COLUMBIA
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2021:
M aya
B inyam 5 4
Passion Projects What’s the difference between freelance writers and gig workers?
by Maya Binyam Illustration by Richard A. Chance
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early forty years ago, in the fall of 1981, more than three thousand writers gathered at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel for the American Writers Congress. They had traveled from as far away as Florida, California, and Texas, and had arrived at the opening ceremony so early and in such great numbers that the event’s organizers, fearing overcrowding, linked arms to deny them entry. Panelists included Edward Said, Kurt Vonnegut, Andrea Dworkin, and Philip Agee, who phoned in from exile. Toni Morrison delivered the keynote address. Her speech served as the bellwether of a shifting labor force: something, in her estimation, was “very wrong.” A culture of individualism had
inculcated in writers a false sense of imperviousness; although they were treated by publishers as “toys, things to be played with by little kings who love us while we please, dismiss us when we don’t,” writers believed themselves to exist outside of market logic. “We may be dreamers or scholars, we may need tranquility or chaos––we may write for posterity or for the hour that is upon us,” Morrison said. “But we are all workers in the most blessed and mundane sense of that word. And as workers we need protection in the form of data: Who are we? And how many? What do we earn? What is earned off us? What are we entitled to?” Morrison’s questions had no obvious answers, but her message had been clear: writers would need to take stock. During the final days of
