Black History’s Blueprint for Resistance
Introduction
On May 12, our annual Day Without Child Care (DWOCC) reached another milestone: In its fourth year, it was the largest one-day work stoppage in child care organizing history. As Family Forward Oregon Executive Director Candice Vickers said on this historic day, “We’re going to keep getting loud, and we’re going to make sure that all care is valued. And we won’t stop.”
In the face of attacks on family-supporting programs, we are unafraid. By organizing childcare providers and parents and growing the choir of voices and map of states that are pushing for transformational policies – on all of our issues – we are building a mass opposition movement to block the MAGA authoritarian power grab.
Read on, and watch our 2025 DWOCC video to get an idea of what it looks like when child care comes to a halt.
Program Pulse
Largest Work Stoppage in Childcare History
On Monday, May 12, thousands of child care providers, parents, and allies showed up in solidarity as part of Community Change Action’s fourth-annual national Day Without Child Care. The demands were clear: stronger protections and investments in child care, and no cuts to basic needs programs, like Medicaid, SNAP, and Head Start, that help millions of people make ends meet. This year’s Day Without Child Care was history-making: 1,395 providers in 43 states and Washington, DC, closed their doors and helped organize more than 100 events nationwide. Approximately 130 local, state, and federal elected officials joined or supported these events, which were covered by hundreds of news outlets across the country, reaching more than 186 million people. In the Santa Fe New Mexican, early childhood educator Fernando Noriega, speaking in Spanish, said, “We just want to cover the necessities of our families, and to keep doing what we want, what we love, which is to care for children.” Click here for more press coverage of DWOCC.
As we closed the day, U.S. Representatives Pramila Jayapal and LaMonica McIver joined a virtual rally with Community Change Action Co-President Lorella Praeli, along with partners and representatives of our Childcare Changemakers, to build energy for the next phase of the fight – and Senator Elizabeth Warren shared pre-recorded remarks in solidarity. Our focus now is on Wisconsin, where Republican lawmakers cut $480 million in funding for the childcare sector from the state budget. Community Change Action helped establish a workers fund to support the providers fighting back against the cuts.
Red-State Lessons on Protecting Medicaid
In May, the U.S. House of Representatives advanced Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” by a 215 to 214 vote. According to the Center for American Progress, the bill proposes the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history. The bill is deeply unpopular, including on the right, which is evident in the closeness of the vote, as well as in feedback we’ve heard in every conversation with impacted constituents. But in the face of White House bullying, most Republican holdouts got in line to pass it.
At the state level, however, recent successful efforts by our grassroots partners to protect Medicaid coverage are showing a path forward, splitting the shaky MAGA alliance to defend basic needs programs.
- In April, Hoosier Action mobilized hundreds of Indiana residents to deliver over 700 stories amplifying the potential impact of proposed cuts to the state’s Medicaid expansion program. In response, the Republican-dominated legislature removed a harmful trigger provision, ensuring continued coverage for 754,000 Healthy Indiana Plan beneficiaries.
- In West Virginia, WV Center on Budget and Policy and other groups combined popular pressure with outreach to sympathetic Republican leaders to block the progress of a trigger bill that would have ended the state’s Medicaid expansion program.
- In Montana, the People’s Food Sovereignty Program helped hold the line on Medicaid expansion. Although Republicans hold a supermajority in the state, fractures within their caucus opened the door for organizing wins, and groups like PFSP were ready with the right relationships and messaging to keep coverage intact.
Interested in learning more? Register for our June 17 briefing to hear from partners about these wins, the lessons they offer for other states, and how we are strategically building from here.
Change Agent AI Selected as Webby Award Honoree
We’re excited to announce that our AI chatbot, Change Agent, was selected as a Webby Award Honoree at the 2025 Webby Awards in May. Last year, Community Change Action collaborated with Change Agent AI to launch a first-of-its-kind private large language model artificial intelligence chatbot developed to strengthen community and grassroots organizing. The partnership between Community Change Action and Change Agent AI aims to develop a “language model for the movement” that reflects a progressive worldview and to build power and advance AI literacy so that progressive organizers can leverage and inform AI advancements with a tool that is of, by, and for movement practitioners. The Webby Awards recognized Change Agent as an Honoree in the category of AI, Immersive & Games, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
Before You Go
- In May, United Today Stronger Tomorrow launched the Protect Medicaid Utah coalition to mobilize opposition to proposed cuts. The launch generated abundant press coverage, striking for deep-red Utah – and evidence of rising energy to protect safety net programs. Press hits include New coalition fights for continued health care coverage, protection for Medicaid in KSL.com; Utah coalition stands up against funding cuts targeting Medicaid in ABC4; Utah coalition stands up against funding cuts targeting Medicaid in Desert News, among others.
- The RX Kids program, which supports low-income mothers and their babies with cash support in Flint, MI, has expanded to Kalamazoo and parts of the Upper Peninsula and will be expanding to more Michigan cities soon. Community Change leadership and staff advise the program, which is supported by the Economic Security Project. Read more in Program to cut infant poverty takes root in cities, counties across Michigan.
- In Potential cuts to Medicaid threaten D.C.’s homeless and formerly homeless populations, in Street Sense Media, Community Change Co-President Dorian Warren warns of harms to Washington, DC, residents, if proposed Medicaid cuts are implemented.
