Et Tu, WGA?
Arthur Miller, a Writers Guild member and poet of the ordinary person, put into the mouth of Willy Loman, the tragic hero of Death of a Salesman: “You can’t eat the orange and throw away the peel — a man is not a piece of fruit!”
I thought about this wonky bit of logic since reading the news the Writers Guild of America West would be disbanding the Independent Writers Caucus next year.
I have felt like an afterthought for a large portion of my life. Having Spina Bifida made me an afterthought in gym class. It made me an afterthought in many potential romances. It made me one in film school where other students were uneasy about working with me because they thought I couldn’t do anything. I felt like an afterthought in my own family, thinking they never listened.
Please listen now, especially the full-time members for whom this decision doesn’t apply.
I overcame this feeling of “left out-ness” when, ironically, I came to Hollywood, a fresh start for this cantankerous Irish New Yorker in the most narcissistic place on earth. Though omnipresent, the entertainment industry still seemed far away. There were gates everywhere, locked and too high to scale. I knew no one and was barely there to be known.
A chance meeting at the Writers Guild of America West changed all that.
I went to a random screening — an invite I almost declined because of a pinched nerve in my back — dragging myself to the Multi-Purpose Room and met the folks in this tiny group called, at the time, the Writers with Disabilities Committee. They were a part of the Diversity Dept., then run by Kim Meyers and Tery Lopez. I was shocked that such a thing even existed. Like many, I thought the industry was owned and operated solely by straight, white, non-disabled men.
(Author’s Note: this is still largely true, but a sea change has been happening that I will get to soon. Please be patient and enjoy a snack.)
I saw faces and bodies like mine, and they had fight in their eyes. This was so exciting. I met Allen Rucker, then the Committee’s chair, telling him, “I have Spina Bifida, and I want to make movies.”
He smiled up from his wheelchair and said, “Well, you’ve come to the right place, pardner.”
He told me about the Independent Writers Caucus, a kind of bottom-rung admission into the Guild. I applied, and they accepted my grad school thesis script. Membership granted me access to the headquarters and attendance to Diversity meetings and discussions about the industry’s progress toward inclusion.
I also saw a ton of movies at the WGA Theater. For a kid whose epitaph will indeed read “Movies save,” I cannot overstate the amount of joy that perk has given me, as well as cheap therapy.
On a more serious note, though, the WGA has been a second home and school, which may not be its primary functions, but the support they’ve given in my decade-plus journey has been life-changing. The Guild has provided a place to use my voice, to connect with others across diverse groups, and to feel like I was no longer the afterthought finally.
I owe this to staff and my fellow members, who have always greeted me with kindness and consideration. Over time, if you didn’t know my name, you at least knew my face.
I showed up, again and again, year after year.
The WGA has taught me that there are things worth fighting for, and I showed up as much as possible. This straight, white Cis male, who was only technically in one diverse group, started attending every Committee meeting. Whether the Committee of Women Writers, or the: LGBTQ Writers, or the Black, Asian, or Latino Writers, I went because I believed the fight was, and is, the same for all of us. It isn’t Diversity if we’re not all in it together. After a while, it became clear that my life gathered meaning from this fight, and it became inseparable from the writing itself. I even co-founded a disability film festival under the Guild’s roof.
Progress has been made, inch by inch.
If I’ve survived the past ten years with my heart intact, it is because of the people I met at the Writers Guild, and, though they are not going away, I don’t want to lose that shelter. It is a place for me and so many others to connect, to stay moored to something that means the world. Young writers are coming up every day, and the Guild must continue to support new blood. They need to continue having our backs.
Don’t cut us loose. Keep the oranges, peels and all.
Don’t disband the Independent Writers Caucus. If you do, a blow will land against Diversity that will not be easy to recover from, and it will make all the things I — we — have built look like a house of cards.
Without the Caucus, the Committees will shrink dramatically. The Diversity Dept. will have less need to exist. If that happens, the fight for equity and inclusion will have been all for naught. The department will have to change its name to the Department of What Could Have Been. Things will return to business as usual, and the stories about all of us that so desperately need to be told won’t be. The industry created this union to support the “little guys.” The power of unions is they prevent disfranchisement from the greater workforce. Access to that workforce is especially problematic for those in the disability community trying to break in as writers. When the Guild reports writers with disabilities aren’t even included in the report of those groups being left out of the industry, something is askew.
Yet, I have seen our once-small Committee grow and grow, primarily due to the pandemic and the need to meet remotely. It has been an excellent opportunity to make good of a terrible situation by congregating over what matters most: getting our stories told.
What has made the Writers Guild special, to the extent I have experienced this, is it provided a place for me to be seen and counted. There is a lot of waiting in the wings concerning getting into entertainment. It’s an exclusive club that needs to be inclusive. I always held the Guild in great esteem for doing its best to narrow that divide, but to be told in no uncertain terms that the Caucus isn’t helping the organization is heartbreaking.
I wrestle with feeling like a burden to people every day. I’m sure some will immediately object to that, and a few may be correct, but a nagging feeling always accompanies news like this, where I question my value and the value of fighting. But I go back to my Jesuit days in high school, where one teacher said, “Be an active verb, not a passive one.” This organization has shaped my identity, and I am better for it.
The Writers Guild has shown me the value of speaking up and being seen. When so many diverse people are still struggling, it is incumbent upon those who have the power to facilitate change and inclusion to do so.
Without it, progress grinds to a halt.
I cannot let that happen without doing what I can to dig in my heels.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.