I had been planning to write Part 2 of my somewhat premature retrospective on the strike, and in that essay (still forthcoming), I had intended to be somewhat complimentary.

Yup. And then…

…I, along with everyone in the WGAw and WGAE, received an email from Patric Verrone. You can read the full text of the letter here, but I’ll excerpt the worst of it below.

In the face of enormous personal and financial hardship on the part of many, you sacrificed in the knowledge that your refusal to work would reap benefits not only for yourselves but countless others in the creative community, now and in the future. Your stalwart resolve paid off. Yet among the many there were a puny few who chose to do otherwise, who consciously and selfishly decided to place their own narrow interests over the greater good. Extreme exceptions to the rule, perhaps, but this handful of members who went financial core, resigning from the union yet continuing to receive the benefits of a union contract, must be held at arm’s length by the rest of us and judged accountable for what they are – strikebreakers whose actions placed everything for which we fought so hard at risk.
The letter goes on to link to a page with the names of all the writers who went FiCore during the strike. Not the writers who went FiCore before the strike…or the writers who’ve gone FiCore since the strike…just the ones that really piss Patric off.

You see, we’re all in this together…or else.

Now, if you adhered to the strike like I did or like every writer I know did, you feel a natural antipathy to people who didn’t. And yet, as a pragmatist, I must ask…if a handful of soap opera writers went FiCore (and they did)…well…so what?

Electing to become a financial core non-member is a legal right available to all union members, enshrined by a United States Supreme Court decision. It is as non-criminal an act as opting to become a union member. We don’t have to like it, but must we now publicly shame, humiliate and punish those who opted for this? To what end? What are we achieving here? Is this a warning to the rest of us? Or is it merely an opportunity to smugly shower the impassioned mob with traitor’s blood?

These writers were frightened and intimidated, no doubt, by their corporate employers. These writers have not made millions of dollars screenwriting like many of our WGAw Board Members. Nor have they made millions running television shows like many of our WGA Negotiating Committee Members. I do not approve of what they did, but I’ll be damned before I judge them and their circumstances without knowing them, their families or their extenuating circumstances.

No such scruples for the man who “sleeps the sleep of the just.” Here is Patric’s institutional declaration that these people are “puny.” Here is his demand that we “hold them at arm’s length” for all time.

If Patric could throw stones via email, no doubt they’d be whistling toward those daytime writers right now.

Nietzsche wrote, “Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” Indeed. This letter is an unnecessary kick to the face of people whose punishment ought to be the weight of their own consciences. They pose no threat to us…unless, like Patric, you believe that any show of disloyalty is enough to bring the whole godforsaken house of cards down around us.

The word “blacklisting” keeps cropping up. There are obvious differences between this letter and the blacklists of the 50′s. The blacklists involved the government and prison. This ain’t that by a long shot. And yet, the public exposure, the thinly-veiled exhortation to not hire these people, the list of names and the accusation of disloyalty and treachery…made by the powerful against those making unpopular but legal choices (communism, ficore)…is born of the same human frailties that led to the blacklists of the 50′s.

Paranoia and fundamentalist zeal.

What an embarrassing and sad day for our union. This letter isn’t something that will destroy us. It’s just a stain. An ugly, unnecessary stain.

I’m not the only writer with a strong opinion about this letter. You can read John August’s thoughts here and Lee Goldberg’s here. I’ve also offered this space to others who wish to voice their feelings. Most have done so under their own names. A few were concerned about reprisals and wished their thoughts to be anonymous. Hard to blame them.

Their opinions are their opinions, just as mine are mine. I post them here, in the hopes that a public protest might achieve precisely what loyal opposition is intended to achieve: accountability and improvement.

That might be one of the creepiest emails I’ve ever received. I’m surprised a professional writer wrote it, much less the President of our guild. We’re blacklisting people now? Count me out. – Derek Haas
I guess our union isn’t really as strong as Patric and David have said it is. I guess the truth is, in order to hang together, we need to resort to small minded tactics to scare our membership into acting as one. Reasoned debate and tolerance for other opinions are now considered either weak or outright treasonous. Members exercise their legal rights and are singled out as traitors. Yet irresponsible plateheads make gross misstatements about our health coverage during the strike and go unpunished (while those who speak out are asked to leave). It’s sad that a mere 50 some years later, the WGA would be using the same tactics and rhetoric as HUAC. How does publishing this list help anything? It only hurts and makes us all look “puny.” – Scott Frank
Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo. It was wrong then. It’s wrong now. – Greg Strangis
Patric and Michael are encouraging a blacklist of sorts. While they do not overtly ask the rest of us to avoid hiring or working with those writers who have gone fi-core, it is clear that their goal is to make it impossible for these individuals to stay employed. As someone who was on the picket lines, obeyed all strike rules, and put my pencil all the way down, in other words, as a guild member in good standing who sacrificed in all the ways I was asked, I find Patric and Michael’s letter totally offensive, embarrassing and without regard for context or history. Witch-hunts are always bad. Institutional witch-hunts always redound against the institution in the end. Let’s reject this ill-timed, ill-advised missive and move forward with a more united, hopeful and pragmatic guild. – Brian Koppelman
One might have suspected that Comrade Verrone – a comedy writer – would have been more sensitive to the irony of his guild, which through its Written By magazine so frequently reminds us of the dark days of McCarthyism, now taking such pleasure in the publication of its very own blacklist. – Gary Whitta
This is a goon move, another in a long line of dim thuggery that has come to define our guild. The insane righteousness of these bullies provide an interesting contrast to the limp, puny deal they managed to achieve. – Larry Doyle
Patrick and Michael, your recent email has given me the bends. I voted for the strike. I walked. I was “force majeured” out of my pilot—but always felt on the righteous side. When your choices of action were questioned, I’d take a moment to wonder if I could do better, and never felt certain I could. You were navigating so many fronts, with such high stakes… But this was easy. You don’t do this! At a time when we need to be creative and re-seed a barren landscape, you don’t try to aim us at those who chose to do something that is, in fact, legal. You don’t suddenly act in the vindictive style of the very people we were struggling against. I am not in THIS together with you. – Michael A. Ross
I feel like we’re being invited to set up stocks in the public square. Not writing for 100 days didn’t make me “courageous.” Nor did it empower me to peer into my fellow-writers’ souls and shun them for acts of conscience, whim, or desperation. – Brian Horiuchi
I know that a union has rules, and it must enforce them to be effective. However, the release of this list is not necessary to that effort, and instead seems only a petty, and pointless, act. In opting to go ficore, the listed writers were making a choice allowed under the WGA’s rules. It’s petty to publicly shame these few serial writers while many people who actively scabbed during the strike will go unpunished. Efforts to prove scabbing have little chance of being comprehensive or effective. Proof will be hard to come by. People were sneaky and in many cases left no paper trails. Most will get away with it. The WGA’s statement said that the daytime serial writers who went ficore are enjoying the gains from the strike without having had to suffer the pain of the work stoppage. But the WGA allowed many writers to go back to work during the strike under its interim agreements with various companies. Despite how the WGA tried to spin it, those agreements did not create leverage or pressure against the companies because they did not hold companies to the WGA’s proposed contract. They obligated the companies only to abide by a new agreement when one was reached. Writers under interim contracts went back to work while their WGA colleagues continued to suffer steep financial losses. They now enjoy the benefits of the strike without feeling the full losses that their fellow writers endured. It’s a strange and uneven justice that finds that situation acceptable but singles out the ficore serial writers for shunning. – Cheryl Heuton
Remember how the Guild refused to talk about Ficore during the strike? Dismissing it as a minor revolt by a few soap opera writers. Now screaming it from the heavens when it serves their purposes. – Don Rhymer
The recent decision by the WGAW and WGAE to publicize the names of WGA members who went financial core during the strike is appalling and shameful—and the most blatant example to date of how current Guild leadership attempts to achieve unity not through inspiration but intimidation. I was incredibly proud when I got my WGA card, but right now, I am embarrassed to be a member of a union that employs such reprehensible—and puny—tactics. – Denise P. Meyer
I’m not proud of these writers who abandoned their union in a time of figurative war. And I share in the frustration that they could do so with very little downside. But I don’t believe it’s the place of the guild to go out of their way to take the petty, vindictive, legally risky, morally dubious and historically tone deaf step of publishing an enemies list. These people didn’t make a dent in the guild’s ability to wage a work stoppage. Wouldn’t the smarter move have been to downplay their impact as negligible, rather than taking an action that suggests we were badly damaged by it? Lastly, if the goal is to discourage anyone from abandoning their union when it matters most, the comments here, on WA, on Nikki Finke, etc, suggest that this ill-advised move may have backfired, creating legions of members who suddenly find themselves questioning whether or not this leadership deserves their loyalty. It sucks that these writers went ficore. But at least, as they are stripped of voting rights, they no longer speak for me. Patric Verrone and the board the the WGAw, however, do speak for me. And I sure wish they could’ve been bigger about this. – Michael Gilvary
Long before I became a professional writer, I was aware of the fifties blacklist and the terrible impact it had on screenwriters. Long before I joined the WGA, I was aware of the Guild’s efforts to undo some of this damage by working to restore the names of blacklisted writers to many films of that era — and that work was one of the reasons I was proud to join the WGA. The day I joined, I felt I was in an organization that would fight against using a list to try to destroy careers—it never entered my mind that the Guild would someday create such a list itself. Today I’m just disgusted, amazed and ashamed that the WGA would stoop to such a tactic, betraying its own history and insulting the whole of the membership by suggesting they’d be willing to participate in this new “blacklist”. – Mike France
With apologies to Robert Bolt and T.E. Lawrence…So long as the WGA pits writer against writer, so long will they be a little union, a silly union – petty, barbarous, and cruel, as we are. – John Turman
I hope other, braver writers make wonderful points about that repugnant letter. For my own part, I’m worried that if I put my name, I’ll be in line for the next round of petty, pointless retaliation. – Anonymous
I was astonished to receive today Verrone’s directive to blacklist and ostracize those on his “enemies list”, to isolate them and bring them material harm. Going fi-core is not just their privilege but their right. Who is this Guild to sit in judgement of these people? Who among this list went fi-core out of financial hardship, having lost faith in Guild leadership and direction (and they were not alone, far from it) and who had children to feed? Who did not? Who knows for sure one way or the other? Verrone has turned this Guild into an organization of arrogant bullies. The attempt to intimidate and punish is sadly reminiscent of lists from another decade, of which we are all ashamed. And so I am ashamed of this action; I am ashamed of what this Guild has now come to represent: an organization that no longer protects its own, even if they disagree or stay, but is capable of eating and disowning its own. Like it or not, respect these fi-core writers’ decisions or not, they remain dues-paying members. Their inability to participate in any other way is isolation and punishment enough. Before today, I was not embarrassed to be a member of this Guild, which has good intentions, ambitions and purposes at its core. I disagree with much, even strongly, but embarrassment? Not yet. But I am embarrassed today. To those writers on that list, whatever their reasons, I apologize. And as for Verrone, he may like to claim — ad nauseum — on our behalf that we are all in this together. From today, he is wrong. In this, at least, count me out. This I want no part of. – Peter Landesman
I have served on a number of Guild committees, produced numerous events for the members (including three successful Writers Salons) and proudly supported my union throughout the strike – pencils down, no doubt. But this action crossed so many lines, I cannot continue to give my time to an administration with so little regard for its members. This morning, I resigned from all my committee activity. The decision was not between leaving those committees or not leaving, but between going financial core in protest or simply resigning all volunteer work until we have new leadership. It is not just this letter, it is everything it has represented about way this union has handled its business in the past year, from the call I got from my strike captain who knew I hadn’t mailed in my strike authorization vote yet (and for all I know, knew how I voted), to the wholesale distribution of members’ private contact info to other members throughout the strike, to the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” zeitgeist that was the very attitude that destroyed the reputation of our great nation worldwide. Just as I am not abandoning my country, but rather working from within the system to fix it, I will not abandon my union. It is a given that my resigning from two committees will not hurt Patric Verrone. If a hundred of me resign, it might; if a thousand, even better. A statement has to be made. This is not the union so many sacrificed so much to build. – Valerie Alexander
I wholeheartedly disagree with the choice of naming names of members going Fi-Core, and particularly take issue with the tone of Patric’s letter. I don’t understand how this is good for the WGA and while the WGA might possibly defend against the named assured lawsuits in a court of law, the court of moral authority will find all of us who make up the WGA guilty. If this was some kind of obtuse scare tactic to help SAG threaten their own members, it was not worth the price. Please cancel all my future issues of “Written By” that hail all the blacklisted writers of days gone by. The irony is too painful. – Michael Brandt
I can’t help but wonder: Why doesn’t the list include the names of everyone who went fi-core before leadership announced the strike was over? They no more shared in our adversity than those listed. But I guess leadership has no problem with them sharing in the victory of our new deal. True, a couple of them are high-profile, award-winning writer-directors-producers, but I can’t imagine that has anything to do with it. And if the list is intended to identify “strikebreakers”—those who went fi-core during the period we were ostensibly on strike against the AMPTP Companies in order to cross picket lines and work struck jobs—then why does it include the name of someone who works under the CBS Newswriters contract? Since the Guild was never on strike against the CBS News Division, how could anyone who works for them, fi-core or not, have crossed picket lines as a “strikebreaker”? Given Verrone and Winship’s own rationale for publicly identifying and disseminating the list, there’s no question that the selection of individuals on the list was arbitrary and discriminatory. Of course, the one thing all these people have in common is this: they dared to dissent with current leadership’s strategy for negotiating contracts, in the most effective way possible. And now they are being dragged around the public square, to be spat at and cursed by other writers, at leadership’s urging. Retaliation for the actions those members took during the 2007-2008 negotiation? Or warning to the rest of us in preparation for the strike of 2011? – Ted Elliott

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