organise + cheer

Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders as exploited workers, pushing back against Dead Internet Theory, Thai anti-fascist music, girlhood in Palestine and connecting Medieval witch experiences to UFOs.

illustration by Natasha Phang-Lee

reflections 🪞

Lessons in organising: How the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders won a 400% pay raise by Hannah Szeto

illustration by Naomi Gennery

This week I looked at this piece about how we can replicate the successes of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC), who self-organised and leveraged their labour power to achieve better working conditions.

Organiser and writer Hannah Szeto discusses this through the lens of Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts, which gives viewers a glimpse into how hazardous and demanding cheerleading actually is. The poor compensation for their work makes the conclusion of their eventual 400%(!) pay rise all the more satisfying, and is a call for workers of all industries to keep pushing for greater safety and security in the workplace.

save the cheerleader(s), save the world

This saga confirms to me that the exploitation of all workers knows no limits. Of course cheerleaders are workers, witness how fucking hard they work.

Perhaps unfairly overshadowed by the athletes they cheer for, cheerleading has a long (and very American) history, closely tied to American football and varsity sports. I didn’t fully appreciate the athleticism and physical pressure that goes into cheering until this article:

In addition to their low pay, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are professional athletes who undergo immense physical strain: it turns out that doing jump splits every week will wear down your hips, and in America’s Sweethearts, we see former cheerleaders in braces and crutches after getting hip replacements before they even turn 30.

cult classics

In addition to the physical risk associated with cheering, the issues of low pay, long hours, high pressure to perform, and poor job security are compounded.

Hannah writes that the series does a stellar job of contrasting the dedication that the DCC put into their work, and their treatment as workers. Footage of the elation and roars of the crowd, some who came specifically to a game to see them perform, later gives way to a bleak Zoom call where the cheerleaders react to a frustrating meeting with the Cowboys’ legal and HR representatives that made them feel undervalued.

The lack of care and support the management has given the cheerleaders is at stark odds with the joy that the performers bring fans. The difference couldn’t be more pronounced.

It’s interesting that freebies are offered by management to keep the cheerleaders sweet. In a classic capitalist move, the workers are provided with ‘perks’ for free due to corporate sponsorship: spray tan, haircuts, nail sets. But these niceties exist to merely enhance their physical appearance, largely for the male gaze, not nourish their financial woes. As Hannah puts it, “free botox does not pay the rent.”

To me, this reveals a fundamental contrast in how the owners of capital view the world, and how the rest of us do.

take your free pen and leave

To the owners of the Dallas Cowboys, including top dog Jerry Jones who is worth almost $18 billion, workers should feel lucky to have a job, and grateful for the surface-level extras they are afforded. Real, liveable wages and actual dignity at work are not fundamentals – a wealthy business owner would rather give the illusion of security than actually provide it.

Capital is all smoke and mirrors, perks are designed to keep you an obedient worker. Shiny things distract from questioning why you aren’t living as comfortably as you deserve to be.

Even the ‘glamorous’ job of a cheerleader – which in reality is an extremely intense and skilled athletic role – amounts to being a worker in someone else’s pocket. Only the collective action of unionising and organising with fellow workers, struggling towards liberation, can remedy the destructive whims of the owning class.

It’s a good thing that the docuseries and Hannah’s article has illuminated this so clearly. All workers can be organised. Welcome to the resistance, Dallas Cowboy Comrades.

~ Tommy

smirk of the week 😏

who wore it worse?

offbeat optics

Humans are being hired to make AI slop look less sloppy

How embarassing that we as a society use AI to try and get a cheap workaround for making an image or writing an article, only to have AI fuck it up so much we need to turn to an actual human to fix the mess. Yep, that’s happening.

This article is eye-opening in showing how AI is not a solution to genuine creativity. Fixing AI-generated shit is becoming an industry in itself, with artists and writers interviewed for this piece speaking about its impact on their business.

Sometimes, the AI-generated images that graphic designer Lisa Carstens is hired to correct requires only a few fixes. But at other points, the AI has bungled a logo idea so badly, she needs to basically start from scratch while staying true to the AI design for the client, which is a longer process than being commissioned to come up with an original design in the first place.

wys, link at Wobblig Emporum?

I think this line from Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer job site, sums up why AI-generated text is not comparable to the human experience: “I mean, the fastest way to get dumped is to send a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend and use ChatGPT to write it.” Speaking from experience?? But yes.

one thing to watch:

struthless – Alive Internet Theory

Highly recommend watching this video by YouTuber struthless to hear the ways he has dealt with screen / phone addiction as compared with drugs/alcohol. He calls for a radical transformation in our approach to using our phones and screens by retaining the community-focused aspects of the early internet but ditching the negative parts (the doomscrolling, being slaves to the algorithm, the endless numbness).

This is the countercultural idea of making the internet alive again, to push against the current of Dead Internet Theory – the notion that the majority of the internet is now bots, not real humans.

But there are of course real humans on the internet – so let’s connect with them in creative ways. struthless calls this an anti-establishment sense of radical optimism. Hope is punk. I couldn’t agree more.

one thing to groove to:

ackerlady – molam (หมอลำ) mix so mental it scares the hell out of government

With a title like that, how can you not listen to it???

This is a vibrant mix by ackerlady, a Thai leftist and self-styled Community Service DJ, which celebrates Molam, a traditional type of folk storytelling music from Laos and the Northeastern Thailand. What’s even greater than the music is the setting: ackerlady performs at an undisclosed protest camp which has just celebrated a workers’ victory.

This gives the whole set an optimistic feel. As she triumphantly writes in her Instagram reel about the mix, “Let's scare the fascists away with joy and happiness of the workers.”

Highly suggest checking out her other mixes on YouTube, which have incredible titles too, such as: solo garage mix by a touch deprived nerd, seduce you with intimate horror mix of techno and alternative rock, and jazz noir mix for yearning and bricked up.

It’s heartening to discover leftist music creators from all parts of the globe with a resonant message! ackerlady put it best: “I want you to know that in another corner of this earth there's always someone doing absolutely anything and working with whatever we have to curate immaculate vibes and find joy in our life.” 🥺

one thing to listen to:

Back From The Borderline – why medieval witches and modern alien experiencers are describing the same thing

I recently discovered this intriguing mental health (and much more) podcast by Mollie Adler. This episode of Back From The Borderline matches the phenomenon of medieval witch experiences with modern UFO encounters. She explores how these two share similarities with ancient shamanic practices, and are alike in being expressions of witnessing unexplainable incidents in the only cultural framework available at the time.

For 17th-century Scotland, the language of the unknown was witches, fairy queens and the devil. In the mid-20th century, during the advent of the space race, this was hyper-technological UFOs and alien abduction. These two share patterns and parallels, centuries apart, in a more convincing way than you may think.

This is a really fascinating listen, something definitely outside my usual areas of interest. All the more reason to dive in with an open mind!

one thing to read:

A Daughter of Pearl – Girlhood Exists in Palestine. You Just Have to Dig Under the Rubble to Find it.

Girlhood Exists in Palestine. You Just Have to Dig Under the Rubble to Find it.

A profoundly beautiful and personal account of the connection between girlhood and Palestine. The author Haya writes about visiting her ancestral home from California as a 12-year-old girl, and dealing with the contradictions of a land she knows, but not fully. This is especially pronounced as it was taking place during the 2014 violence and upheaval in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Entering the land of Palestine was like reuniting with your mother after a long day. She hugs you and doesn’t let go, squeezing tightly and whispering into your ear how much she has missed you. No matter how long it had been since the last time you connected, her warmth made up for all the missing days.”

Haya gains a semblance of control about her situation when she goes to the neighbourhood shekel shop with money from her mother, and buys herself Ruby Red nail polish, and eventually other colours, to give her this sense of girlhood in a land where they hear about death and destruction daily.

It’s a heartfelt exploration of how Palestinians cope with their erasure – in any way they can.

“Palestinians have this ability to coexist with death in a manner I've never seen replicated. To sell fruits hours after burying a loved one, to clean up the rubble of their house that was bulldozed or bombed, straightening the rug, sweeping the mess, and inviting people over for chai an hour later. Death was no dark-cloaked man with a pitchfork, surprising them; death was a neighbor. For some, it was a gift.”

one thing to do:

Support striking workers in your country!

• BRITAIN: Support outsourced cleaners at Ernst & Young fighting against redundancies

• BRITAIN: Support housekeepers at Radisson Blu Canary Wharf fighting against exploitative conditions

• BRITAIN: Support NHS facilities workers at St Helier and Epsom hospitals fighting for equal contracts as other NHS staff

• BRITAIN: Donate to the strike hardship fund set up by the IWGB Courier and Logistics Branch

• USA: Support Fenway Park concession workers striking for better pay and to protect jobs from automation

• USA: Support Venice Family Clinic workers fighting for fair pay

  

  source: Autonomous Design Group

bonus:

buy this fundraising postcard illustrated by long-time shado illustrator Rama Duwaji

100% of all sales will go to MedicAid for Palestine, a charity that works for the health and dignity of Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees.