A movement for welfare rights, built by poor single mothers, pushed the United States the closest it’s ever been to a universal basic income. Though unsuccessful, the National Welfare Rights Organization and grassroots groups across the country advocated for the Guaranteed Adequate Income Bill, a piece of legislation that would have radically diverged from the association of wages and earned benefits with productive labor. That idea, which many women on welfare vehemently attacked, enjoyed ample support among potential collaborators. Effective coalition-building with poor and middle-class men was forestalled because atop the binary of wages and independence and means-tested welfare with dependency sat an equally strong divide between productive and reproductive labor.