Thread by @minhalbaig

Today's picketing event outside NBC Towers in Chicago revealed that there are so many unions that have joined us in solidarity. Thank you to them, and our strike captains @mrgilio, @ZaydDohrn, @bneveu.
I gave a little speech, the text which I'll reproduce here: (1/12)

My name is Minhal Baig & I’ve been a member of the Writer’s Guild of America since 2018. In the last few years of working in television writers’ rooms, I’ve gained experience and met lifelong friends. I’ve also witnessed the quick erosion of the writers’ room in real-time. (2/12)

Writers’ rooms that were once 20-week long jobs became shorter and shorter. The rooms got smaller. There were fewer opportunities for lower-level writers. Staff writers practically became non-existent. (3/12)

I was told by more experienced writers that going to set to produce your episode was part of the job. I’ve never known it. This is by design. We have been paid less and less and expected to deliver more and more. And now we’ve reached a point of no-return. (4/12)

The studio want us to feel desperate. So they make us feel powerless. Like we should just be lucky to have our jobs in the first place. They diminish us in the hopes that we never recognize our own power. But we make the only product they can sell. (5/12)

The words are where it all begins. We are the generators. Without us, they have nothing. And with this strike, they will recognize our power. We are striking because if we don’t, our jobs won’t exist. (6/12)

The TV writers’ room, a beloved institution that has made a creative format possible, will be gone. The studios have taken and taken from us and we have had enough. Now is the time to fight. And it's not just for us - the mini-roomification of our economy is spreading. (7/12)

It's the destruction of stable, long-term work environments that cultivate talent and enable brilliance, in favor of short-term gigs that cut every ounce of fat out of the process in service of the spreadsheet. (8/12)

Anyone who has worked in a creative industry knows that it's in that extra space, the time that isn't optimized, where the magic happens. Creativity cannot be optimized. (9/12)

I strike because I love what I do. I want to be able to keep doing it for a living, for as long as I can. When I strike, I see so many other writers in solidarity. This is what we have that the studios don’t: community. (10/12)

This is what we have they don't: A job we love so much that we were wiling to risk it all for our future. And we will not settle. We will not fold. They have not expected for us to stand united, with the support of so many other unions who work alongside us. (11/12)

The Teamsters. IATSE. SAG AFTRA. Thank you all for being with us. Supporting us. This is a historic moment. This isn’t a strike just for a contract, this is a strike for our continued existence. For our future. (12/12)