September 5, 2025, 2:58pm
In at least decent media news, the children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel has been using her huge platform for good.
Ms. Rachel—whose government name is Rachel Griffin Accurso—has worked in children’s education for years, getting her start as a teacher for students with special needs. Also inspired by her own experience parenting a child with a speech delay, she started her baby earworm factory, “Songs for Littles,” in 2019.
Now Ms. R is a beloved toddler soother with fans across the world. (And to anyone who’s recently had to entertain a “little,” probably a household name.) She’s best known for her enthusiastic and approachable ditties on key subjects, like potty training. Her YouTube channel boasts 16 million subscribers.
For the past two years, Ms. Rachel has also been using her high pulpit to advocate for child welfare in Palestine. Though initially wrapped in a generally loving message about kids around all border, her advocacy for Gazan kids in particular—as well as child victims of the ongoing genocide in Sudan—has grown louder and louder.
As Amy Goodman put it on a Thursday episode of Democracy Now, Ms. Rachel has been “hailed as the heir to Mr. Rogers, the legendary PBS children’s entertainer who also used his position in families’ living rooms to speak out on social issues.”
So how does baby whispering dovetail with advocacy?
After publicly declaring that she would not work with anyone who didn’t speak out for Gaza, Ms. R joined forces with Tareq Hailat, director of the Treatment Abroad Program for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Hailat describes Accurso as “one of the most significant, if not the most significant, voices for Palestinian human rights” in the world.
As he told Democracy Now, “Her advocacy has touched the hearts of people that never would have ever heard about Gaza or the Palestinian children, and that’s why her voice is so vital.”
Among other joint endeavors, Hailat helped connect Accurso with a recent guest—Rahaf, a 3-year-old girl from Gaza who lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike.
The episode in question is typical Ms. R content, in that the subjects sing and dance and pretend to go to sleep like little bunnies. But it does the quiet work of humanizing and de-stigmatizing Palestinian child victims.
So why the Mr. Rogers’ comps?
Like Ms. R, Mr. F also demonstrated an admirable ability to stay on message when the chips were down. In addition to advocating for public media funding before Congress, he used his standing invitation into American homes to model tolerance. In a now famous episode that first aired in 1969, Mr. Rogers shared a wading pool with a Black American—the Neighborhood‘s beat cop, Mr. Clemons.
Though the gents only got ankle deep, this was a huge get for a then hot-button cause—integrated pools. We can speculate as to how this move swayed public opinion, but the Supreme Court did err on Fred’s side (aka, Team Justice) later that year.
It’s inelegant, to say the least, to contrast such different phenomenons as American segregation and the ongoing genocides in Gaza or Sudan. But by speaking to and for the most vulnerable—and crucially, appealing to parents in the perpetuating nations and households—these children’s entertainers model a tone it’d be nice to see every other U.S. entertainer take.
Because Ms. Rachel’s points, like Fred’s, are obvious: All parents love their kids, and no child should be caught in the state’s crosshairs.
Here’s hoping we can get the adults to hear.
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