In 2019, more than 32 million workers couldn’t access a single day of paid sick leave, and four out of five workers did not have access to paid family leave. Only 43 percent of Black workers and 25 percent of Latinx workers have access to paid parental leave, and about 65 percent of Black parents and 75 percent of Latinx parents are ineligible, or cannot afford, to take the unpaid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act — the closest thing our country has to a federally mandated paid leave program. To talk about paid leave, says Erika Moritsugu, the Vice President for Congressional Relations and Economic Justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families, is to talk about racial and gender economic justice and how the combined crises of COVID-19, the child-care shortage, massive unemployment of women, and people of color all lead to one road: federal paid leave. Moritsugu walked us through the issues — and charted a path forward.