{"id":6819,"date":"2020-01-25T11:05:40","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T16:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=6819"},"modified":"2020-02-12T10:31:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T15:31:35","slug":"writers-love-freedom-or-why-ab5-has-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/writers-love-freedom-or-why-ab5-has-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers Love Freedom, or: “Why AB5 Has To Go.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the text of my speech at the #RepealAB5 Rally on January 24, 2020, in West LA. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I AM A WRITER.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grab ideas out of the air and pin them down, with words, in space and time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And writing changes your brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean that\nliterally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my\nsymptoms: I remember my dreams. Every night, at least three or four dreams. In complete\ndetail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I know\nwhy I remember them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s because dreams are the world of ideas, and archetypes, and symbols. It\u2019s the world where time doesn\u2019t exist. The past is now. The dead live. <\/strong>The dead are as vivid and real as you are here, now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019ve worn away the veil between that world and this one. I\u2019ve worn it thin, from a lifetime of moving back and forth between these two worlds, in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

… Or maybe it\u2019s not me, that does the moving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I\u2019m hitching a ride on Hermes. You know Hermes, right? He\u2019s the Greek god with the wings on his sandals. His job was to carry messages back and forth between humans and the gods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He carries\nmessages to us from the world of ideas, and archetypes, and symbols, and the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No surprise: Hermes is the god of writing …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something else that is no surprise: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers love\nfreedom.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you\nspend your time flying with winged sandals and talking to the dead, you learn\nsome interesting things about what it means to be free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have my\nstory about AB5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve lost work because of AB5.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have my\nstory about freelancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About how I\u2019ve always freelanced, because that\u2019s what writers do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About how when I walked away from full time salaried work and started to freelance full time, I tripled my income. <\/strong>I came into my own as a professional, respected working woman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yeah, the\nidea that words\u2014some else\u2019s words\u2014can mess with that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It pisses me off. It pisses me off!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019ve been listening, very carefully, to the people who support AB5. I\u2019ve been listening as a writer. And I\u2019ve read the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#AB5 a piece of “writing.”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Quite the piece!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5896 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(By the way? The Constitution of the United States \u2013 which comes to us [thank you, O Hermes!]<\/em> from the dead<\/strong> \u2013 is 4558 words…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why do I care about the length of AB5? Why mention that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my favorite quotes about writing is from the historian David McCullough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo write is to think. And to write well is to think well.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hmmmm…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all agree\nthere are ideas out there\u2014ideas related, somehow, to AB5\u2014that are good ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody should be exploited. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a very, very good idea. (\u201cNobody should be exploited\u201d is four words, by the way.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone deserves fair compensation. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Also a good idea. (Also four words!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a\nsentence from AB5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In circumstances which are in essence the loan of an employee from one employer to another employer wherein direction and control of the manner and means of performing the services changes to the employer to whom the employee is loaned, the loaning employer shall continue to be the employer of the employee if the loaning employer continues to pay remuneration to the employee, whether or not reimbursed by the other employer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What the fuck. (That\u2019s the writer in me, talking…) What the serious <\/strong>fuck …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said a\nminute ago: writers know something about freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because\nthere\u2019s nothing more free than darting around the world of ideas on your winged\nsandals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But writers also know that, in this world, words are used to imprison people.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that writers are often on the front lines of wars. Or that they are often among the first to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers want to be free. Writers want YOU to be free. <\/strong>And when it comes down to it, to push and to shove, we will fight to keep you free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But maybe you\u2019re thinking, AB5? It\u2019s not about freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me put\nit this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you wish, sometimes, that life was simpler? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we all do. I think we all know, in our heart of hearts, that things really should <\/em>be simpler. And technology. Globalization. All those 21st<\/sup> century \u201cisms\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They don\u2019t change what\u2019s real.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in our heart\nof hearts, we know that. Because in our heart of hearts, we know that our true\nhome is anchored in the world of ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\nworld resolves to only a few, simple things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love. Family. Peace. Joy.<\/p>

Suffering … Redemption.<\/p>

Longing … Fulfillment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So why do we\nsubmit to so many complications?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” wrote the poet William Butler Yeats. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst  \/ Are full of passionate intensity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that … us?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have we abandoned\nthe convictions that we, as Americans \u2013 as Californians \u2013 as humans – once held\nso strongly about the things that really matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have we let \u201cthe\nworst\u201d wear us down? Confuse us? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not\nabout politics.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is not about the left, or the right. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1981, in his introduction to Unamerican Activities, <\/em>a compilation by the PEN American Freedom to Write Committee, PEN coordinator Geoffrey Rips wrote about writing and freedom and control. \u201cA government intent on controlling the economic and social realities of a country,\u201d he said, must manipulate the written <\/em>perception of those realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And look at\nus, 39 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst,\nwith their passionate intensity, are burying us with crazy words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re\ndumping this crazy pile of words on us. And we\u2019re scrambling to try to\nunderstand them. To make sense of them. To react to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an awful thing. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To go from what we once were, to a people governed by awful, mixed-up, crazy words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To wake up one morning and learn that some rough beast, its hour come round at last, is slouching toward us to be born. That because of some word salad written by lawyers, that living you were earning? That business you built?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disappeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had no interest in becoming political. I had no interest in becoming an activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But writers? We know what freedom is.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that\nfreedom begins with ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clear ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas truest\nto your heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My story is\nonly one, small story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But AB5 is not small. AB5 is monstrous.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\ngovernment overreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the\nopposite of freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\nunAmerican.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AB5 has to go.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the text of my speech at the #RepealAB5 Rally on January 24, 2020, in West LA. I AM A WRITER. I grab ideas out of the air and pin them down, with words, in space and time. And … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775,3],"tags":[1760,1780,1783,1778,1776,1779,1781,442,1782,1085,241],"class_list":["post-6819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ab5","category-writing","tag-ab5","tag-freedom","tag-geoffrey-rips","tag-pen-american-freedom-to-write","tag-repeal-ab5","tag-the-second-coming","tag-unamerican-activities","tag-wb-yeats","tag-william-butler-yeats","tag-writers","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6849,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions\/6849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}