CAROLINE MCMANUS
Writer + Artist
My work predominantly focuses on inequality, and how technology impacts both labor and life. My written and video work has been featured in the Cleveland Review of Books, Polyester Magazine, the San Francisco Daily Journal, Oakland North, KTVU, Teen Vogue and NHDocs.
2023 resident for generative literature composition. Residents must produce a 100,000 word work within a duration of 5 days.
My forthcoming book, ANAMNESIS, produced during the residency, is an experimental, 6-part quasi-journalistic process to synthesize and interrogate the form of participatory oral tradition in the age of AI.
Cleveland Review of Books
Instead of cooperating with the labor market, how about circumventing it completely, and refusing any potential confrontation with its whims? Which raises the question, do SAHGFs represent a peregrination back to 1950s housewifery, with the focus on aesthetics and maintaining a manicured appearance?
10 million Americans with disabilities, including many in the Bay, can't keep more than $2,000 in their bank account without losing their income AND healthcare. What are they supposed to do to prepare for a pandemic? Or a car repair?
Seniors who are too poor to retire, and for whom Social Security benefits can't support the cost of living in the Bay Area, have been working throughout the pandemic, often in service and care jobs.
The average wage grew so much, and so fast, because millions of the lowest paid workers lost their jobs. One such worker, Luiz Morales, picks up cans around her San Francisco neighborhood after her shift as a cook to pay the bills.
Some of California’s 300,000 teachers, all of whom are included in the current 1B vaccination phase, have already been vaccinated. But many teachers who haven’t, and their unions, say they don’t feel safe to return unless they’ve been vaccinated and schools improve ventilation.
"When we talk about justice and equity, disability is often left out, forgotten, or tacked on at the last minute," said Alice Wong, a San Francisco-based disabled activist, media maker and consultant. "We see this with a vaccine for California, but also across the state because there is no national plan—there is no funding. There clearly is not an infrastructure."
The current verification measures are inappropriately burdening innocent, unemployed taxpayers caught up in the fraud investigation. When an unemployed person’s application is flagged, it could mean that they enter an administrative nightmare with no money, and no end in sight.
Many Uber drivers report making below minimum wage, and when people cannot get full-time work, they are sometimes pushed into gig work as the only available option.
Unemployed Californians may be surprised to learn that benefits are taxable. Many people are confused about the tax opt-in system, and many more report that they simply can’t afford to put aside any money when they don’t have enough to begin with.
“I, myself, use a ventilator, but am very afraid that the healthcare supplier is going to tell me that they need it and take it back,” said Stacey Park, an organizer with the Disability Justice Culture Club in Oakland. “And I've already been coming up with plans around what I'm gonna do if that happens.”
During public school closures in the Bay Area, many of which will last through April, families with children who depend on school meals will have access to packaged breakfasts and lunches to pick up at local sites.
Since the rule was announced in late 2018, it has caused immigrants, most of whom are not affected by the public charge rule, to unenroll from their benefits or fail to apply, despite demonstrated need. For recipients or prospective applicants of CalFresh, the chilling effect has caused immense confusion, fear and anxiety.
Countless service employees are uncertain where to turn after losing their incomes, or what a long-term contingency plan will look like.
Although food insecurity—the formal term for being unable to reliably access and afford nutritious food—is on the decline in California, it’s on the rise for senior citizens.
Profiles a classically trained chef named Paul Correnty who provides an innovative model of feeding children at a public school cafeteria in Massachusetts. Accepted into NHDocs, New Haven's documentary film festival.
On a law firm in Oakland that handles psychological injury cases, and finds a large number of clients via their ownership of the domain name www.sexualharassment.com.
Multimedia report on the organization's Audio Academy, which taught non-visual DJ methodology.