In subway stations and under the shade of trees across New York City, Allison Julien met with domestic workers organizing. She wanted to talk to them about their basic rights — the ones they’d been denied for decades.

It was the early 2000s, and nannies, home cleaners and home health aides across the state were in the midst of a years-long campaign to pass the nation’s first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, a document that would guarantee protections such as a minimum wage and paid time off after labor laws shut these workers out. Julien, then a nanny without permanent legal status, was one of the leaders of that movement.

Domestic workers didn’t have a shop floor where they could organize or a lunch room where they could talk on their breaks. The work to build their movement had to be done on the streets. But Julien’s pitch, tailored for a workforce composed almost entirely of women of color and immigrants, felt like a moonshot for domestic workers organizing.

Read the full article about domestic workers organizing by Chabeli Carrazana at The 19th.