’m so grateful. Everyone, make sure to follow moms rising at moms rising and also we have a fabulous, fabulous Latina community of moms rising called my mask on poder, which I love. As I mentioned, you can go to moms risingorg slash, join to sign up and be part of our million mom movement. Everyone, make sure you share this episode. Make sure to check your voter registration is. Invite your friends to register and subscribe, leave a review, recommend the podcast. Until next time, don’t forget hope is our superpower.
37:45 – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (Guest)
Bye, I’m going to enjoy to work with you. Thanks for having me on.
