Labor Day Solidarity from Canned 🥫✊🏼🥫
Zombie recruiters, redshirts, and flying footlongs.
I’m an old school Trekkie, which means I know the redshirt gets it when the away team beams down to the planet. I didn’t draw the notion of a labor connection until much later and it doesn’t seem to be intentional on the part of Star Trek, but it feels real all the same. Of course the random worker gets it, who cares about that guy?
There’s so much redshirting right now, whether it’s by the government or AI or outright hostility keeping workers away — I’m looking at you crops rotting on the vine because farm laborers risk arrest by showing up. MSNBC, not exactly a bastion of progressivity, reports that 300,000 Black women have “left the labor force” in the last three months.
My own situation is less than ideal. Work dried up in April; I’m down to a gig that pays a few hundred dollars every other month. My network is dead, not because they don’t want to help but because everyone’s in the same boat. I recently discovered there’s a new catfishing/fake recruiter scam — I didn’t fall for it, there were too many clues. But wow, between the AI zombies and ghost jobs and vampire recruiters, LinkedIn is a total haunted house of terrors.
(I should interject that I am fine in the short term, and probably the mid-term. The long term, time will tell. Depends on how long we let fascism stand. Ahem.)
I did not think CANNED would be so relevant. I got axed in what felt like a bad faith move, and got curious. I didn’t know this (waves hands around) cultural wave would swamp so many of us.
Last week I finished a book proposal for Canned. This week I start the search for an agent. I would like the wisdom everyone has shared to find more people. I would like more people to feel like they can say, “That was fucked up, I deserved better.” I would like it if we did not feel alone or embarassed or at sea when we get fired.
I would also like better rights for workers, and national health, and basic income, and my dog to live as long as I do and for both of us to be healthy and to leave this world in our sleep, quietly at the same time. I’m doing what I can. Ahem.
In the meantime:
Melissa was on Canned S1/E13; she recently posted an update on her situation to Instagram. WTF, we say. WTF.
I still have a handful of summer pledge drive stickers. They came out great! Venmo [$3 US residents/$5 overseas] I’ll mail you one. Or, you know, any amount over that is cool too. It all goes to operating costs.
In honor of that guy who threw his sandwich at the guard in DC, I made shirts. Heads up, the ringer runs large.
Please share this newsletter with anyone, everyone, who might need to hear that they’re not alone in this crazy job market, this crazy time. And send your fired friends my way.
Everything feels so fraught, so risky, right now. But we still gotta wear red, throw a sandwich, join a union, make a protest sign. Tell true stories about what’s happening. What you do matters.
Canned remains a labor of love and gratitude. We love making it and we’re always grateful for your stories.
Solidarity, friends. 🥫✊🏼🥫
Pam//Host//Canned