A SUMMARY OF PART TWO OF "UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT"
- AAPF
- Apr 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Thank you to all of you who tuned into Wednesday's panel (which can be found here). We were so grateful for the quality and quantity of your input, and energized by our panelists’ discussion. It was an informative and impassioned 90 minutes. We are busy preparing this week’s episode -- please mark your calendars for Wednesday at 8 PM. You can register here.
In our second episode, Saru Jayaraman and Mily Treviño-Sauceda illuminated the impact of the current crisis on workers in the restaurant and agriculture industries. Jayaraman tracked the history of tip-based labor to the Reconstruction Era, when former slaves were forced to live entirely off tips thus prolonging their economic dependency on wealthy whites. The racialization of the minimum wage became even more glaring when Jayaraman identified that it was farmworkers and domestic workers, in addition to servers, who were excluded from even this small move toward a more egalitarian society during the New Deal.
Treviño-Sauceda built on these harrowing points, highlighting the particular marginalization of American farmworkers, many of whom are currently working in terribly unsanitary conditions, shoulder-to-shoulder, without a bathroom in sight as they toil under increased pressure from corporations. With 65% of farmworkers undocumented, they are largely unable to tap into the limited American social safety net, nor are they able to organize to secure their safety. These farmworkers epitomize the paradox of being “essential” while simultaneously expendable.
Naomi Klein elevated the precedent for the ways that government(s) are using this disastrous moment to push through legislation that would otherwise be roundly dismissed as dangerously authoritarian. She harkened back to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when pre-existing desires to privatize the city’s education system were realized in the midst of chaos. Likewise, in the midst of today’s mounting death tolls, we’re seeing a boon for fossil fuel companies, Silicon Valley, and the for-profit education sector.
Dara Baldwin deepened this critique of capitalism when she spoke of the cutthroat, Darwinian things happening in places like Alabama, Kansas, and Washington, which have coded profoundly ableist treatment rationing programs. Six states in total are setting up their hospitals to pick and choose who should be saved. As Executive Director Kimberle Crenshaw noted, “We’re allowing essential rights to be placed out on a market basis. [And correspondingly,] marginalized people are left out.”
Janine Jackson critiqued, among other things, the media’s “lives v. livelihood” debate that we’ve seen play out in the past week. She pointed to independent media sources -- like fair.org -- that present a more robust, critical framing of our politics and society.
The rest of the conversation -- a 40-minute chorus of essential, intersectionally informed voices -- can be found in the attached video.
Over the course of the conversation, several of the panelists and attendees shared valuable resources for these uncertain times. You can find the full series’ compilation of resources here, and this week’s below.
Resources from Dara Baldwin:
Social Media Hashtags: Hashtags to follow the work of Dara and other disability rights advocates
Treatment Rationing Lawsuit(s): Details on the current litigation in several states challenging treatment rationing
Resources from Saru Jarayaman
An emergency fund created to help provide cash assistance to restaurant workers, car service drivers, delivery workers, personal service workers and more who need the money they aren’t getting to survive.
Diners’ Guide showcases food establishments who take the “high road” to profitability, providing livable wages, paid time off, racial equity, an environment free of sexual harassment, and opportunities for advancement.
Resources from Mily Treviño-Sauceda
Emergency fund created to provide emergency assistance to farmworkers.
The panel’s broader argument about systemic inequality and visibility is compelling, especially in how it connects disability justice, labor rights, and economic exclusion under one framework. The idea that systems decide whose lives are prioritized is particularly powerful and unsettling, because it reveals how “neutral” structures are often value-laden. Visualizing these complex relationships can help make them more understandable and harder to ignore. That is where generative tools like Nano maker AI become relevant, as they can translate abstract social critique into images, video, and other media forms that make systemic patterns more visible.
The discussion of crisis-driven policy shifts, especially Naomi Klein’s points, effectively shows how emergencies can accelerate agendas that would otherwise face resistance. This framing helps explain why inequality often deepens during moments of disruption rather than easing. It also raises the issue of how information and narratives are shaped in real time, influencing public understanding. In that sense, tools that democratize expression and communication become especially relevant, such as AI song generator, which allows users to transform ideas into structured creative output more directly.
The critique of media framing around “lives vs. livelihood” is an important reminder of how narratives can oversimplify complex systemic realities. The panel’s emphasis on structural inequality rather than individual choice makes the argument much stronger and more grounded. It also highlights how collective coordination and shared responsibility are necessary to address systemic harm, not just isolated actions. That kind of coordination and role interdependence can be seen in basketball bros, where success depends on timing, positioning, and working within a shared system rather than acting alone.
This summary does an effective job of showing how policy exclusions—especially around farmworkers and domestic workers—are not gaps but deliberate structural decisions. The discussion of “essential yet expendable” labor is particularly powerful because it exposes how rules define whose contributions are fully recognized. That idea of structured advantage and constraint also appears in competitive systems where outcomes are shaped by design as much as skill. A similar dynamic can be seen in baseball bros, where strategy and rule-based positioning determine how opportunities unfold within the game.
The piece clearly highlights how deeply historical labor exploitation still shapes present-day “essential work,” especially in restaurant and agricultural sectors. The connection between Reconstruction-era labor systems and today’s wage structures is particularly striking, as it shows these inequalities were designed, not accidental. The urgency described in these working conditions also feels like a constant race against time, where survival depends on speed and endurance under pressure. In a very different way, that sense of timing and pressure can be seen in speed stars game, where performance is shaped by rhythm, precision, and how quickly one adapts to accelerating demands.