I heard something on the news this morning about movement in the writer’s strike, but I was looking up jobs or making coffee or something and didn’t hear the whole clip. Once the jobs were finished, the newsletter sent and the job entry made, I used Google News to try to catch up. What I got was more confusion. Here are the headlines at the moment:
LA story: $1.5 billion lost due to the strike – MSNBC I’d label this one almost a fear piece about the economic impact of the strike, because of the way it’s framed. The subhead is …read more

Care2.com one of the bigger sites on the web that promotes progressive causes has a petition site where they are asking people to “Send a message to Hollywood executives: It’s time to treat your writers fairly.” If you support the writer’s strike, this is one way you can participate.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.

Mike Sieber, who blogs at The Word Wrangler, is opposed to the writer’s strike and spells out his thinking in a post called: Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike Goddess I appreciate clear writing, and Mike makes his position abundantly clear.
He’s a conservative who believes we all are in charge of our own destiny. I guess that means, and he didn’t say this, that he also believes we all start on something close to a level playing field. The thing I never understand about this sort of argument is how I, as an individual, am on a level playing …read more

Yesterday I wrote a post called: Writers Strike and the Myth of the Free Market
John Hewitt who runs the excellent and comprehensive Writer’s Resource Center responded with my question about how we could support the strike with an excellent article of his own, called: Three Reasons to Support the WGA Strike and Three Ways You Can Do It
He points out some things there I didn’t know, like how the copyrights for screenwriters differ from those of us who blog or write for print, and how small the number of employers for movie scripts has actually become – it’s down to …read more

Much of the magic of the United States has been a more-or-less democracy that allowed and even encouraged the growth of a solid middle class. But that middle class didn’t happen automatically. Even though the frame work for economic justice can be found in the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, it took people who organized to push back against the power of corporations to get things we don’t even think about today like:

A (mostly) 40 hour work week (with paid overtime).
Laws against child labor.
Workplace safety, including everything from mines to offices
Laws against sexual discrimination.
Etc. etc. etc… the list …read more