I've been running camera since 1994.
A film practice built over two decades inside the creative economy. Erased by a pandemic in March 2020. Not damaged - erased. The event industry ceased to exist. There is no accommodation framework for a year when your entire client base disappears simultaneously. The worker absorbs it alone, because that is what the system was designed for the worker to do.
I'm telling you this because this week I wrote about something that connects your signature on this petition to a different bill moving through the Colorado General Assembly right now - and about the moment I understood, in my own biography, exactly why the Colorado CARE Act has to exist.
When I was hired in 2020, remote work wasn't an accommodation - it was the policy. And that mandatory flexibility had an unintended consequence: it kept me close to my mother, who has end-stage dementia. Presence matters in end-stage dementia. Not dramatic presence. Just the daily availability that lets a person feel located in a world that is increasingly not locating them.
In 2022 and 2023, I had formal accommodations. The arrangement worked.
Then 2024. A return-to-office policy, applied broadly, with no conversation about what it meant for my caregiving situation. No interactive process. No documentation of what the accommodation had been doing, what its removal would cost. A policy changed. A care arrangement changed with it.
The law had nothing to say.
That is the bill you are signing.
Two weeks ago, the Colorado Artist Company Act - SB26-133 - cleared a Senate committee 5-0 on a bipartisan vote. It's the first business entity in American history built around how artists actually work. Not a tax credit. A structure. A legal architecture matched to the worker who actually exists.
The CARE Act is the same idea for caregivers. A legal architecture matched to the 113,520 Colorado workers who exit the workforce each year because no law requires the conversation before the policy changes, before the role is restructured, before the accommodation disappears without a word.
Both bills are answering the same question: what do we owe to the workers the economy depends on but refuses to recognize?
One bill is moving. One is coming.
Your signature is part of what brings it. Sharing this is the next step.
We are at 757 signatures and 677 supporters. We need 243 more to reach 1,000.
Read this week's full piece - "The Work the Law Couldn't See" - and share it with one person:
Sign here: https://chng.it/DLWncS9wtT
Kindly and Gratefully,
- Mark Fukae Director of Advocacy, Professionals Who Care Founder, CASI - Caregiver Advocacy Support Initiative mark_fukae@casiadvocacy.org | casiadvocacy.org