Another week of striking! This week I’ve been going to Netflix (maybe you’ve heard of it?!), which according to the Guild, is the biggest perpetrator of not showing us the money thus far. Proof that corporations are bad writers: the giant tech company being the holdout in a labor negotiation is not a good plot twist!
The Netflix building is right off of the 101 Freeway, right at the beginning of Hollywood proper on Sunset Boulevard. I used to work at a studio next door and I wouldn’t describe it as a particularly gorgeous part of town. It’s like Times Square, if a bunch of freeways went through Times Square and everything was really far apart and it was in Los Angeles instead of New York.
From where I parked, I walked through a neighborhood where a lot of people are suffering from a bunch of things at once (lack of shelter, addiction, mental health crises). It means maintaining your compassion and personal safety at the same time, and further motivates righteous indignation at the poor choices our wealthy country provides us with.
I then hiked across a freeway overpass, following Sunset Boulevard to the west. At a certain point, the journey requires navigating a crosswalk directly in front of a freeway entrance. There is no traffic light there—just some painted white bars on the road. The good thing is the cars trying to get on the freeway are really slow and attentive. Just kidding! They could not care less if you are there, even if there is a baby strapped to your literal body.
Once you weather these trials, the Netflix building and the picket line roping around the front of it emerges. The protest is fairly straightforward—a walk in front of the building, blocking the main gate. The nice part about the march is you go in a loop, so you pass friends you haven’t seen in a long time, which is really getting to the heart of why I have some faith in the strike, whatever happens. Because after three years of feeling alone and disconnected I am finally feeling a sense of community again, which, comfortingly, is not what the studios would like us to feel (I bet).
The atmosphere is “street-festival-meets-women’s-march-meets-post-improv-show-sidewalk-linger” which is niche but pleasant. At one point the band Imagine Dragons performed a stripped-down set for us, passers-by, and (ironically) Netflix employees peering down from their offices above us. I really enjoyed this because I think Imagine Dragons makes the perfect kind of music for getting EXCITED and HYPED UP and anyone who says they don’t like them are being snobs and given a blind Imagine Dragons audio test would tap their toes and nod their head, no questions asked.
My friend Lizzie and I walked home from a day of picketing specifically for moms (just made the cut on that one, phew) and stopped for some fruit at a fruit cart on the way back. We chatted with the women operating it and I practiced my bad Spanish and I just hope that when the writers get what we need everyone else does, too.
If you’d like to support the strike from afar you can make a donation to The Entertainment Community Fund, which provides financial relief to all entertainment workers, regardless of union affiliation (AKA support and production staff who are affected by the strike)! And here’s a roundup of other labor union relief funds that might not get quite as much publicity as the WGA does.
Do they make signs that say "baby on broad"? Langan, you write so well that I have to sit down before I read anything of yours so that my heart doesn't have far to fall before it hits the floor.
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