Why Should We Care? Re: The Writer's Strike

Not often is it that I make public comment in written word via this channel about my beliefs regarding the world. Mainly because I’m fairly certain I’d alienate people with my irritating commitment to justice. However, the writers strike is something I feel deeply inspired to address simply because I am a writer.

To be blunt: it’s kind of bullshit that writers have to prove ourselves over decades in order to just potentially earn a chance at recognition from corporate executives who have no experience in identifying genuine art. High value writing is not judged high value for its ability to move, to challenge, to push the boundaries of our understanding, but instead by how much money it can bring to the box office. No longer are television shows like The Cosby Show and Roseanne (two shows which paved the way for artists of color and women by challenging societal norms, stereotypes, and misconceptions) leading humanity one step closer to our freedom. Instead, we remain chained by whatever show is deemed the most binge-worthy. Entertainment, like much else in our current predicament, is driven by profit.

The current environment of low pay and inadequate benefits encourages a sick type of hunger games, forcing full-time writers to work multiple jobs just to keep Top Ramen and Fanta on our tables as we slave away at a single chance to be noticed for our greatest talents and passions. The shows that you and most of the world adore are not made solely through good directing and impeccable acting, but also through the writing that breathes life into storytelling. Great writing is the tangible nuance of many of the best performances of all time.

People value art now more than ever. We the people value the sanctity of creative work and energy. Yet, we are fighting, trudging through the sticky marsh of capitalism which devalues art, devalues humanity, devalues diverse voices and inclusion, and devalues creation as a communal entity. Struggling against the tyranny of the mighty millionaires and billionaires actively stealing wages off the backs of modern indentured servant writers. When the writers are not being forced under the thumb of poverty, they’re being literally robbed of their ideas and their work, in corporate copycats, AI generated content, and outright theft. Writers are dying out because the hoops in which we must jump through are impossible to reach. I only see two solutions.

One, which is the current solution, we strike for higher pay, more benefits, and to be valued as any other worker in the economy. This option is practical, but it yields to the very system which destroys us. Two, my personal choice, is to put the power of art and creativity back into the hands of the people. Creatives need to band together and create a new Hollywood, a new vision of creation in which the stakeholders are the creators themselves. Take back the spirit of our business and stop sleeping on ourselves! Our time, our vision, our lives, our experiences, and our very essences which bleed into our projects are invaluable. Owning ourselves at every angle, in every iteration; can you picture it? Take back our freedom, take back our lives. The birth of creation belongs to us, not our capitalist overlords.

Stand with the writers, because next it’ll be the actors. Then the musicians. Corporate greed will not stop with writers. They will eventually come for you. Capitalism consumes. Fight.

And when the day comes when we collectively realize that we are better together, in all our differences, all our eccentricities, all of our untethered joy - we shall be the rulers of our own destiny. We will be wide awake and we will be free.