“Clarissa’s Battle”: A powerful early childhood education advocacy tool

Join the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, Media Impact Funders and the Raising Child Care Fund for a discussion about how “Clarissa’s Battle,” a new documentary film, and other social movement documentaries can be used as powerful grassroots organizing tools.

Driven by her own experience losing child care and becoming unhoused with her infant son, Xavier, single mother and organizer Clarissa Doutherd is building a powerful coalition of parents fighting for child care and early education funds, desperately needed by low and middle-income parents and children across the United States.

As a result, Clarissa is seemingly everywhere at once—at hearings, election rooms, and rallies from Oakland, Calif., to Washington, D.C. But juggling this work with raising her son pushes Clarissa into a personal health crisis far too common among stressed, working mothers, especially women of color. When the lockdown pushes more families into desperate circumstances, Clarissa and her coalition redouble their efforts, with the stakes higher than ever.

“Clarissa’s Battle” gives us insight into an erupting movement, as communities across the country follow Clarissa’s successes, setbacks and indomitable resilience. But this is about more than a movement. It’s about the tenacity of a woman who experienced the shock of financial insecurity after the birth of her son, and her determination to stop it from happening to anyone else. It’s about the unseen and unspoken struggle of millions of families. It is about what happens when a woman rises to grasp her power and says, “Enough.

In conversation with: