A hotly anticipated meeting Friday between the Writers Guild of America and negotiators for Hollywood’s biggest studios ended not with a bang but with a whimper, it appears, as both sides confirm that the three-month-long standoff between screenwriters and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is set to continue, as will the strike that’s left the entertainment industry at a standstill.
Friday’s meeting, the first between the WGA and the AMPTP since contract negotiations stalled in May, had been greeted with high hopes when it was announced earlier this week. The New York Times reported that conditions for an end to the writers’ strike seemed promising, as a back-channel meeting last week between a “handful of executives” and “three members of the guild’s negotiating committee” led execs to believe that “there could be a path to a deal.“
Following that shadowy meeting, AMPTP president Carol Lombardini reached out to WGA leaders to schedule Friday’s official confab, but even as that news broke, the WGA remained cautious. In a message to members Thursday, the WGA’s negotiating committee said that “we won’t prejudge what’s to come, but playbooks die hard. So far, the companies have wasted months on their same failed strategy. They have attempted, time and time again, through anonymous quotes in the media, to use scare tactics, rumors, and lies to weaken our resolve.”
Variety reports that the two sides met Friday for about an hour, but that after the WGA stood firm on its expectations regarding “minimum staffing levels in episodic TV and a guaranteed minimum number of weeks of employment,” the conversation fizzled.
This is extremely important, y'all. They’re trying to Hyde Amendment trans care for people of all ages.
Medicaid and Medicare coverage would go away, no matter what state you are in. ACA plan coverage would go away. Hospitals would fully just have to stop offering trans care, full stop, or lose their federal funding.
I know we hate the phone but we absolutely can’t sleep on this. If you have a Democrat rep, you absolutely have to tell them to hold the line against this.
Odd memory from 1995: Waiting in a restaurant lobby to be seated while “Emperor’s New Clothes” played on the sound system. Myself and another young woman – no one I knew – were singing along, silently:
We don’t want that kind of pearl clutching ‘christian’ conservative sitting on the AO3 board. Keep Moms For Liberty out of our fanfiction.
this is the second fucking year in a row someone has tried to pull this crap. but if you’re still on the fence about it (though fair warning, I am not copying everything she wrote as a response, which you can read on the OTW website):
Would you be in favor of creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee? Why or why not? I see no reason creating another committee would help anything in light of the continued staffing issues, and see several ways it could hurt. Lumping nonwhite, and non-English-speaking, and non-American volunteers together in one committee is just tokenism with a bow on top. Those experiences are not singular or universal. The DEI consultant to be hired by the organization will be able to speak to this far better than I can.
The cost of becoming a member/voting in elections is prohibitive for many users, particularly disabled, international and POC ones. Do you have any ideas about how this could be improved to make the otw more inclusive and less privileged? No.
Also, just for some proof of the “Republican” part, from Twitter:
like, it’s not a pejorative, it’s how she’s self-identified
also, ENTIRELY unrelated to this crap, but she’s only been a volunteer for about a year and a lot of her answers to questions about ongoing problems is “I don’t know because I’ve only been here a year.” she doesn’t even know what PAC is.
On Tuesday, the OTW posted “Elections Committee Statement on Harassment“ in which they said “The elections committee would like to condemn in the strongest terms, the recent harassment campaign aimed at one of our candidates.
While all OTW board election candidates are prepared to run, and if elected or appointed, serve under their legal name, the intense harassment of Audrey goes well beyond what is appropriate during the candidacy period. We do not condone the harassment of the candidate or their employer.“
I don’t know what people are saying to or about Audrey that may be inappropriate, but the fact that she is a Republican and ran for Congress as a Republican candidate is not misinformation, and the questions of her preparedness for the role she’s seeking and whether, given her other affiliations, she has an unspoken agenda with regard to OTW and AO3 are absolutely legitimate concerns about someone who is asking to be chosen for a leadership position.
There will be four chats with candidates on July 29 and 30, and Audrey will be in the third and fourth chats. I am deeply looking forward to her Republican feet getting nice and warmed up when held to the fire. Appropriately and civilly, of course.
But here’s what’s real: in 2023, anyone choosing to affiliate with the Republican party in the United States of America is choosing to affiliate themselves with an organization committed to the oppression of all gender and sexual minorities, racial minorities, disabled people and low income people, and installing themselves for permanent singular rule via subversion of our electoral system. They’re fascists. And I don’t see any reason why we need to give a moment of fair consideration to a fascist to be in a position of leadership in the neighborhood dog feces patrol, let alone an organization committed to the free expression of creative arts by a body of authors, and for an audience that are overwhelmingly part of the very demographics that they want to oppress, control or eliminate from existence.
We can be nice about it, we can hear her out on whatever it is she wants to say, but the truth about who she is is the truth. If she wanted people to regard her with more kindness, she should be a better person.
if you guys thought you had a weird middle school experience my whole grade was convinced I was an actual literal werewolf for 3 years to the point where people were afraid of me so come 8th grade the popular girl had a huge Halloween party on her farm that everyone went to that just happened to coincide with the full moon so I staged a whole elaborate ‘transformation’ at the end of the night and scared the shit out of all of them. I don’t think I’ll ever top that
the prisoner of azkaban had just come out. we were a bunch of bored idiot kids in the boonies. everyone thought they could identify a werewolf and I just happened to have illnesses that often took me out of school around the time of the full moon every month. it didn’t help that I had been the ‘wolf kid’ since elementary. and I’m not saying I didn’t play into it when I found out the rumor — teen wolf (1985) was one of my favorite movies so of course I wanted to pretend I was living it.
but this went on for years. I had kids showing up behind my house on the full moon hoping to catch me changing. people were afraid to invite me to sleepovers. so when I finally got invited to a party, on that full moon no less, I went all out. I waited for the moon to rise. I hid a costume werewolf head and clawed gloves in the woods, snuck out there mid-party while 30-something kids were gathered around a bonfire, changed, ripped my clothes and started howling from the trees. some brave souls started to investigate and that’s when I started to chase them. pandemonium broke out. and oh, did I have the time of my life, because I hated most of these kids. revenge of the nerds, and all that. they’d teased me for years for things I couldn’t help like being sickly or having too much hair on my body.
I made my getaway with a friend at the end, and left the rest to wonder. most of them realized the prank and later laughed it off with me. but there was one kid who, senior year of high school, admitted I intimidated him because he still believed I was a werewolf. I put my arm around his shoulder, told him, “Between you and me, I am,” and gave him a wink. even after graduation, that guy looked at me like I would eat him alive.
I gotta say, there are worse things to be than a teenage werewolf
