Most people don't know this about me: I'm the son of UNION workers from the Midwest. My father was a Teamster. My mother and stepfather were in the Bakery, Confectioney, Tobacco Workers Union, and every year or two, their labor contracts would expire, and there would be much fervor in our home about the increase in hourly wages, better healthcare and safer working environments.

Occasionally, they would strike and hit the picket lines, and for a month or less [or more] my parents' faces would grow serious and my stepfather, in particular, an elected union steward, would grow quiet and calculating as he set out to battle the greedy inhumane evil-makers at Keebler Cookies.

But what I remember most was the thrill in my mother's voice [and sometimes exhaustion] from walking the picket line for a cause that had everything to do with how we survived.

Which slides me into this: As a member of the Writer's Guild, I've been picketing here in NYC and I must confess although the solidarity of weekly picketing is good, the midwestern morale I know so well is lacking.

Yesterday, a few fellow strikers decided to do some union chanting [to boost morale, ours in particular], and as we screamed and rhymed, the other 100 or so Strikers looked on with uninterest as if to say, Chanting at a Picket line? How archaic. How passionate and passe.

It's a strange feeling to be among writers, fighting for the security of our financial and creative futures, and feel disconnected. To get a sense that some members of humanity have been so self-engorged with urban know-it-all, that the sound of a union member chanting receives as much enthusiasm as listening to water drip from ten miles away.

I guess I'm disappointed, but certainly not shocked. I'm living in a city where mindless momentum and navigating gentrification has trumped simple human noise.

Here's to reviving the importance of solidarity as a means to express conviction as opposed to simply posing and participating in a gab fest.

Until next time,

Keith