Women became teary-eyed as they heard their own struggles and stories being told from a stage that included Michelle Obama, four women governors and vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden Tuesday.
The Economic Roundtable with the governors and several working women from across the nation provided the forum for Michelle Obama to share her husband Barack Obama’s plan for working women and families which includes at least 7 days of paid sick days for all workers.
“Working women are struggling in this nation,” Obama said. “They are asked to shoulder enormous burden. The challenges that face working families are not new to Barack and they are not new to Joe.”
She emphasized that her husband will pour billions into education and create universal healthcare by the end of his term in office to a loud and resounding cheer.
The group of women and Biden gathered around a small coffee table at the Colfax Event Center and talked about issues of pay equality, universal healthcare, withdrawal from Iraq and affordable housing.
“I speak for people in the gap,” said Leisha Kiel, who lives in Aurora and participated in the discussion. “A lot of women who are working need just a little bit of help. I never qualified for anything but I still have trouble paying my bills.”
Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner shared how her husband’s heart attack and death in 1967 required she go back to school, raise her children and get a job.
“My son had a runny nose and I had three bucks in my pocket. I had a choice to make,” she said. “I have never forgotten that because that is what people are facing.”
Making those kinds of choices struck a chord with Ruby Gutierrez Carrier who attended the forum from Greeley and recently had to decide whether to pay a $200 urgent care co-pay or wait and see if her son’s finger, bleeding from a torn fingernail, would improve.
“I can relate to people who share our experience, those of us who work and take care of children,” she said. “They are strong women with great ideas.”
The women who joined the discussion included a 23-year-old Iowan who is in college and cares full time for her sister who has cerebral palsy, a Coloradan who left school more than two decades ago when she got pregnant and is now trying to complete her education but still works two jobs, and another woman who lost her husband four years ago and is now raising their five children by herself.
Biden was the surprise guest at the event, which organizers mostly invited women to attend. He was joined by his wife Jill.
“People don’t want you to give them a hand out, he said. “They want you to give them a chance.”
Michelle Obama recalled that both men came from hard- working families that struggled to make ends meet, sometimes for Barack’s family it meant resorting to food stamps.
The plan she revealed is intended to help the millions who do not have family leave or paid sick days.
“Twenty-two million working woman don’t have a single sick day paid off,” she said. “The Obama-Biden plan will expand the Family Medical Leave Act so additional Americans can take time off to care for a sick child or elderly parent.”
The plan also would require employers to provide at least seven paid sick days a year.
Lisa McLennan who attended after seeing a crowd gathering across the street from her home said she did so in honor of her daughter who is due to give birth anytime and has had to take unpaid maternity leave from her job.
“I got the chills, they are talking about issues I identify with, I feel like they are speaking to real people,” she said. ‘The struggles, the education.”
