In Support of the Strike

Unlike nearly everyone else of my acquaintance, I’ve been mum on the topic of the writers’ (and now actors’) strike for a variety of reasons. One is that, given my long-standing and certainly childish appreciation of producers, entrepreneurs, and impresarios, I don’t want to be thought disingenuous. After all, I’m one of the few people I know who defends George M. Cohan’s stance on the 1919 Equity Strike. Even most theatrical producers condemn him for that! It’s always been my knee jerk impulse to stand apart from popular opinion if it can be done in good conscience. Both of my parents were card-carrying union members for decades (I was on my first picket line when I was five years old) but (TMI) it fills me with a kind of emotional confusion to follow my parents’ example in anything, even the right thing. Further, I’ve never had the good fortune to be embraced by any professional organization as a writer, an actor, or anything really, despite having been doing what I do for 40 years. I should be so lucky that I would actually belong to the unions that are on strike at the moment, is my selfish unconscious feeling.

But right is right and wrong is wrong, and nothing could ever be more cut and dried than the fact that in this case the artist’s cause is the right one, to put it mildly. In recent weeks it’s been widely reported about how numerous writers, actors, and other screen artists — many of them famous, critically acclaimed, even award-winning — make so little that they never even gave up their day jobs, as bartenders, waiters or whatever. There’s a very good chance that the people you watch on TV make less than you do, and will wait on your table at a restaurant. You may like that just fine, but the fact remains that not everybody can do what these people do. They ought to be compensated in proportion to the uniqueness of their gifts, and the joy and pleasure they bring to millions. And contrary to a popular misconception, they work extremely hard, and for long hours.

This moment is a climax to issues that go back at least two centuries, when craftspeople were replaced by looms and other machines. It’s sad — perhaps fatal — that the culture has not been more sympathetic to physical laborers in the first place. But when we’ve reached the stage where ARTISTS are being replaced by machines, isn’t that “game over”? Isn’t that in a very real sense the beginning of the end of humanity? It makes me want to examine and question every turn western culture has made over the past 500 years. A handful of billionaires are holding 8 billion people hostage, and the 8 billion are for the most part willing participants in their own lack of power and their own inability to determine their own lives and futures. This strike is big, but it is bigger than even many of the participants may realize. Technology makes so much possible. It makes this BLOG possible! But we have reached the point where Artificial Intelligence could displace and even replace this blog. That’s where we’re at. Honestly, this is every person’s fight.

So (as I have from the beginning) I stand with the unions in this case, and I’m writing to encourage you to do the same. There are things you can do even if you’re not a member of one of the striking unions. You can spout off about it, as I finally got off my ass to do. And there’s the power of the pocketbook — cancel your subscriptions to the offending streaming platforms, TV networks, and so forth. We just did, thanks to my much more militant spouse, and I’m more than approving of that. And, if I thought it would help, I’d take this blog offline in a heartbeat, although I’d never do it without consulting my valued Patreon members, who do so much to help me keep Travalanche going. And, of course, the availability of the blog allows posts like the one you are reading. (You may also be interested in this one, about the vaudeville performers union The White Rats).

This may go on a while. For a long time, I’ve felt that was really needed to ensure some kind of equitable future for humanity was an international general strike, but it would take such extraordinary leadership and organization and resources. Impossible? Unprecedented? But if awful impossible, unprecedented things can happen, as has been the case over the last several years, why not positive ones?