Small business owners and their workers’ rights finding an affordable care solution.

Photo above courtesy of “Care Force One” producers: The vintage 1967 Mercury station wagon that Marisa Jahn , her toddler age son Choco, and good friend Anjum Asharia are hoping will make the long trek from NYC to Florida to chronicle their journey and conversations with domestic care workers along the way.

Artist and domestic care worker advocate, Marisa Jahn is adjusting her lens in a slightly different way than most to focus in her own unique way how to address issues revolving around domestic care workers, employers and their rights.

A serious and growing concern for our country as our population quickly ages,

Jahn states that she as well as many of us are part of the newly created “Sandwich Generation”, an ever growing population squeezed between having parents of the baby boomer era who need elderly care and still raising children that need caregivers to teach and take care of them –these caregivers allow the “Sandwich Generation” to go to work while their families are well taken care of. 

These caregivers with which we entrust our family’s well being are the people she wants to make sure are as equally cared for.

These care force heroes are those who in many cases skills are undervalued, are paid below the state’s minimum wage, are not given the rights of vacation or sick days, suffer from abusive employers or racial discrimination and sexual harassment and carry a stigma of being workers who perform menial tasks.

Jahn also recognizes the other side of the coin for our elderly population being able to maintain their dignity and knowing they can employ and afford healthcare for themselves.

Focusing in on both sides of workers’ rights and employers’ ability to find affordable care

Focusing in on both sides of workers’ rights and employers’ ability to find affordable care is something that Jahn has been working on by using her combined skills of art & advocacy. By bringing in humor, storytelling, and a bit of whimsy she can engage communities and humanize the issues to initiate these sometimes difficult, uncomfortable and controversial conversations.

The “Care Force One Travelogues” is a 4 part docu-series premiering this spring on accessible to everyone channel, PBS. It is a humorous and touching story that calls on us to think more about our quickly growing domestic care industry and how these workers are treated

Her 1 ½ year in the making project, “Care Force One Travelogues” is a docu-series that will be premiering on PBS this spring.

It is a 4 part series that will follow Jahn, her toddler age son, Choco and her good friend, Anjum on their journey from NYC to Florida in a brightly painted (and questionably running) 1967 station wagon as a tribute to care worker heroes, making stops along the way from DC, to South Carolina, to their final destination at the Perez Art Museum Miami. 

Speaking to nannies, housekeepers, caregivers, and death doulas along the way in some of the nation’s states with the least amount of protection for its domestic workers; states with legacies of slavery, and states with high numbers of immigrants—these are the care force heroes whose voices she wants to be heard.

On the flip side of the serious nature of this documentary

On the flip side of the serious nature of this documentary, Jahn also shares her motherly thoughts about what it meant to be prepared to take on this trip with a toddler attached to her.

The humor in arming herself with some fun colorful headbands for her trip, having to make sure they had a “car manual for dummies” so they could service their vintage station wagon’s needs because as her son says they are people who “don’t know nothing about cars” let alone old ones that bring you surprises every turn of the way, packing extra amounts of toddler friendly snacks, and dealing with her slightly car-sick prone son who with a stomach full of milk gets sick right out of the driveway and follows up with the you guessed it question—“are we there yet”.  

This funny yet serious adventure is a mixture of car care versus domestic worker care.

Jahn’s quiet moment with her son on the road trip to Florida

Next page- Jahn, a second generation immigrant, half Chinese, half Ecuadorian has a fine arts from University of California Berkeley