Welp, here we go. For the first time in sixty years, the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America are jointly on strike. It’s as serious as it sounds, and entirely warranted. Taken individually, both the lack of a viable model for streaming royalties and the potential for AI to supplant screenwriters for a large part of the production process are issues worth fighting about. Taken together, a frightening larger pattern emerges, of an industry that would gleefully get rid of the human aspect of production – also known as the artist – altogether. If you don’t need to pay anybody to generate product, then why would you?
Unless, of course, it’s made crystal clear that you can’t.
So, in lieu of yet another blog post about how difficult it is to find time to write, this week I’m signal boosting some ways you can help out in this particular fight. Note that boycotting current film releases, Netflix, or what have you are not currently a tactic in this fight – producers are liable to look at those numbers and say “see, the economic model isn’t viable, we can’t afford to pay anybody.” Instead, here are some places you can donate to help those on the front lines of this particular battle.
https://www.tusctogether.com/?fbclid=IwAR3bjguSBUD35RK-pCGQCxF-VpWZotxHXm6yN1HGXYwzNVu80pLYHVocRM0
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/the-snacklist-support-striking-workers