what you can do

The time has come to insist on an obvious but overlooked fact—artists are workers. They make things and perform services, just like other workers, and these goods and services have value—not merely in lofty spiritual terms but also in dollars and cents. Dana Gioia, Chairman National Endowment for the Arts. in Artists in the Workforce, 1990-2005

If you are an artist, it's almost a certainty that you will fall into the blue region represented above—that is, in the lower 90 percentile of wage earners in the US. Everyone deserves, and should demand, a living wage. Not just for artists but for everyone.