“Our labor analytic…is not just about artists and writers,” Ross says. “It’s about the folks who are building and maintaining and operating the infrastructure for those forms of expression…. The root principle is that freedom of artistic expression or academic expression is incomplete right, it is a flawed right if it’s enjoyed at the expense of these other workers’ rights.”

There’s no blueprint for activism, but rather an impulse to recapture and rebrand cultural capital from below, so all workers can wield culture as a tool for dismantling social hierarchy, and building anew.

To that end, the new vanguard of creative laborers are constructing a new platform for protest as they go, and redefining the work of the artist, and the labor of creative protest, alongside workers of every stripe.

To read the rest of the article, visit The Nation.