This story is a collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Magnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions has grown over the last decade, actual membership has continued to decline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workers here.

Domestic workers perform grueling work with few protections. They provide care in isolated settings, leaving their essential labor all too often hidden. It can be a difficult job and a complicated one. When you work in a home, lines blur. 

For decades, feminist activists have said that work in the home—often performed for no pay by wives, mothers, and daughters—has been misunderstood as separate from “real” labor. This feminized care has been relegated and detached from a labor movement focused on men.

In the United States, such work has also been done by Black women who have had to organize aggressively against the odds. Infamously, domestic workers were excluded from the labor agenda during the New Deal. And, since then, they have had to fight to catch up to standards enshrined for others in the law. The National Domestic Workers Alliance and others have sought to change the state of play. After the pandemic, there has also been an uptick in interest in movements like Wages for Housework—a campaign in the 1970s to organize and recognize work in the home.

In this project, Chloe Aftel highlights the day-to-day demands of these workers who often go unnoticed. She follows Vivian Siordia and Liezl Japona, both care workers in California, showing the daily ups and downs of such labor. Both Siordia and Japona think that more organizing and aid to care workers could help make the job better.

Update, April 11: This article has been updated to more clearly reflect the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and California Domestic Workers Coalition.

This story is a collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Magnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions has grown over the last decade, actual membership has continued to decline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workers here.

In the South, retail workers at dollar stores are pushing to improve their lot.

Working at a dollar store is often low-paid and dangerous—according to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 660 shootings have occurred in such stores since 2014. As more and more of the retail stores open, the lack of serious protections takes on a bigger dimension. Are workers safe in these common jobs?

This project looks at the fight by Step Up Louisiana and others to push for better conditions for retail workers. Kenya Slaughter, an organizer of dollar stores with Step Up Louisiana, has traveled to stores across the state—dropping in at Dollar Trees, Dollar Generals, and Family Dollars to explain to workers what can be offered by banding together with other workers. She discusses not only safety but the other things a union can offer, from increased pay to an opportunity to stand up to your bosses.

As blue-collar workers continue to migrate from the factory floor to the retail aisle, fights like this could determine whether a working-class job can still provide a decent life in America. While focused on dollar stores, Step Up Louisiana’s work goes beyond to look at others employed behind the counter—at everywhere from hardware stores to coffee shops.

Update, March 19: This article has been updated to more clearly reflect Kenya Slaughter’s and David Williams’ roles in Step Up Louisiana and the organization’s work in the broader movement to organize retail workers.

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The American public seems to have emerged from the initial jolt of the pandemic with a newfound clarity familiar to survivors of catastrophes. Many people experienced an evaporation of the things that lent their lives the illusion of stability. Jobs disappeared and the social safety net’s holes loomed large. For scores of working people, it was—though they might not use this term—a radicalizing experience. Millions suddenly confronted the fact that if we didn’t protect ourselves, nobody else would. “I don’t really know if any amount of money would make working in this environment and being exposed to this level of risk feel worth it,” one grocery worker said early in the pandemic. For “essential” workers, it became clear that the work and the risk were a package deal.

This realization supercharged public interest in organized labor, bolstering a surge of support for union activity, which had already been growing slowly since the Great Recession in 2009. Polls show that public approval of labor unions is now at its highest point since 1965. This is unsurprising. Since the start of the Reagan era, wages for average workers have stagnated, astounding wealth has flowed to a tiny percentage of society, and the resulting rise in economic inequality has destabilized our political landscape. When this slow but steady erosion of the American Dream met the shock of Covid, it became all but impossible to avoid the conclusion that “Organize or Die” could be a literal slogan.

In 2020, we saw the launch of the (ultimately unsuccessful) union drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama­—at that point the most serious organizing effort against the Bezos empire. The addition of Covid’s burden to the weight of algorithmically driven warehouse work was the tipping point for fed-up workers unwilling to risk their lives for $15.50 an hour. That effort was followed in 2021 by a series of victories: a successful union vote at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, the launch of the still-growing Starbucks union organizing campaign, and a mini-wave of strikes dubbed “Striketober.” The drumbeat grew louder in 2023, with major strikes in Hollywood and at the Big Three automakers. In September, Joe Biden spoke at a picket line in support of United Auto Workers, the first sitting president in history to do so. It was clear that something was happening.

But what, exactly? The long-overdue return of unions to the spotlight is not the sea change that it can appear to be. In the middle of the 20th century, when American unions were at peak membership, about one in three workers was in a union. By 1980, the number had fallen to one in five, and by 2005, one in eight. This unrelenting decline in union density—the percentage of workers who are members—is the biggest problem facing organized labor. And since strong unions tend to improve wages and conditions even for nonunion employees, and make politics more worker-friendly, low union density is a problem for the entire working class and, more broadly, anyone with a job. Each success is meaningful to individual workers. But the wins do not add up to a transformative movement unless they can reverse decades of decline—which has not yet happened.

In 2022, even as the popularity of unions hit a generational high, union density fell to 10.1 percent, the lowest on record. The inability to channel all this excitement, during the most pro-union administration of most voters’ lifetimes, into an economy wide barrage of large-scale organizing drives, should put a lump in the throat of anyone who cares about the class war. The traditional analysis of union decline cites two main causes. The first is the devastating effects of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act—which restricted how unions could strike; outlawed “closed shops”; and enabled states to pass “right to work” laws, which under the guise of worker freedom allow a member of a unionized workplace to opt out of paying fees. The second cause is corporate America’s decades-long project to perfect its union-busting tactics.

But you can’t just chalk up organized labor’s woes to the old saws of union-busting businesses and hostile laws. They also reflect the atrophied state of labor’s institutions, a lack of adequate organizing ­infrastructure and budgets, and, in many cases, an attitude of resignation that decades of decline inflicted on some union leaders who should, right now, be rushing to capitalize on the favorable conditions.

From the very earliest days of worker organizing, there have been two fundamental competing visions. One side, rooted in the craft guilds of skilled workers, says that unions exist to take care of their members. The other, rooted in the mass industrial unions, argues that the labor movement exists to serve the wider purpose of helping all workers. It is the first philosophy, that of the self-declared realists, that has historically dominated the union world. The most vivid example of this divide came in 1938, when crusading United Mine Workers of America leader John L. Lewis, dissatisfied with the staid attitude of the American Federation of Labor, became the first leader of the more radical Congress of Industrial Organizations, which successfully pursued broad organizing in steel, auto, rubber, and other fields before merging back with the larger, more conservative AFL in 1955. While the first camp looks at a group of workers and decides whether it is in a union’s interests to organize them, the second camp looks at the unions and wonders why they are failing in their responsibility to organize everyone. It is the former outlook that prevailed.

Today, surrounded by centibillionaires and trillion-dollar corporations and a depressing private sector union density of 6 percent, we can safely look back on the past half-century and say: Well, that didn’t work.

Declaring that organized labor is poised for a resurrection is a dangerous prediction. It has been wrong often. Yet now, things may just be lined up. The failure of the union world’s narrow-mindedness in the face of the rising inequality and corporate power is running up against a general public that is tired, pissed off, and ready for action. To put it plainly: Work sucks, and people know it. Inequality taunts us from above, and crappy jobs taunt us from below. Unions are the path to salvation and, incredibly, people seem to have realized it. Now we find out whether the labor movement can meet the challenge of turning rage into rebirth.

 

UAW members and supporters participate in a rally at the UAW-Ford Joint Trusts Center on September 15, 2023, in Detroit.Sylvia Jarrus

Last year, we asked photographers to document this knotty moment for American labor. Their projects show both new organizing and the reinvigoration of old institutions. In March 2023, reform-minded Shawn Fain was elected president of the UAW by a margin of less than 1 percent. He proceeded to don an “EAT THE RICH” T-shirt and lead the boldest strike in the union’s history, shutting down all of the Big Three automakers and winning record wage gains for workers. Instead of resting on these victories, he announced an aggressive plan to ­organize nearly 150,000 nonunion autoworkers across the country.

In less than a year, Fain proved that unions already possess the most potent ingredient necessary for their rejuvenation: ambition. Images of the UAW on the frontlines empowered workers beyond any individual contract fight. In Los Angeles, something similar happened: So many workers went on strike last year—hotel workers, public school workers, and Hollywood actors alike—that the entire city seemed to morph into a living demonstration of the way unions lend power to everyone, from janitors to movie stars. Every labor victory serves as a giant billboard to nonunion workers: Organize, and you can have this too.

But there is much ground to make up. Horse-trading to pass foundational labor laws has left some of the most exploited classes of workers behind. In 1935, the Wagner Act, which gave private sector workers the right to unionize, explicitly excluded farmworkers and domestic workers, among others. And decades of “War on Crime” politics have created a vast pool of formerly incarcerated people who find themselves excluded from stable employment, easy prey for bad bosses and low wages. (If the labor movement won’t take on the task of helping them, who will?)

After decades of globalization, America’s industrial jobs have been lost. Millions of service and retail workers—for many, the only jobs left in the wake of neoliberalism’s offshoring—have thus far been nearly impossible to unionize. This is particularly true in the South. If unions cannot find a way to effectively organize the retail chains that dominate American commerce, it will not just be bad news for all of those underpaid, disrespected workers; it will be an ominous sign that businesses can leverage global changes in the economy to purge unions and keep them out indefinitely.

The invigorating moment we are now living through has the potential to propel unions back into the center of American life. Fully capturing this burst of energy is necessary if organized labor ever wants to fulfill its larger purpose: restoring the balance of power between capital and humanity. Beyond material gains, people want to change what jobs are—to transform these weird, necessary evils into a tolerable part of our lives. Without scrutiny, the workplace, where we spend many of our waking hours, can become a dark and dictatorial haunt. The labor movement seeks to shine a light in these spaces. “Don’t quit, organize,” goes the rallying cry. That has, for most of our lifetimes, been a difficult ask. But things change.

The zeitgeist is, for now, in our favor. These images capture the spirit of those trying to seize it.

City on Strike

By Sara Terry

In 2023, Los Angeles experienced an explosion of strikes across almost every sector of the economy. This project looks at how the city’s Justice for Janitors organizing in 1990—a historic and unexpected victory—laid the groundwork for organizing today. View the full project here.

Another Chance

By Jeff Rae

In New York City, low-income workers, especially those recently released from prison, are often recruited to work for so-called body shops—low-wage construction firms with few labor protections. Jeff Rae documents a program that offers an alternative: a paid pathway to apprenticeships that can lead to union jobs. View the full project here.

The Almighty Dollar

By Rita Harper

Working at a dollar store is often low-paid and dangerous—according to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 660 shootings have occurred in such stores since 2014. In the South, dollar store workers are organizing to improve their lot. Rita Harper photographed the fight by Step Up Louisiana to organize retail workers to push for better conditions. As blue-collar workers continue to migrate from the factory floor to the retail aisle, fights like this could determine whether a working-class job can still provide a decent life in America. View the full project here.

Eat the Rich

By Sylvia Jarrus

Last year, under the leadership of Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers conducted a historic 46-day strike that harkened back to the union’s militant roots. Sylvia Jarrus’ photos take us to the front lines to show the impacts of one of the most consequential labor fights of the 21st century. The new contract, Fain promised in his post-victory speech, is no less than “a turning point in the class war.” View the full project here.

Lessons in Class War

By Octavio Jones

As Gov. Ron DeSantis battles to reshape education in the state, the culture war is part of a class war: Unions are on the front lines of the fight over what educators can or (more often) cannot do. View the full project here.

Home Work

By Chloe Aftel

Domestic workers perform grueling work with few protections. Infamously, the group was excluded from the labor agenda during the New Deal. And, since then, workers have had to fight to catch up to standards enshrined for others in the law. Such care work can be hard to see and even questioned as work at all. Chloe Aftel’s photos highlight the day-to-day demands of the workers caring for those who struggle to care for themselves. View the full project here.

This story is a collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Magnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions has grown over the last decade, actual membership has continued to decline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workers here.

Last year, under the leadership of Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers conducted a historic 46-day strike against the so-called Big Three automakers. The action gained national attention and harkened back to the union’s militant roots. (The UAW’s “Stand Up Strike” was a reference to the famous 1936 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan.)

More than just a battle over an individual contract, Fain publicized the UAW’s work as a battle for working people across the country. He became a notable figure as few labor leaders have been in recent decades. The battle saw the strike as a mobilizing force for the entire working class. Fain wore a shirt that said “eat the rich” and he lambasted the “billionaire class.” Politicians took note and saw the UAW strike as an essential part of defending their bona fides.

In the process, the UAW and Fain showed those in unions fighting for their rights from a position of strength. When the new contract was won, Fain promised in his post-victory speech that it was no less than “a turning point in the class war.”

Sylvia Jarrus’ photos take us to the front lines to show the impacts of one of the most consequential labor fights of the 21st century. For all the attention thrust on Fain—a necessity, he believed, to win the fight—this was a movement that involved hundreds of workers who walked out. “If it weren’t for us,” Denita Shaw-Lynch of Local 862 said, “none of these cars would be built.”

Editor’s note: Mother Jones workers are represented by UAW Local 2103.

This story is a collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Magnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions has grown over the last decade, actual membership has continued to decline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workers here.

Dock workers. Bus drivers. Screenwriters. Cooks. Teachers. Actors. Teaching assistants. Hotel workers. Strippers. Amazon drivers. In 2023, in Los Angeles, all these workers were either on strike, walking out, or picketing, or publicly pushing for more.

It wasn’t always this way in LA. For decades, the city had a reputation as an anti-union town. But, in 1990, there was a major change with the Justice for Janitors campaign. 

In the previous decade, as unions were struggling to build membership, janitors became a focus. Cleaning contractors had undercut their prices to service large buildings, costing the janitors a hefty chunk of their wages. Justice for Janitors was an attempt to fight back. 

Workers organized a march in Century City, one of the city’s wealthy commercial centers. But police attacked the protesters—injuring dozens and causing one woman to miscarry. The assault electrified the city, made national news, and in the following years brought a flood of supporters, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

The concessions won by Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles inspired similar efforts across the country, changing an organizing campaign into an actual movement that made important gains for low-wage workers.

Today, even as organized labor continues to build on lessons learned from Justice for Janitors, this powerful chapter in Los Angeles history is unknown to many. 

This project layers images of today’s strong unions in Los Angeles with images and stories from the Justice for Janitor days. The images are tied together by handwritten text that includes comments from union workers who were active then and now.

In New York City, “body shops” target the formerly incarcerated for dangerous and low-wage construction work. (The name stems from the companies’ single function, which is to provide bodies for construction sites.) With few other prospects, the former prisoners often take the jobs. Often, their terms of release require employment.

But, in recent years, construction labor unions have campaigned against these body shops—which undercut union labor. In doing so, they have educated many of the workers they once fought against on their rights to demand better conditions.

In what used to be a conflict, some are seeing an opportunity for organizing. In an effort to respond to community demand for the hiring of workers local to construction projects, longtime union members developed a program called Pathways 2 Apprenticeship. P2A provides people from low-income and justice-affected communities with a paid opportunity to learn about the construction trades and prepare for apprenticeship opportunities.

This photo story highlights one P2A graduate who has become P2A’a lead instructor as well as three additional union members who graduated from P2A, all three of whom originally worked in body shops, two upon returning home from prison.

This story is a collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Magnum Foundation. We asked photographers to show us the paradox of today’s labor movement. Even as the popularity of unions has grown over the last decade, actual membership has continued to decline. Can new enthusiasm revitalize American labor? Read about this unique moment for workers here.

“The challenges for the teacher union have never been more profound,” Rob Kriete, the head of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, explained. Under a new law in Florida, teachers unions must show that 60 percent of educators are paying dues or risk decertification.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis battles to reshape education in the state, the culture war is part of a class war: Unions are on the front lines of the fight over what educators can or (more often) cannot do. When book bans are in place, it is teachers—and their unions—stuck in the crossfire of DeSantis’ attack on public education.

“I’ve been a union member for going on 30 years now,” Kriete said. “With Gov. DeSantis, he’s trying to bring the death knell to the teacher unions. He’s trying to eradicate them in the state of Florida.”

This project looks at the public figures fighting over a workplace—how politicians, parents, and community members determine what it means to be an education worker in Florida. Attacks on unions don’t always look like nefarious bosses in boardrooms. Sometimes, it can be a mom wanting to make a teacher’s job harder.

While the investigation focuses on the story of Katrina Edwards, who spent years in UHS’s North Star Behavioral Health, in Anchorage, several former foster children in Alaska shared similar accounts. They talked about the violence, seclusion, and overmedication at UHS facilities, and of feeling abandoned by the Office of Children’s Services, the state’s child welfare agency.

Below, five former foster youth recount their experiences at North Star and another UHS center. (UHS couldn’t comment on the specific stories, but has denied similar allegations.) Their stories reflect claims made in pending lawsuits against UHS, and have been lightly edited for clarity.

Alexies Ezell

20 years old; at North Star three times between 2017 and 2019, totaling six months

“It was just really lonely. No one would call unless it was a court date. I felt really forgotten about. And when [OCS] would check in, it’d be just very brief, just like, ‘Oh, you’re okay? You’re still alive? Okay, well, we’re still looking for a placement.’”

Mateo Jaime

21 years old; at North Star for two months around 2018

“With North Star, once you’re there long enough, you want to be a juvenile delinquent. You want to cause trouble. Everything’s so gray. There’s no purpose to be there. Therapy’s once every two weeks—so-called therapy. During that time, they just want to send you to Nevada. They want to send you to Oklahoma, send you to California. It was this merry-go-round, merry-go-round.”

Nathon Pressley

26 years old; at North Star for eight stays from 2003 to 2011, totaling 14 months

By age 6, “they stick me with people that are [older]. I could say one wrong word and suddenly I had my face in the ground. So I started misbehaving as well. I would get angry at people keeping me there. I would tell adults to fuck off. I learned those words very quickly. That’s how the chain started. They would throw me into a cage and treat me like an animal. I would act like an animal in return, and they would keep on caging me.”

Abigail Redmon

19 years old; at North Star three times from 2016 to 2020, totaling roughly 3.5 months

“We weren’t supposed to bring bugs inside, but there was a small outside part with a basketball hoop. I used to go back there and lift up the mats and find worms. I found an inchworm one time, and I named him José. I tried to keep him alive as long as I could, sneaking pieces of broccoli and carrots in my clothes to bring upstairs. I also had a spider. His name was Mark. José and Mark, they were in styrofoam cups all the way in the back of the desk.”

Jyasia Batts

22 years old; at North Star an estimated 11 times and Texas NeuroRehab Center for two years starting in 2011

“There was this male [staffer at Texas NeuroRehab]—he slammed my head into the floor. And he put his elbow on the side of my face, just digging it in. It got to a point where I couldn’t breathe because he was putting so much pressure on me. After that, they put me in my room and told me I couldn’t come out. I was obviously hysterically crying. I was in pain. The fact that the bruises were so visible was traumatizing. That’s when OCS should have taken me out. But I stayed there. I remember [my caseworker’s] response was, ‘You just have a few more months and you will be discharged.’”

In cities across the state, housing has been a dominant political issue. Local leaders have bemoaned the long-term lack of supply of affordable shelter and the acute rise in the unhoused population. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has battled to allow for sweeps of tent cities. A prosecutor of the county that includes Sacramento recently claimed that the capital city’s inability to remove homeless people amounted to an “utter collapse into chaos.” Culver City banned tent encampments.

Amid a homelessness crisis, the unhoused have been less heard in these discussions. Starting in the fall of 2021, Aaron Schrank and Sam Comen conducted interviews and photographed unhoused people living in Los Angeles and Northern California as a companion piece to the University of California San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness to shed light on those affected. You can hear their stories and read a lightly condensed version of the transcripts below. More of Comen and Schrank’s work is available at the website Unhoused CA.

Ennix Blackmon, 37

When you come in, you have to be prepared for anything. We all come from different backgrounds, different experiences, different ages, eras. Literally. You got people I’ve bunked with who are Vietnam vets. Being in the shelter, to be honest with you, one glove doesn’t fit all.

I served fifteen years in the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard. I enlisted a couple of months after I got out of high school. I went to Iraq twice: 2006 and I went back in 2010. It’s a surreal experience to be at the worst possible place at the worst possible time. I can remember coming outside and all you can hear is “TOO! TOO! TOO! TOO!” small arms fire in the distance and you got the big tankers rolling all over the place, dropping bombs on these people, then mortar rounds started to hit.

When I got back, there were things I had to address. PTSD. I couldn’t handle failure. I couldn’t handle disappointment. I couldn’t handle hurt. Things that happened in my life, they were taking a larger toll than I was used to. I was really beating myself up for a long time. I did counseling for three years. That truly helped me. I’m not gonna say I’m in a place of perfection, but I can smile. 

Being homeless, man—that was very hard for me to get over. Because I’m someone who’s used to being independent. 

I was raised in a household around substances. When you see that those things bring the worst out of the people you love, and you’re a victim of that. I made the decision to keep right and stay right. I understand why people use. I pray that those people find a peace. I pray that they find the help they need. It’s so much more than just getting off the drugs. We see that with homeless vets on drugs all the time. What happened? What got them there?

I’m two years from my bachelor’s now. I’m on a benefit called the Montgomery GI Bill. That’s where they pay you to go to school. My major is supply change management. Working towards my goals. Regardless of my circumstances here, just trying not to let it keep me from reaching my goals. 

You see how the world in general looks at homeless people? I think it’s a sad situation. I challenge people. Ask that person: What’s their story? Find out what their story is, because it’s uncommon for someone to just be out and not have anyone to care for them. But there’s a reason for it…find out the story behind a person’s life. But don’t look at that person like trash.

Raven Gardner

It’s been a long journey. As far as I know, in my family, there’s never been anyone who was gay or lesbian—not openly or anything. It wasn’t just an out-of-the-blue thing, though it seemed like it to them.

I came out…and it shocked my family. A couple of them kind of showed their true colors with how they reacted. So I decided to try to get out on my own. I’ve only been experiencing homelessness for the last few months. [My partner and I] have avoided getting a tent. We’ve been real warriors to avoid the actual streets, just trying to be safe. We have a lot of friends struggling themselves, so we can’t really ask someone to rent a room. My case managers, they’ve been helping me realizing a couple different terms I never understood, like boundaries are a big one and values. So I set a lot of really heavy boundaries with my family. I gradually finally started talking to my mom. I call her once in a while. It’s lonely not being able to talk to any family.

I have a lot of depression, stress, anxiety. That’s another part of my transition as being a trans female. A lot people don’t want to talk to me, but once they do, a lot of them see I’m a very artistic, positive person. I try to grow and learn and affect people around me the same way.

At least we have somewhere to start because you have to break the vicious cycle. If you don’t have a place to sleep and feel safe in and eat and you don’t have money and you don’t have a car you know, then it’s difficult. I have a for-now job that I get pretty good tips in and stuff and it’s a lot of work but I’m doing the best I can with that. 

Daniel James Little

What takes someone 15 minutes to do in the morning—brush their teeth, get their clothes on—takes me sometimes all day. All day. If someone didn’t steal my clothes, I gotta wash them, because they’re always dirty. I gotta dry ’em. It just takes me all day. When I get ready to go out to hustle, it’s 6 o’clock, it’s like, “what happened? All day just went by.” You know what I’m saying? It’s a struggle.

 

I don’t get no sleep. Being out here, I always have to be on my toes.

Because it’s a whole ’nother world out here.

 

Charles Mortiz Jr.

I grew up in South Whittier, right down the street. I got kicked out at 18.

I’m going on 13 years and honestly, it was just because of me being stupid, not listening to my parents’ rules, not having a job, not paying rent. Before I got to the riverbed, I’d out there sleeping in the street…anywhere I could find warmth. It was tough. People out here have helped me a lot. People out here are a lot more helpful than out there. There are some housed people who care about us out here—give us clothes, food, money. There’s a lot of disrespect too. People are mean out there.

I was put in a Project Roomkey, but I felt like I was locked up. The only time outside the motel was from 1pm to 3pm; that’s not enough time to get what we have to get done. I didn’t last a day…Being cooped up in that motel. Yeah, the shower was cool. The bed was cool. But uh-uh, I can’t do it.

Help us with housing, but let us do what we need to do—in order to help us move up not down. Keeping us inside all day and when we get out, we’re still gonna…You got to survive out here. I don’t want to go to a shelter. I’d rather be in my own place or out here. 

Griselda Flores

Right there, I had my apartment. I used to live there for 10 years. I’ve had asthma problems since the day I was born. I had an asthma attack and a heart attack at the same time. They took me to the emergency. I was in a coma for 3 months. I lost everything when I woke up.

I have 9 years already on the street. Sanitation comes and gives us tickets. We get arrested if we don’t go to court. I got arrested, just for trespassing. They gave me a traffic ticket and I said, “but I don’t drive.” They told me it’s because I live on the freeway. That’s why it’s a traffic ticket. 

I’m waiting to get a shelter, but I went to court so I lost my chance. To be honest, I don’t even want to go to a shelter. It’s hard, with my dogs. 

It’s hard to be a woman and be in the streets. Like, you don’t even know how the mentality can be. It’s really hard to survive every day, to be sure I got what I need like water and food.

Charles, 61, and Jennifer Hake, 33

Charles: I’ve been in California 23 years, I’ve been on the street the last five. Before, we had a five bedroom house, swimming pool, everything. Rent just kept going up. I didn’t want to be in debt like that, so we moved out. 

Jennifer: We tried living in apartment complexes but because of our dogs, they kept kicking us out.

Charles: Rent just got higher and higher and higher.

Jennifer: We couldn’t afford to pay rent. So we were forced to basically move into this kind of lifestyle. We didn’t have a choice. I stress on his health, because he’s my dad. He does not need to be out here, period. 

Charles: I feel fine!

It makes your bonds a lot stronger. Most people aren’t sitting around going: Where are we going to get water? People sitting at home at a dinner table don’t have that question. They go to a faucet and turn it on. 

I get social security, $2,000 a month. Go look at the price of an apartment. What was $800 is now $1200. They want first, last, and a deposit. They want credit ratings over 700. One out of 20 people I know may pass that. Most people burnt up their credit already. That’s why they’re here. So now you built this wall that they’re boxed out. How do you get them back into society?

Some day you look, you have three packs of Top Ramen and I’ve got six people to feed. What do you do? Ah, but there’s “help available.” (laughs) “Fill out these forms and we’ll call you in a week.” (laughs) You need housing? They tell you to get on the list. 

Jennifer: The shelters, when I went into rehab there, three girls had been raped and exited. That’s why one of the beds opened. I said, “I’m not going there.” When shit like that happens, it makes people not want to get into programs, not want to get clean. It makes them just want to say, “Fuck it.”

I don’t want to live like this. I need a shower. I need a roof over my head. I want to go back to school to get my high school diploma.

Torr ‘T-Bone’ Ducey

I’ve been in this spot just about three months now. It’s really nothing special. I’ve got board, I’ve got mesh. It started off just as space to protect my property. A lot of activity happens out here. People coming through, looking, etc. It’s nothing special, but I did put a little bit of technique in it to make it safe. If people can’t push their way in or kick their way in, they have a tendency to move on. That’s what I was trying to do—be safe.

Really everybody’s trying to protect their privacy. Trauma, mental illness; there’s a lot of domestic violence. People are really trying to get away from where they were, or what they had been through, maybe get somewhere they can heal.

Sometimes we just really don’t want to show the caring side of who we are and what we really care for.

I’m [in] independent trucking, I’m not driving for a company…And then there’s all of a sudden, bam, a shut-down, globally. And I get into the elbow incident. A guy snuck up behind me, hit me with a machete. I chip a bone, a nerve. I come out of surgery. I’m nervous. I’m in a three-quarter cast. I’m homeless with one arm. I can’t go back to work. I went through my little savings. That just derailed me, I’m flat-lined. 

I had a disability, but at the same time I had to eat. So I had needs that needed to be met. Could I find work that could meet my level of disability? I actually shouldn’t have been working, but I knew I had to do something. 

It was really hard when I got a recording studio job. I was weak. I only had one arm, part of the duties was to sweep. I had 7,800 some odd square feet to sweep, then go back and mop it. That’s what I was able to maintain to do.

It scared me not knowing how to take my coat off, take off my shoes, how would tie them in the morning. How would I go to the bathroom? These things really hit me hard. It was a nightmare. 

I don’t feel I’m above anyone out here. We’re all in the same homeless boat. I’m just trying to make myself last. 

Kelly Tuckett

I know where I came from, and I want to work for my money and be productive in society. It feels a lot better, you know?

I’m down here on two basis: I was divorced at about the same time I was released from my job of 14 years. So both of those, that calamity sent me here.

Dylan Hensley

It’s difficult at best to get hooked up with any homeless services. And if in fact you do it probably won’t last long because they got a lot of different rules and a lot of different personalities and a lot of stuff ends up clashing.

My wife threw me out of the house. That lead me down the road…I went to jail, lost my job. Whatever. I basically put bikes together for me or my friends. It’s something to keep me out of trouble.

Calvin Shorts Jr., 40

I’m an L.A. native. I went to Santa Monica College. I’ve been out here a while. I love this city. This is my city. 

I’ve been homeless, then housed; homeless, housed. I think I’ve been out here this time…five-ish, six years or something like that. Sad to say, I used to be like, “I’ll never be on the streets that long.” You don’t realize it because days turn to weeks…it’s all about where is my next hustle, where can I stay in this comfortable area and not worry? Every five seconds we gotta move the foundation of your whole house and everything you own into another square and hopefully that works. It plays with your mind a lot.

If you don’t know how to make a dollar, get a dollar, it’s hard. It is extremely hard. That plays with overly your depression, your self-esteem. You don’t want to go out. You don’t want to be seen a certain way. Because automatically they think, if you’re homeless, you must be so dumb, you can’t fill out a resume, you don’t know how to open a door. Living out here changed my whole morale. I had to redefine what it was that I lived by. I can’t go home to my mom. I probably can, but it’s not her fault and I shouldn’t put another penny or worry on her.

I went through the whole paranoia thing. I thought my mom was against me and I couldn’t go home. But if you can’t go home when you’re on something and you can’t go to church because you can’t talk really to anybody, where are you supposed to go and get comfort? But you can get through it! I found out the greater the community is and how rich it is, rich in communication and helping. I don’t know how to describe it, because I don’t want to forget about the struggle.

I was stabbed over 18 times less than a year ago, over there at my tent. It could have been anybody’s tent. The only thing to protect us is a zipper. It could have pushed me back into depression. I thought about not talking to certain types of people, but you can’t do that out here on the streets. You can’t really do that in life. You can’t stop your life for an incident.

Christina Jordan, 44

If I was placed in housing right now, everything else would fall in place. But it’s hard to do the paperwork. It’s hard to do everything. It’s hard—especially being in a wheelchair. If I was on my own two feet, I would have everything.

I started running away because my mom and dad got into crack and heroin in the ’80s. I thought, “If they can’t take care of me, I’ll just take care of myself.” I started looking for love in all the wrong places: prostitutes, pimps. I thought it was genuine. You’re 12, you’re naive. Not knowing they’re feeding into what I’m looking for but for their benefit. Then I started getting fed crack—at 12! It made me feel like, “WHOA! I’m invincible.” 

At 16, I finally went to Vegas. I was out there hoing, getting pimped out. I started using meth in prison, with needles, over and over. I got an abscess to my spinal cord. I woke up paralyzed. 

You know, what people don’t realize, what people go through and they judge you by the exterior. But they don’t know. Like me, I’m educated. I can’t spell that great, but I can read! I love to read. I’m not a Bible thumper, but there’s someone out there higher than myself. 

My dad died of a diabetic coma…he died in his sleep.  I lost him in 2007. 2014, my mom got murdered. At that time, I’m a 20-something: in jail, a stubborn asshole. Thinking my mom didn’t love me. I was still that hurt little girl. But then she got murdered and it was too late for me. I never got a chance to say I love you, I apologize, I do care. Because I was so stubborn! It was too late.

If it wasn’t for me running away, what would I do? I would be so much different.

I’ve actually introduced myself to fentanyl. I’ve overdosed like 15 times. Now I’m just feeding an addiction. I’ve been trying to wean myself off of it, but I can’t let it go. It’s very easy to overdose. It’s very easy to mistakenly do too much. Within the last year, I’ve had like 100 plus die. I thought I’d be dead before. If you go down this walk, on the wall, you see all the memorials on the wall. RIP Wicked. RIP Ponytail. RIP this, RIP that. 

What do I do now? I’m 44. I have a 20-year-old son. I never intended to get pregnant. He’s like, “I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what you’re going through, I just want my mom.” That’s basically my life. Like I said, if I was on my own two feet, I would have everything. But it’s hard. It’s so hard.

Georgeann Ayers

Don’t let them fall so far. Come on. But take the people who have been there and had to fall far and use them as employees. Pay them. Don’t pay these third-party places that come out and give you a shower with an attitude or take care of the bathroom and all they do is sit on their ass all day. These people are ridiculous. Or count you like cattle. Those people are ridiculous too.

It’s so hard. I’m ashamed to be a homosapien right now. I am ashamed that we’ve gotten to this point. It’s rare to find people who have empathy.

This documentary project was produced with support from the California Health Care Foundation and is intended to serve as a companion piece to the UCSF Benioff Homeless and Housing Initiative’s California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness.

In August, photographer Michael Friberg visited the picket line to talk to some of the writers and actors showing up day in and day out to make their voices heard. Here’s what they told him.

These interviews have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Akeem Mair

“With everything going up, actors cannot survive on their craft alone.”

There are certain actors in the 10 percent who are making extremely great money, and then there’s the other 90 percent who are living paycheck to paycheck or working two to three jobs on the side. With streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, actors’ residuals or pay scale is far less than television or film in the theaters. With everything going up, actors cannot survive on their craft alone, they need other income to support themselves—while the studio and executives are making crazy amounts of money. I’m not envious nor hate them for that, they’ve earned their incomes. I just wish the studio executives cut back on their pay to supplement those who are suffering. This also applies to the actors scoring 15 million dollars on a project where 10 million is good enough and give the extra 5 million to the actors who are not making enough.

The same SAG contract pay scale is not enough. Unfortunately, we are living in expensive times which requires those above us to give back more to those on the bottom—or risk a total collapse of the industry.

Adrian Dev

“It’s all about the transparency.”

It’s just…it’s just embarrassing when you’re getting checks for residuals that are like $0.13 and $0.30, over and over again.

And, you know, with AI and all that, it’s crazy. We worked on Obi-Wan Star Wars show and me and a bunch of us got scanned. We have no idea what it was for. I was just like, if Ewan McGregor is doing it and Hayden [Christensen]’s doing it, you know, you’ve got Obi Wan and Darth Vader scanning. It wasn’t like they were just grabbing random extras. It was like lead cast. I was like, okay, whatever. But it’s hard to say what they’re going to do and what they can do. 

It’s all about the transparency. There just needs to be more transparency, on the streaming side specifically, with residuals and even with the tech that they’re using with AI. It’s ridiculous. You don’t know what they’re going to do with your likeness or, you know, if you’re ever going to see that money that they’re clearly going to get something from, you know?

Natalie Stavola and Vannessa Vasquez

“You shouldn’t have to be a huge celebrity or kill yourself hustling in order to survive and feed your family.”

Natalie: I was always told that you could be a working actor and make a living—support yourself, your family, build a career around what you were passionate about without having to be an A-list celebrity. I believed that. I joined SAG in 2013 and that was true back then, there were residuals. You had to work hard to get on a SAG project, but it was worth it.

Right after I joined, more projects and commercials turned non-union, cut corners. New media came out to keep up with the changes in the industry, but really what happened was more people were getting on projects that were underfunded or were able to barely pay actors. 

I went from jumping from project to project, making money to support myself, to having to go back into waitressing, and then ultimately now having an entirely new career; I’m a life and dating coach for men, and full-time filmmaker in an industry that’s being shackled by greed and bad deals. I thought that you still just had to work hard and once you were more successful in the industry, then you’d see more money. It absolutely broke my heart to finally see that leads of TV shows on streaming platforms are making less money in residuals than when I did a co-star on Burn Notice.

I strike because you shouldn’t have to be a huge celebrity or kill yourself hustling in order to survive and feed your family.

Vannessa: I was lead actor one of Hulu’s first original series for 4 years, from 2014-2018. We didn’t make enough to even pay our rent and never saw a single residual. I tried to speak up about the unfairness of it all and was received with the news that my character was getting killed off—even though I was number one. They said it was a financial studio decision between me and my male lead.

It was a very painful experience to work so hard for a show and not even be able to pay rent.

Starla Heinz

“SAG gave me grace. More grace than the world did.”

I am a San Francisco native. I love my city—however, sometimes, the things you love are not good to you. At 16 years old, I found myself homeless, living out of a shelter on Harrison Street. The shelter was proud of me for going to school while living in the homeless shelter so they relocated me to Southern California. Society thought I would be the next biggest screw-up. I was determined not to prove society right.

SAG treated me like family and never closed their doors on me or my dreams. As a stand-up comedian and actress, I believe SAG gave me grace. More grace than the world did. At this time SAG is standing up for the rights for all of my counterparts. We deserve to be heard and we all deserve a seat at the table without the feeling of someone looking at us like we are invisible or homeless. Like I felt many times on the streets as a teenager.

Sydney Baloue

“I was out on the picket line on Day 1 because my guild showed up for me.”

I’m so grateful to the WGA for my health care and for protecting my wages as a TV writer. It’s a massive shift from the world of reality TV where writers (“producers”) are not protected at all and exploitation is rampant. I was out on the picket line on Day 1 because my guild showed up for me. It only made sense for me to show up for them in return.

Since being on the picket line with my fellow writers and actors, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to come together with so many trans and non-binary writers to clap back at the exploitative practices happening in our industry, especially as it relates to trans and non-binary storytelling. I helped organize the #TransTakeover at Netflix on May 18. The stakes are different. We tell stories that literally save lives. TV, film, and media as a whole has the power to change the way people think.

As the ACLU reports, there are 492 [now 496] anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation in this country. So much vitriol has been aimed at trans youth, we know that our stories are needed, not only for entertainment but also to restore humanity to those young people out there who feel like they have no hope and that no one understands them or cares. For us trans and non-binary writers, our “diverse” stories are often the first to get cut after these mega-corporate mergers as we are labeled as dispensable and “too niche.” Considering how the numbers are trending our way (1 in 5 Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+), exec talk is what it has been for a minute: cheap and full of hot air. Storytelling is our most powerful weapon to fight hate. I’m glad to be a warrior on the front lines fighting the good fight for my guild, for myself, and for the trans youth out there. There is no place to go but up from here.

Christopher Encell

“I’m striking to protect us from the AI bots who think they’re funnier.”

I’ve been very fortunate to have the career I’ve had. After years of being an assistant, I landed my dream writing job at The Good Place. While I was (this can’t be said enough) very lucky to get that job and somehow stay employed over the years, I kept hearing seasoned veterans tell me that things were very different prior to Netflix and shortened seasons. Residuals could carry you from year to year.

Now, you have to get multiple jobs per year, which can be quite difficult to come by. With shortened seasons, you get even less experience.

Here’s an example of a lot of young writers today: Imagine you land your dream job. You get to work on a cool new 10-episode series. You might work between 10 and 20 weeks on this show. In that time, you break stories and write scripts. Then, because the studios don’t find younger writers necessary in production or post, you are now unemployed and must find another job. The showrunner, and maybe one other person, stays on to table the scripts, re-write them, go into production, and then edit the episodes.

While these all sound like different things from being a writer—they all fall under the umbrella of writing. I know a lot of writers who have never seen a set or been inside an editing bay. I myself didn’t get into an editing bay until I was a supervising producer.

So I’m striking to make sure future writers have the skills to do the job long after me. Also, I’m striking to protect us from the AI bots who think they’re funnier.

Naledi Jackson

“We’re looking just for a little bit of fairness.”

I’ve been a WGA member since 2020. I’m also a member of the Writers Guild of Canada. I moved here from Canada to work on a few shows like Outer Range on Amazon Prime.

The WGA is asking for two percent of the studio’s profits—it is not very much. I do feel like we deserve a living wage. I am also very much striking for regulation over AI. Keeping the human aspect of storytelling is very important.

I wasn’t around for network TV. Now, as it moves to these platforms, writers still aren’t getting residuals that reflect opportunities at the studios. I really feel that needs to change. There are caps on our salaries, whereas we’re seeing massive profits on the studio side. We’re looking just for a little bit of fairness.

Barry Brisco

“Actors that you see on television every day—that you think are banging out here in Hollywood—are driving for Uber.”

I literally have just got a residual check in the mail yesterday that was for $0.46. I mean, it costs more to mail it. It’s going to cost me even more money to drive to the store to cash that check. What the hell is that?

Look at the streaming. Look at everything that’s going on. I just did a Netflix show. They had me get dressed and they said: Before you go eat, go get scanned. I had no idea what that meant. But then when I looked all the stars of the show are standing there, I’m just like…you lead, follow, or get out of the way. There’s a hundred cameras in there. Put your feet on the little yellow things like you are at the airport. Cameras go up and down. Now, I no longer own my image? Nobody asked my permission. I didn’t sign anything for that.

There’s nobody in Los Angeles any summer. Why? Because they’re in the Hamptons. They’re in Paris. They’re in France. They’re on their yachts. We’re sitting here going: Oh, my God, what the F- are we going to do? When is work going to come back?

Actors that you see on television every day—that you think are banging out here in Hollywood—are driving for Uber, are delivering for GrubHub, are walking dogs for Wag. They’re doing whatever they possibly can do to pay their bills.

I’m working and I’m not a kid. People think that I’m in the position, like…they see me on shows. And they think that I have money. And I’m very grateful. But no, no, no, sweetheart. I didn’t make any money. I can’t loan you any. Don’t send me a cash app. I’m just an actor.

Liz Pullano

“If your business model necessitates not paying your employees a decent wage, then it’s not a great model.”

I feel our strike is emblematic of labor problems as a whole in this country, where those at the top are rewarded while most everyone else is barely getting by or not at all. If your business model necessitates not paying your employees a decent wage, then it’s not a great model.

And now, thanks to streaming, media consolidation, and corporate greed (among many other things), those of us who create all of the wealth in the industry are being turned into gig workers who struggle to get by. As a WGA writer, I’m fortunate to have a union to join the fight for fairness. That’s really all we’re asking for—fairness.

Emily Kincaid

“This isn’t just about actors and writers. This is about the majority of people.”

I’m really impressed by all of the actors coming out and being really honest about what they’ve been paid for shows. In Hollywood, it’s kind of the whole fake-it-till-you-make-it vibe. I get it. That’s what you all have to do, you know? But people are coming out and saying, “I had a series regular last year and three guest stars and I still didn’t make enough to get insurance.” [The threshold to qualify for] insurance is only $26,000. We should all be able to get there. And we’re not.

It’s really shocking. People, faces and names that you know, they’re coming out saying like: “I don’t have enough to pay my mortgage.” So it’s surprising. But, you know, I’m appreciative of the honesty of the transparency. The transparency, I think, is helping everyone realize we really are in this together, and we’re not as far apart as we may have once thought. 

We had the hotel union down here last Friday. This Friday Starbucks is going to be here. This isn’t just about actors and writers. This is about everyone. This is about the majority of people. You know, the not one percent that’s making money for this huge company and are not living an easy life. We all have multiple jobs and we shouldn’t have to. 

Jordan Morris

“The fact that these companies would shut down a whole industry over two percent of their profits is just insane to me.”

I’ve been a WGA writer since 2008. I got my guild card from a writing job on a Comedy Central late-night show called @Midnight. I feel so lucky to get paid to write, but the business side of our industry is getting steadily worse. Pay is going down while corporate profits are up. It’s not just lower pay when you land a job but smaller writing room sizes, which mean there’s fewer jobs to go around.

The statistic that I keep going back to is that it would cost these companies around two percent of their profits to give the writers everything they’re asking for. The fact that these companies would shut down a whole industry over two percent of their profits is just insane to me.

I’m striking not just for myself and my peers, but for future writers who want to make a living with their art. The fact that studios refuse to bargain when it comes to AI portends a depressing future where writers are just there to spell check barfed-out AI scripts. Creativity will suffer and the end products will suffer. If you love TV and movies, a future where all we get is AI scripts should bum you out.

I love writing for a living and I love my WGA community. Hopefully, the studios can see past their bottom line and give hard-working creatives their piece of the pie.

Rell Battle

“I think people see TV and assume they’re all rich. That’s just not the case.”

I qualify for insurance. I’m one of the lucky ones. For my brothers who aren’t in a position, where they can’t qualify, I was there five or six years ago. So, I think it’s important for me to show face.

I think people think because it’s Hollywood, everybody’s Tom Cruise. About one percent are living off of their work. So, most people aren’t getting as much as your son or daughter in a mall, you know? I think people see TV and assume they’re all rich. That’s just not the case. 

Sachin Bhatt

“One of the things we’re fighting for is to get a lock on AI.”

One of the things we’re fighting for is to get a lock on AI. It seems like a scary thing, but part of it is we can’t use my likeness in perpetuity. You can’t use it without my permission and you need to be compensated. I think that’s part of the fight is to protect ourselves from what could happen. It shouldn’t be you do the one job and then it gets to live somewhere forever and we don’t get compensation for that. That’s our work. That’s my work that’s out there and I should be able to make money off of that.

Kenneth Davitian

“This is what I want to do. This is what makes me alive.”

I’ve been a member of SAG since 1990. I was out here in 2008. I’m 70 years old and I’m out here again.

I’ll tell you one thing an AI can’t do: I don’t think it can resolve a problem that’s on the set. Somebody says something wrong and you say something right and then tell them what they’re wrong is, and we keep going. I don’t think AI has got a soul. It’s only something to save money for people who have a heck of a lot more money than I do.

The problem is the salaries of actors. I’m talking about extras and I’m talking about co-star guest stars. They have not risen as much as inflation has. People are like, “Oh, come on, you’re an actor. You’re a millionaire.” No, if it wasn’t for residual checks, I’d have a real big problem. We get paid and then we don’t work for six months. That’s the hard part. Actors say that it takes 300 days to get a job doing 65 days of work.

I have a theater degree. This is what I want to do. This is what makes me alive. So if I can’t do it and they’ve got something that looks like me, it’s going to ruin a lot of lives.