Adventures in Picketing
My father was a teamster and I don't have TV, so I was doubly unprepared for picketing with the WGA writers in November. I took a morning off from my vacation, googled to find the nearest studio, and headed over. I hit the jackpot, because Disney and ABC are right across the street from each other so I could walk two lines. ME
I'm a writer. And I'm here to help.
Usually that just makes people collapse in gales of laughter, but this was a writer-friendly crowd.
Someone immediately gave me a sign and I marched back and forth in front of the Disney entrance with a group of picketers. It was weird seeing all those writers together outside, squinting at the sun. Mostly, we're an indoor species.
There was no chanting, which was just as well as I don't chant. My books are set in pre-Nazi Germany, so I'm allergic to groups of people marching around chanting, even if they don't have flags or torches, and even if I believe in the cause, which I do. Any one can see that it's wrong to give the writers nothing for reusing their work.
All the writers were very friendly to me and happy that I'd come out to support them. As picketers and in general, writers are a peaceful lot. We write about violence, but we don't usually engage in it (except for that horror writer in Brazil who killed and ate those people). So no one had a baseball bat, no one stopped a car with his body, and the handle of my sign was thoughtfully wrapped in duct tape so I wouldn't get a splinter.
The only awkward moment came when this conversation started, and it replayed more than once, I'm sorry to say. I guess that's on reruns too.
TV WRITER
I work on show X. Do you like it?
ME
Umm...well..
ME
(lamely)
But I support your right to be compensated fairly for
your work. I mean, everyone else but me watches TV, and
the studios make a fortune. And it all starts with a writer
in a room with a blank page.
At the end of my abbreviated shift, the strike
captain took down my email and now I get the daily "Captain's Log" of
how picketing is going, where my team needs to show up, freebies for
writers (last week Drew Carey was giving out free dinners at Big Boy to
anyone with a WGA card and an ID), a call to help a fellow writer tear
down the remains of his house gutted by the LA fires, and a request for
crowd control on the day of the big rally where Alicia Keys sang and
men in tuxedoes served cookies to the marching and chanting crowd.
These are not the strikes that my father told me about,
with baseball bats and bricks, but they are important. And I'm proud
that I marched. Maybe when TV comes back, I'll go over to someone's
house and watch some of those shows. Except I have a novel to finish
and this huge stack of books to read...
EVEN SMOKE LEAVES A TRACE is Rebecca's debut novel, and will be available in May, 2009. For more information, check out her website.
