Since we released Share or Die in print, we took down the sorting page with the linked table of contents. All the pieces are still up somewhere on the site, you just have to look a little bit to find them. But, since we believe in open access and such, here are five selected stories presented for your easy access. Enjoy, and check out Share or Die in stores now.
From Tom Judd's "Organizing the Precariat"
"What I encountered at the call center was similar to other nonprofits – an office filled with dedicated, capable young people who put up with low pay and no benefits in the name of making a difference. Most of the people I worked with were women in college or who had recently graduated. Like a number of non-profits I have worked for or observed, the supposedly social justice-oriented call center made a name for itself by providing a service to people in need, while throwing workers under the bus and in the process exploiting both the needy and the employee."
From Lauren Westerfield's "Flexible Lives, Flexible Relationships"
"'What are you doing these days?' they’d always ask, all smiles, expecting to be impressed. Did they not notice the sweatpants? The glasses? The grocery shopping in our wee tiny town on a weekday? All signs pointed to unemployment. 'Oh, I’m staying with my family right now,' I’d say calmly, feigning confidence and an implied visit rather than permanent residence. “I’m in-between things and taking a break to help mom out around the house.”
From Venessa Miemis's "Emergeny by Design"
"When that business flight landed in Berlin, I was greeted by Gabriel and Pati, an amazing couple and gracious hosts who immediately made me feel at home. Though I had the rented room they arranged for me, I ended up crashing many a night on their living room futon after intensive workdays on the project. We documented our activity for the public to follow those two weeks via videoblogs and tweets. We launched an online crowdfunding campaign to garner support from the public while we completed a project we had already committed to doing for free. We managed to raise around $6000 in just a few weeks."
From Liz Kofman and Astri Von Arbin Ahlander's, "Get on The Lattice"
"We poked around on the Internet and discovered that no American employer was going to grant a few years of parental leave anyway—they weren’t required to provide any at all, and the very best offered at most a couple of months, often to women only. What started with a few questions about combining parenthood with a career, snowballed into more and more questions about the day-to-day of corporate work culture in America—about flexibility (mostly rhetoric), about face-time (ubiquitous) about sick leave (not guaranteed) and vacation (an average of 10 days for the first 5 years)."
From Nine's, "Take It And Leave It: Inside The Pack of A Modern Nomad"
"Before I left Edinburgh, I was bored and frustrated, drinking too much and behaving badly, and I think it's better to see the world and go home only when I can be certain I won't return to more of the same. Meantime, I'm happy most of the time with what I'm doing and where I am, and appreciate the connections I get to forge along the way."
