Transcripts For CSPAN2 Anne Helen Petersen Cant Even 20240711

Just make sure to swing by on a monday or tuesday because we can certainly busy for us. Just remember your purchase is supporting our bookstore and staff. Also you can order a copy of the book from bookpeople today you will be entered to win free book and sweater so make sure to grab one. Just think of everyone after this introduction, our guests will be joining us on the screen. There will be taking some questions so please make sure to submit them in the q a bubble below. If you look at your zoom screen, the bar below all the way to the use two little bubbles. Please submit in them there ind of the chat so we can find them. With that just a quick note, we will be recording the nights event which will be aired on cspan at a later date so just a heads up. Now on to introducing our guests for the night. Anne Helen Petersen is a Senior Writer for buzzfeed, she received her phd at the university of texas at austin where she focused on the history of celebrity gossip. Her previous book, too fat, to slutty, too loud and scandals of classic hollywood were featured in npr and the atlantic. She currently lives in cate young as an analyst based film and culture critic from trinidad and tobago. Her books on the intersection of race, gender and sexuality, and has appeared in jezebel and impure music, nylon, glamour, cosmopolitan, culture and paper magazine. Kate has a ba in photojournalism from boston university, masters and mask your medications from university of and a masters in specialized journalism in the arts from the university of southern california. In 2015 she served as an article pop cultural criticism developing entwined gene she was awarded the Rotten Tomatoes fellowship a Digital Innovation and film criticism. S. E. Smith is a National Magazine awardwinning essayist injured list based in northern california. She is an editor at west beat and also writes in the daily meet newsletter, and has published work in the cult, gq and catapult. Then we have connie wang, executive editor of refinery 29. Before she was packed features writer and covered consumer culture, race. She also hosted and coproduced a refinery 29 documentary series titled style out there. That report on fashion, cultures around the world. The Second Season 18 news women plug avenue new york front page award. And with that i would like for you to help me welcome our guests for the night, and thank you all for being here. I am anne Helen Petersen. I am so glad you could be so grateful to bookpeople for hosting, but i lived in austin bookpeople was a real refuge for me and every time i i come baco austin it remains as much of that so grateful for the work they do in the community and the place to visit in the community for books and for reading. So very happy to be here. I want to actually go around and i will have each of the panelists say just one thing about themselves, like a place with a can find a piece of work being done there really proud of because i think one of the talks of these panels is introducing you to new thinkers. And then also to say thank you for being on this panel im donating 250 for an organization of each of their choice of want them to say just a little bit about their organization, get it on all of your radars as people are watching picky. Two dollars, five dollars to throw their way, a little bit can add up to a lot. That i along with my Editorial Union addressed the people and the structure that were responsible for the inequities and make sure that thingschanged and the changes were implemented and were sustainable in a meaningful way. And when people ask why why were the changes if they happened in 2020, why are we working from home and assorted this decentralized, a lot of people said it was because of what was happening in the world but i think that doesnt give credit to the people that made it happen but what i notice is it was his shift that happened was based off of older generations versus younger millennials entering the works force and the difference in the way that we saw what was possible and what we were capable of. And the possibilities of collective action. But i wrote about all of that and wrote about how my generation had a lack of vision and what we learned from those people in all of the various reckonings that werehappening. And what your organization . I forgot about this. Thank you for reminding me. I just had a baby two weeks ago so my brain is a little bit fried. I will nibble on this idea but at the end of the question i will have an organization. Sorry. So im kate, the piece that i thought of is an essay that i wrote called the past president in which i talked about essentially homecoming as a project inmythmaking. And i thought about it because i think it does kind of encapsulate the kind of life that i most enjoy doing, specifically around how women are represented inthe medium. As for my organization, i would like. [inaudible] i think it has always been crucial but now especially in the retail a case is more crucialthan ever. Absolutely. Hello, i guess i already gotintroduced. My piece that i think is most relevant in this conversation and to my larger body of work is called, this appeared in the sixth issue of bench thats also online and the future is looking at the colonization of grief is tied so closely to you get your monday off and come back and you need to be over it. And this came out but is more insightful than ever because everyones experience loss and is not able to process it. You have to go get sick, you need to get therapy. And grief counselors say sometimes grief justsucks and thats how it is. So it was an amazing feature to work on and it was great to be supported by event who is one of the few black editors i get to work with. My series also looks at the coast Childrens Fund, i live in one of the lowest income counties in california with really significant classes there where you have the techies buying out and people sleeping on the streets and the Childrens Fund provides a ton of services and support. I would say they punch about their weight and right now we have refugees and covid issues that are really testing their ability so id love to see them get some more support. I shout out to betts which is currently fundraising for the campaign, there a nonprofit that does truly intersectionalbalance work. Just google bench magazine and youll find a link to this important projectthat i donate to every year. Celia, i guess our newsletter mission i would love to be the q and a i did with tiktok interns. Ive spent the entire pandemic getting into tiktok and just sort of being excited by how creative everyone is, especially the young people so in one of the accounts ive been blown away with is the planet money tiktok so i was able to get in touch with the guy who runs the whole thing and just got stuck in his brain, if you guys look at that site its weird, its such a weird account but it explains economic symbols in a way where now i get. And so i got to ask him about like his background and everything and it turns out he had studied experimental film in college and explained everything. So if you just google these links, planet money tiktok or theres a link inthe chat , his name is doctor corbett by the way. But i highly recommend that. And the Organization Im into tonight is the city which is a nonprofit that covers new york city at the grassroots level. Ive been checking the coronavirus tracker every day. And ive also just been really impressed by these things they have, one of which is their building a structural memorial to help from covid with it a huge undertaking and we also have this project and a few other local news outlets in order to keep the covid19, the nypd accountable in black and brown communities and theres so many people i want to talk about their experiences with the nypd. Theres never a bad time to support this but i think its informative especially right now. Thank you for this. Yesterdays panel we were talking about the labor and social media participation and one thing everybody talks about is how the only problem that doesnt make you feel in the crowd is tiktok because you dont feel even the youngest are no millennials, you have a compulsion that you have to go out and make a difference. There are college kids who can go do that so i can just consume it and find the algorithm for myself. The first question that were going to do is a little more personal and talk about a time in their lives when we felt that we had social skills and like the broad theme of this panel is freelance culture. Like, you have to be working allthe time. Whether that is a salaried job that goes into all parts of life for them together a bunch ofdifferent gays. That compulsion which existed for millennials but then has become much more prevalent as millennials have integrated in the workforce and after the 2008 recession has become a defining feature of millennials relationship. So just feeling like i can always be trying to put together other odd jobs in other to finally get a job. But im curious to hear about cecilia, do you want to go First Western mark. For me it was definitely college but we have this amazing chapter in the book about what im doing is this kind of it reminded me of these colleges, its supposed to be this time in your life or whatever and i went to the Journalism School there and it was just sort of on top of just normal having the time of your life every day but also there was this pressure i think coming from the administration and our peers in terms of you have to get your internship the next year and you have to never stop stop letting up because thats how youre going to break into the medium in the midwest. And theres this real sense ofonly a few will ever make it out of here. It was so competitive and even if you have a weekend off you have this sense that you are falling behind so i think that was definitely the most stressful time in mylife. From my time as a professor, how do you make those connections to get those internships . Sometimes the routes there through the university or college but sometimes theyre like, try to reach out to some people in their business and you dont know how to do that. You dont have the connections through my parents or anything like that thatwould make that possible. I felt like it was such a huge boulder to keep rolling upthe hill. Absolutely. What about you . Ive been a fulltime freelancer for 15 years so basically all those years, probably the most relevant point was my father had a heart attack in 2012, a triple bypass. He had some Health Problems and you throw out and thats something that had to do with you was an adjunct faculty member. He had no savings and could have worked for a long time without leaving the workforce altogether which in a normal world where people retire at 50 is fine. But was not for me and i realized i was going to be keeping two households on one income in a county that weirdly is a poor and a very highcost of living. That was when i started traveling to the bottom of the barrel basement job. 50, i will take it. Every sense counts area and i think that travel is familiar to a lot of freelancers but it comes with this dark side because it comes back to bite me in the. [bleep] later when someone pulls off thatshady personal essay you wrote for 50 in 2013 or whatever. Which is something that i think we dont talk about as much as we should in this pressure to do it all and do all those things, sometimes you are laying traps that future you say really, you really needed to pick that assignment . Youreally did. Okay. I have those dotted over the internet if anyone wants to find them and many of them i didnt get anything for. This thing that connie talked about, this great thing that was published on the internet but that those down what other people can expect to be paid and what i can expect to be paid because i workedfor free at that stage, why would they pay for someone else . Kate, go ahead. So for me it was slightly different because i went back to college and it was especially interesting to me as i had the opportunity that culturally we dont have that expectation. That was kind of not really the passion that i wanted but i had this passion to find work that held that range in the waythat you talk about in the book. So for a number ofthings , that was what the bulk of my life was. I was trying to. [inaudible] my friends had never heard of and happened to kind of continually justify that work that i was doing. And i was also kind of behind it away because when i went into the workforce it was during the peak of the internet era and im very cognizant of the fact that it was on the internet forever and i wanted to sort of mind my commas. I regret slightly that i was too scared to get this but i dont have things following me around because by the time i started writing on the internet i was moving out of that phase and also i have found that i had Something Else i wantedto do. Its not that i made a specific personal choice and i never have. So that aspect is kind of clear to me but i also meant that i had trouble in the industry and a lot of the women predominately who started inthat time , you had slightly different monitors that i had so theres this payoff, was it worth it to have that backcatalog . I was really ashamed that i was doing work that my mother could bragabout. And i felt a lot of conflict to us because she didnt understand the industry that i was working in and how it functioned. This is during a time when there was routinely entire publications were going under and i had to find a way to become a staff writer at the publication that was going under, that didnt Hire International people , that i couldnt legally work for because also i worked in the us and it was just how you can justify the average achievement was nothing was essentially the boundaries of what i could accomplish and it took a long time and when they started their scholarship internationally, that was how i was able to get a byline and become recognized enough to keep going and im quite proud of the things i did with those other publications but it was very difficult and it was something that alerted me specifically because for me there are certain things that you have physically to attempt, that give you more confidence so that gives you available opportunities but im really, i had a very strange relationship to how i view the work because i definitely grew up with this founding that my goal was to not have to do the kind of work that is always the best kind, you can clock out. And but that was something that was drummed into me. Like in school that i wouldnt have to work at kfc or whatever. They have benefits, its fun. And that anecdote, we talked about the young woman, why is it not okay to have enough to support yourself. What more is there, i dont live to work a job, ilive to earn money so i can do other things. So yes, it is a lot. I think a lot of people who dont know or dont work closely with people who are in advance dont know how difficult it is to find an organization that iswilling to go through the visa process with you. It is a huge prolonged deal andits incredibly stressful. Two workers and it sucks. And i wish that there were massivereforms that made it a lot easier. I tried to explain to other people know i cant apply for that job. A lot of applications will ask if you are allowed to work, i had a few agents ago only to find out i was not able to work in canada,its like you didnt mention that before. That would have been important to me now and so its like, apparently im separate from that school so technically im doing my own bta so. [inaudible] its a long process and its very stressful because theres a certain point when you recognize it has nothing to do with how hard you work, how skilled you are. Its really just about who is willing to take you on as a commodity that is willing to invest in all the loopholes it wouldtake to retain you as a worker. Especially in culture writing the idea of a staff job, its not like its heres this staff job, its just nonexistent and the people who are not trying to be culture writers, theres the difficulty of explaining a lot of millennial jobs to othergenerations. Like, i keep saying people keep asking me how did my nails get this reputation for being lazy and entitled and i think a lot of it has to do with one, we were raised to advocate for ourselves, many of us and to, a lot of our jobs dont necessarily look like additional work. Im sure you get all the time, you watch movies as a job. I got that so many times before for the rest of my life, i have a phd in movies, just to watch movies allday. But theres just a lot more. What about you . First time experiencing burnout was my first time experiencing media. Just i saved up all of my money working in college to spend a summer in new york city working through internships. They weretechnically paid , then i worked at 12 hours a day in condc nast and one was 30 hours a day for one post at a magazine thats nolonger around. And i was paying three airbnb so i was paying 1000 a month to share a room and spend my weekends working and its like hundred young people in business casual drinking diy one wine at thehudson river trying to network with each other thats what my summer was. And we had tips about how to get a job and this was right before therecession hit. We were all bright eyed and idealistic about the prospect of what work looked like and that all fell apartshortly afterwards. But i left that summer feeling completely depleted. I experienced whatever you can experience working in exploit of your job going from embarrassment andshame to total joy and euphoria. What i found was the work and the craft, putting words on paper excited me and told me so that part of it was excellent and i perhaps took away the wrong lessons of that summer. Granted it was only three months but because it was only three months to some percent i felt i had gone through with the challenge. I can only twomyself to that. To me it was all work all the time and it wasnt the case and worse yet it blinded me to how i wasperpetuating that within the industry. And that lesson that i learned or miss learned years ago was the genesis of the grateful generationstory. So just to remind us if anyone has questions you can drop them in the q and a and we will get to them in a little bit. But i think ian touched on something kate mentioned, im curious about how this thinking has evolved over the years of how those moments of culture, what kind of respect did you have, kate said looking at someone with a 95 job a lot of us may be perceived as not what we wanted in ourlife , but thinking about the attractiveness for the ability or how that has shifted. Lets go back, are you in there . I was just going to say that i think coming out of college i had this idea there was going to be one perfect job that would fulfill every note and cranny of my soul and i would look into it and i would be poised for i dont know, this job would just pick me up and iwould be fine. And i watched a number of people right out of the gate get into great internships or fellowships at these companies. I got what i thought was my dream job as a fellow Atlantic Media and those first few years, it was kind of comical where it would be like the first few months were allmy god, its so great, ive met all these people. And then i just remember i was in a class at Atlantic Media and we have this summer we have a thanksgiving potluck and i can remember somebody asked the question and we sort of all ended up saying i dont like this job. Like this culture is so hard and we were all one person was like i didnt go to harvard law to sell pamphlets and on the other hand people are saying i was working 12 to 14 hours a day and its not what i want to do so i think that was a mirage in terms of my coworkers having these really cool jobs. They have made and finding out these jobs didnt really exist. And so i think that sort of helped change the thinking for me in terms of im supposed to line up my cards right so that one good thing will happen and ill fastforward into forever. I think that helped me in that panicking face. Finding out where is it sort of entering out what im actually looking forin a job. Its enough to be somewhere where i like to work and i like the people and i think that changed a lotfor me for sure. I think there is this kind of equation that if you find a cool job youre passionate about you will find appropriate compensationand happiness. No part of the equation equalat. At least not in our society right now and im learning that and also i know a lot of people got into their 30s and after trying to, like if i can just work one more year, one more job i can get one more promotion and ill find that thing and it never comes , then they reach a point of i dont know, quiet exit essential crisis. I guess i can reconsider alot of things i guess were a priority. I think two things that shifted for me are boundaries and benefits. I took a position two years ago with top poverty and one of the big factors there was that i didnt want to pay 100 amonth for Health Insurance anymore. And it provides the ability and a little bit of a shift, but its a strange thing for me to be working but i really value that it had stability and it has benefits and that led me to kind of, im much more assertive about my boundaries and i wish i can go back in time to pass me and say you dont have to accept that ethic. You dont have to writethat piece. This is not worth it. I know you think it is youre going to regretit later. And i carried that into my work now. I work with great editorson the freelance side. But i am a person who says actually i stop work at five area if you email me at 5 01 its going to get to me tomorrow morning and i think a lot of millennials are terrified of imposing those kind of boundaries to say you can do that, but then you wont get ahead, you will get promotions and that is something i definitely see with the people who are assertive about the use of their time and their skills and their personhood, can they get passed over a lot even if in supposedly progressive organizations that say we really value work life balance. And im like except for how you totally do notvalue that. Its like all of this communication from companies right now about we really value the parents in our company and want to give you that flexibility but also you need to be available for these meetings and also probably quietly pass you over for a promotion and not having anything in place about your stability in this workplace. Especially for stable people in the workforce, versus stress to have them say this is a personal boundary that isnt about acceptability or whatever you think its getting onto, its a person who needs this thing and theres this huge pressure for fulltime workers to not let the side down and be the best employees and approve that hiring people is worth it and thats a lot to put on us. It shouldnt be my responsibility for that of my colleagues in many places far and wide. Absolutely. Case, what about you, how has your thinking changed . I think in a lot of ways a lot of this came along before i was here because i was living at home. I wasnt experiencing kind of experience that other people are. And so i was kind able to come to the conclusion that i dont have to be living here and no one canmake me. Not that im in a solution, and also having to kind of really think about boundaries and make sure that the lines between personal and professional, especially now that theyve all marched into our homes. Its really important to me. It was two months ago where i realized that i could just not work onweekends, thats a choice i could make. Not be working to take those days to rest. And it was such a Novel Concept and in a way i think it was my mother who mentioned and, you can do that. Thats a legitimate choice that you could make and it hadnt overtook me because i was someone who had been working abroad and someone who had limited opportunities because of that. Everything was an opportunity to work. I had trouble watching movies just to watch movies now because it always an opportunity to teach something or a tv show, ill turn stuff off because i want to make sure im in the frame of mind topay attention. And im finally in a position where i can just watch things. I dont have as much time to anymore but i still have a lot of guilt about not doing things on weekends, like do groceries, clean the house but theres this underlying anxiety of what can i be accomplishingat this time instead . That especially im always there attempted, i do Critical Thinking so im always having to mentally see what im allowed to beworking , not kind of doing things on the weekend as part of working but i also watch a lot of television. Ithink of how often , normalized income for the workplace comedy has become to whereeverybodys family and involved in each others personal life. We benefit from the idea that there shouldnt be a division between these states and that its about a workplace you have activism and now im able to recognize that work is a family, its just inching the door open for that classification and you can feel that sense of obligation to them in ways that you wouldnt if you are having amillennial over at the Grocery Store. Im starting to understand that i get paid for x hours a day and i accomplished x amount of work in that time. And once, im not under the obligation to keep working. I dont actually have to do more work for you and i can take. Because im doing that for free. But yes, i definitely agree with that thing about having those boundaries but its something i worry aboutin terms of , i think as ive gotten older ive been able to muddle through without havingto deal with those things. I know im speaking up about them but i am so conscious that im still about living in the United States and there are still professions about the Model Employee so i tried to push against the systems is much as i can but i feel as though in my adult life its just fine. And im willing to jeopardize that, but im also perfectly capable of taking care of my responsibilities in the position that i have now. So theres the possibility of never advancing. Thats what we have to balance is the desire to have that ability with also the desire to have family, how you keep those things, these do believe that the company has will also be how can i set boundaries and a steady job and i dont think it should be one choice or the other. I can have Health Insurance and no boundaries. That is a false dichotomy. What about you . I have two answers to your questions, one is very boring and ill just throw it out there for people. But i think the biggest change that i underwent was i used to be so repelled by the idea that parents and grandparents used to tell me all the time. This would be a lot easier for you if you lived in the same city asyour parents. Its going to be easier for you if you get married early and have children early. You have children or a job, you probably shouldntdo both. I dont want to say those ideas are right because theyre not right for everyone but i will say that the natural avenue for when our generation got those ideas was that, that institution structure of america made easy. Thats no longer the case. What i was attracted to and what a lot of people in my generation are attracted to is being single in a big city, having a lowpaying job that was slightly glamorous. Thats feasible. Logistically im feasible insulated ways, institutionally its not set up to make that possible for people so the change that ive undergone is that i know mine longer think that but i do recognize that on the main its easier to look into and i naturally look forthose shortcuts now. And i no longer moralize these decisions in the way that i used to. And then theres the second question is that its very specific but i think that a lot of times i was really dazzled by the idea of optimization and optimizing my own stories. Thinking about journalism and content and all the fun tools that wegot to play with. Sort of like platforms, social media andall these things. Watching stories about how things perform on chart beat. Those were really addictive tools. Theres a way that i think about these stories , in the drivers seat and all the tools that just you can add on to your car and you can get a lot further and get there a lot faster if you have these addons, if you have a Company Driver in the drivers but your car doesnt run in the first place thats not going to get you anywhere so what happens was im curious, there are so many of thesetools that we forgot to trade in the progress. That creates a system where its just diminishing returns and you have to work so much harder to get less and less out of it. That creates that scenario for burnett and that is a situation that is definitive of 2010 for people in media. I got to enjoy a little bit of that life and it was very enjoyable where everything was just kind of creative but the internet was a creative fun place and not optimized for traffic. It wasnt analytics, datadriven kind of thingthat happened. These digital newsroom worship that you could not break out if you wanted to play that. I love that metaphor that its also like, weve got these tools so it doesnt matter if the driver is totallyexhausted. Maybe we dont even need a driver. You can just make this algorithmically tinker with stories that you dont have to worry about the health or the longevity. Its that driver just gets pushedout because they cant take it anymore. Its better thinking about the value and that stays for a verylong time. So the question did kind of bring a lot ofthese questions together , a lot of us are talking about things that we did when we still had some faith in it. We were college educated, i always had times where i didnt have a lot of money. Or i can always move back and i always had housingstability , all those things. So how can we try to be attentive to ways of the hustle that were doing with his categorically different from what a lot of other people are doing every day. Which is like im working, poor households and one of them might be a little bit illegal and im worried about how am i going to find opposition especially now with the increased disparity of financial security. Lets just kind of an open question if anyone has any initial thoughts about how we can be attentive to those differences. I think the first thing think speaking as someone who worked a lot of those home care assistant, leader of the bakery, extra hours in college is to actually listen to what people are saying which sounds like it should be obvious but i feel im going to advocate for uber drivers or whatever. Uber drivers are advocating for themselves and they got a specific app that theyre very clear about so use wanting him to save them is not super productive. And i think another thing we should be doing is paying a lot of attention to labor journalists who been doing the work for a long time because the theme of journalism as a skill has these deeply sourced Networks Like sarah jaffe for example. These people that they are talking to and there helping people who wouldnt connect with those people ordinarily because maybe you dont need a healthcare person. You dont even know how this works and how all these systems function. So its kind of getting into what these people are actually saying and i think theres a tendency to be a little bit, pedantic is not the word im looking for. That you know better than them about their needs. That comes across real strong in some leftist circles and thats not productive. Youve got to ask yourself how can i work as coconspirators with people who are fighting for the same things i am whether its healthcare or instability or not being sexually harassed at the workplace or not feeling like i have to work 8 million jobs. Do you think thats part of what happened with the legislation in california with uber drivers, that they werelistening to what drivers actually wanted . A5 had a lot of room for freelancers, now we have another ballot measure coming up in november. The intention was classifying people and people not realizing that it was actuallycodifying an existing legal position. Some people say they came swooping in and well, its not uncommon to see a major Court Decision that wants to make sure they get affirmed in legislation but they said yes, you have the Assembly Member who really led the charge on that was not actually talking to any of the people that she was legislating for and this became very clear with freelance writers who started saying youre going to screw us out of jobs. Thats not the intent and the problem here is media organizations are finding a contractor whenlegally you are not a contractor. They unfortunately cant start the legislature, it has tostart in the culture of these companies. I know Companies Even outside of california are going dont know how this affects california workers, there does not want to hire people in california, were going to restrict the work that they do and theyre extending a whole big mess which again, have been avoided by sitting down for coffee with people and having some long conversations. When you talk about coconspirators, working on and on with people is the answer to a lot of these problems. I think short of their this difference between organizations, different generations. Is that the reason why we work in media lesson mark i think a lot of people my age, its about the craft again. Like, they really liked writing as a theme, as an art form. But i find that for a lot of younger, with purpose is a lot more social. They enter the workforce because they want to write wrong they wanted and i think that word to serve, no matter what you have, if you are in service between a community of another community of america. Thats any type of people, theres always an opportunity for you to, you to write those sort of wrongs about the scale little bit so i think for people in media and journalism, we are lucky in that many of us feel the work fuels us as much as it drains us and feel that kind of satisfaction for the work. Its a privilege to have but whenever we have that, theres that energy and that reserve that you think about spending that service. At the people arerecovering, the story that were writing. The same justices were shouting. I think the reason the media has changed the most is kind of reconsider my own respondingof people. I think for me the lightbulb was during the coverage for the 50s and there were a lot of people being why should you have that much money in minimum wage area we, my family grew up to value that work also that work needs to get done. I want to be able to go to that place and i dont know how to do that myself. Someone has to do that. The idea that the work itself has no value and therefore should not be paid, its just doesnt logically compute to me and i think that was when i started to understand the work that i do should be able to work a 40 hour week without being exploited. I should still be able to provide for their families. In order to make sure that their lights stay on and they can make rent. We should be expecting that you have to level up to some kind of more elitist position in order to afford the basics of whats required to live and also also i think its that sense of that really to place for me that wouldnt work and if you, its necessary enough it needs to get done but you have to recognize that the people who are doing that work all also supporting them and its the same way of they want us to have an agenda butsomeone needs to be doing work. And whether or not you think about this as a, doesnt change the fact that it is an essential step in the process of getting these things that you need and in itself, it is worth that, that is essential and needs to get done and it isntgetting done , such that other people are getting what they need and all of themselves in theprocess, whether its the post office or garbage men , their work is essential to the functioning of oursociety. And we deserve to be paid the value of the work thatthey are providing. I feel like covid has brought this home for a lot of people, realizing child care workers perform the service that is valuable to their making how much an hour . But having staff at the Grocery Store and having someone at the gas station that gets along with the pump. Hoping that its a real labor awakening. It also includes waking up and valuing workers who probably are very sensitive and being treated likegarbage. Thats one thing id love to stay essentialbecause it becomes a hackneyed false term about how we treat these workers that are essential , how can we mentally change oursociety to show that value. To show those workers that they are essential. Im thinking a lot about this in terms of the organization you and i was formulating the state for a while and i dont know if its perfect and it can get canceled but i think theres something to the fact that theres this sort of i think a lot of excitement around organizing workplaces and these sort of whitecollar jobs and i think theres something to be cautious of when were appropriating or borrowing this bluecollar, like getting down in the trenches. That kind of language without having a better awareness or understanding of the labor movements that have come before. The achievements of you know, longstanding organizations are activations that have been organized for a long time. And i sort of have been thinking about this because a few years ago i was talking to a friends dad explaining that Digital Workers organization and it was so embarrassing because that friend was like my dad knows thats what youre saying because he had organizers like electrical workers in illinois and i was like oh my god, im a dumbass. And so i think as members of the media being able to elevate like the sort of longstanding movements and organizations from what theyve achieved is really important and i think also approaching this point in our own sort of occupational careers about those studios, we are building all the work that has already been done through all these other levels in society. Where not reinvesting this whole new thing and i dont think we should be grateful about that in some ways. That is such a great point and i always wanted to point out the ways in which these companies are aligned with the restrictions, the different groups that they have to affiliate with in order to get that and its an incredible reminder of that of how much work has gone on. For decades area to even get us to the point in depending on the state where you are that i want to recognize there are a lot of states like texas that are right to work states so a union with attempts to take and often times take actionable offense, like you can be hired, is not written intothe law. So i often think of its a privilege of living in places with strong racial histories but even the state of montana. I get my pto paid out because of decades of work by the labor leaders in montana are fighting the copper barons back in the 1920s to make sure that these rights that were guaranteed would be solidified and that wasnt something i did, that was what people did years ago. Also for generations, so the last question, changed over they want to know that there is if theyre in a toxic Work Environment that has that Element Family elements, is there anything they can do to fix it or dothey need to get that. Get out. Get out. Its a terrible time to be looking for work but get out. Also when you apply for new awesome jobs , trying to track down people who are after the companies that and ask them what theculture is like. As you were saying earlier, you see job listings like we are like a family. Dont apply there. There is no way you can fix that, its a fundamental culture problem. Thats a great segue so the overall theme of the book is you can try to change things on an organizational level but we need to change labor laws holistically, we need to approach this problem as a regulation problem, catch up to the way the workplace works to get today instead of legislating labor laws like in the 1960s. This needs to catch up to the ways in which permalancers have pervaded the workplace. I am sograteful you guys were all here today. Ive taken such pleasure about some of the events that i didnt take and i was really anxious, i said are people not going to like it because its dumb and no one wants to be on zoom its been really positive for me so thank you all for coming and ill give it back to these people and they have a final word. Can i say a final word . I have an organization, welcome to chinatown and people who are disproportionately affected by covid, i put into the chat right now but im no longer living in new york city but i would hate to say it fall into relapse because of one lousy pentagram. Thank you everyone, have a great friday night. Dont work this weekend if you can. Thank you for your time and thank you for your work and for talking about this in writing about it. Everyone, please set this up and if you can, get it from your independent bookstore. And with that, thank you everyone. This is wonderful. We hope to be at the next one. Thank you again. Theres a look at books being published this week. In first principles, journalist thomas ricks describe the influence of greek and roman philosophy and politics americas founders. Former professional Football Player emmanuel much of explores issues of racism in america and Uncomfortable Conversations with a black man in strongman, historian revenge and examines authoritarian leaders throughout history. Also being published this week in once a warrior, a former marine jake would explores how hes trying to helpveterans find purpose after the war by forming a Disaster Relief organization. Ophthalmologist john 11 examines the Science Behind black holes in black hole Survival Guide in fountain freedom as Alice Bumgarner called the lives of slaves escape south for mexico. By these titles wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on book tv on cspan2. On a weekly Author Interview program ran two, msnbc political analyst Helena Maxwell offered her thoughts on identity politics and how to create a more inclusive Democratic Party area your portion of the interview. After 2016 in particular identity politics got a bad rap. It was a term coined by dennis in 1977. Who layout and articulate how people who had marginalized identities can build coalitions to sustain political power and after 2016 one thing we need is their focus on identity projects, like talking about White Privilege for directors and talking about just the different ideas of identities, people with differing abilities and she had a list about a variety of identities. So what we didnt realize in 2016 is that shes talking about identity politics like donald trump, donald trump is talking about white identity and too often we talk about the essential white identity, like voters in every single aspect of our political conversation is theres a message so my book basically ways out the fact that weight, hold up. We cant criticize identity politics just because its on black people and the community asserting their rights and ability to obtain political power and representation. Just because were doing it, there calling it a bad thing. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website. The after words tab to view this and all our previous. Uber