I’m working on assignment for another publication (more details if/when I actually get published there) about the PRO Act and how it will affect freelancers in creative sectors, arts, and entertainment. My pitch was that we collectively need to analyze the PRO Act, and all labor issues, through the lens of inequity—which is not how our news systems typically report them. This assignment has segued me into meeting with more workers across the U.S. to learn more of their working conditions, how COVID affected them in already decimated industries, and steps they’re taking in collective-individual movement building.
I was connected with Cherri after I learned about Gig Workers Rising which is based in Oakland. Cherri is a social justice minister and organizer with GWR; I think we definitely stumbled onto a soul connection here. It was fucking awesome.
Here’s a pull quote from our interview, spoken by Cherri. I hope you enjoy this talk and learn more about the interconnectedness of all struggles—from police brutality to lack of basic worker protections in American workspaces—and racial & economic justice. (Interestingly, I think this pull-quote alludes to the critical race theory events & discussions currently taking place in Georgia.)
“A lot of us think that if we talk about race, it somehow we will divide us. But we know that’s not true. And so to [not] have a reckoning around racism, around economic and racial violence, has the ability for us to make bad decisions, bad economic policy decisions. It makes it for a harsher society and a more punitive one, some more than others, as we’ve seen the last couple of years. It stops us from seeing our basic common humanity. In order for us to improve our, the state of our society, we have to realize that the financial crisis that we’re in is partly due to racism and that it costs us so much to remain divided. COVID-19 has proven that. And that our fates are linked and that an injury to one is an injury to all.
We have a choice. We have a choice to know that to recognize that our nation was founded on a hierarchy of who’s more deserving and who’s not. So we can let that proximity of so much difference either reveal that common humanity or remain status quo. And so when I look at the gig economy, I think it’s the key to tool to healing our nation, right? It is … it is the depiction of not only the present and the future, but of the past. Because it mimics that. If you look at the evolution of it, and you look at the common theme of whom it impacts — impacting low wage workers impacting mostly Black and brown people — you will see that racism has continued to destroy this ideal democracy that everybody wants.
And the gig advocacy, I think, is a key to healing our nation. But in order to do that, there has to be a reckoning that has to be an acknowledgement of a history of economic exploitation. It has to be an acknowledgement of interlocking oppressions that work with that as it relates to racial justice. And there has to be a commitment to improving legislation. And what I see is the lack of bipartisanship to improve our nation because we don’t want to deal with the racial issue.”
———————————————
INDIGENOUS LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is with deep and sincere respect that I acknowledge that I am currently residing and working on the unceded ancestral lands of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People, past and present. I honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
This recording also took place on the unceded ancestral lands of the Costanoan Rumsen Ohlone Tribe and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, who are the indigenous people of the Central California Coastal and San Francisco bay area, where Cherri currently resides. The Costanoans existed peacefully in the region for thousands of years before the Spanish Missionaries arrived in the 1760s. After years of enslavement under the Spanish missionary system, the Tribe was forced into exile to avoid violent persecution by settlers and California-sponsored racist policies toward Native Americans. The Costanoan Rumsen tribe moved to Southern California work on the ranchos in 1864. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s ancestral lands fell under the influence of three missions that spanned from 1776 to 1836.
The photograph accompanying this podcast recording is believed to have been taken on the unceded ancestral lands of the indigenous people who lived at Yuhaaviat, who were known as the Yuhaaviatam, or “People of the Pines.” They were a clan of Maara’yam (Serrano) people and are now known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. They are the Yuhaaviatam clan of Maara’yam (Serrano) and continue the tradition of holding sacred the land and everything it provides. The term “Mission Indians” originated from the 21 missions established by Spanish settlers along California’s coast between 1769 and 1823, from San Diego, Calif., to Sonoma, Calif.
Sources: https://www.duwamishtribe.org/land-acknowledgement, http://www.costanoanrumsen.org/history.html, http://www.muwekma.org/index.html, https://sanmanuel-nsn.gov/culture/history
