[readermail]
Dear pamie,
So I’m writing you for a few reasons, the first of which are fangirly–I’ve been a longtime reader of your site (and a Gilmore Girls fan, for which your recaps are required reading), I’ve read both your novels and pressed them on anyone who would take them, and I think you, as a general rule, are a kickass writer who should write as much and often as possible. And, you know, get paid for it.
The other reason is more ideological, I guess. My parents are both public school teachers, and I am the product of a die-hard union household. At the moment, my mom’s on the verge of striking over a contract negotiation that’s been going on for two years. She’s been teaching for thirty-seven years, and if this contract doesn’t pass, in her last year as a public school teacher, she’ll have to strike. It’s pretty much breaking her heart even to think about it. When you love your job, you want to work. I can’t imagine that anyone picketing with you right now wouldn’t rather be working.
I think what you and your colleagues are doing is important, given how badly you’re being taken advantage of. While it sucks like a hoover that my parents have to spend years negotiating and fighting the image of being money-grubbing liberals who don’t appreciate their easy, taxpayer funded jobs, at least no one else is profiting from their work by not passing a better contract. That’s just gross.
So I’m making my tiny show of support as a pro-union, pamie-fangirl, writing-phile and boycotting streaming online, paid download services, and TV on DVD while the WGA is on strike, and I’ll picket my little corner of the internet and ask people to do the same.
I wish you all the best of luck and hope you get back to work soon, on your terms.
P.S.: Please feel free to reprint it, absolutely! And I will certainly write the companies [to tell them I will boycott their products until the writers get a fair contract], and ask anyone who’s willing to do the same. I can’t in good conscience ever cross a picket line, and to me, making use of those services you’re not getting paid for, that’s the same thing.
[/readermail]
Best of luck to you, too!