Adriana George didn’t set out to be a founder of our nation.
At 21, she left her home in the Caribbean for a new life in New York. She fell in love with caregiving as a nanny, and soon found community with others doing the same work in the city. At meetups in a local park, they shared stories of long days, low pay and mistreatment.
George realized what was happening to them was unjust, so she began organizing by collecting domestic workers’ testimonies and using their shared experiences to demand better protections.
She moved to Philadelphia, birthplace of American freedom, and did what the original founders did: She listed grievances and worked to demand change. It was there that she also became a U.S. citizen.
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Today, she runs the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s We Dream in Black program in Pennsylvania, advocating for Black, Afro-Latina and Caribbean domestic workers. She brought workers’ stories to Philadelphia City Hall. Then, she helped push for a law expanding protections for domestic workers, including restitution for harmed workers, proactive investigations of abusive employers and a public list of employers with a history of mistreatment.
Work like George’s is happening everywhere in our country — in city halls, in courtrooms and in neighborhood parks where caregivers gather between shifts, imagining something better.
“I don’t like to see injustice around me,” George said. “I’m fighting for workers to know they deserve better. Domestic workers do the work that makes all other work possible.”
George’s work is a reminder that democracy is not a finished project — it’s an ongoing one.
This profile is apart of The 19th’s Revolutionary series. Subscribe to The Amendment, our biweekly newsletter, to receive project updates and political analysis focused on gender, race and power.
our past coverage of Adriana George
· May 6, 2026
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