Claim to dignity: as union organizing efforts take off, the lessons of community organizing could go a long way toward building a powerful movement of family childcare providers.

I'LL NEVER FORGET THE FIRST TIME I met Shirley Craig-head. In a voice made harsh by years of struggle and cigarettes, she outpreached any pastor as she addressed a room full of daycare providers. The spark of Shirley's oratory touched the gasoline of frustration felt by other middle-aged Black women whose meager paychecks from the state were three months late and who had moved way past the margins of economic survival. Within six years, Shirley and her sisters and brothers in DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) had revamped the state's antiquated payroll system, won nearly $100,000 in back pay and, by 1996, made Rhode Island the only state in the country to offer ...