Thread by @ewarren

After my daddy had a heart attack, he couldn’t work for a while. Bills piled up. One day, I walked into my parents’ bedroom. My mother’s face was red and puffy. A dress was laid out over the bedspread—the dress that only came out for weddings, graduations, and funerals:

"We are not going to lose this house,” she kept saying. She’d never worked outside the home. She was terrified. But she knew what she had to do. She put on that dress, walked down the street to Sears, and got a minimum wage job that saved our house and saved our family.

This #MothersDay, I’m thinking of my mother’s courage. I’m thinking of all the mamas fighting for their families. And I’m thinking of all the ways the deck is stacked against them:

Today, the minimum wage won’t keep a mama and her baby out of poverty. That is wrong, and that is why I’m in this fight to raise the minimum wage and put more power in the hands of working people—which includes strengthening unions.
cnbc.com/2021/02/03/wha…

Most women who get abortions are already mothers. Many are working multiple jobs that don’t pay enough to support their children. Abortion bans make it even harder for those families to make ends meet. We need reproductive justice for all.
romper.com/life/most-wome…

Without quality, affordable child care, mothers have been shoved out of the workforce in this pandemic. They will feel the consequences—in lost earnings, in lower Social Security benefits—for the rest of their lives. We need universal child care. nytimes.com/interactive/20…

So, look: I don’t want to hear Republicans talking about how much they love mothers today unless they’re going to do something—anything—to value mothers tomorrow.