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For writers, our work is not our reward; the amount paid for our work is the just reward. But getting people to understand or acknowledge that is uphill work, and my precarious position as a freelance writer also means that people have felt free to exploit me. When I first began my life as a writer, I was shocked to find that the most exploitative people are those embedded in the non-profit/social justice world. I once had the six-figure earning head of a domestic violence organization try to get me to write a grant proposal for nothing. I have had people change their minds about what they owed me after I had turned in the work, which is a delicate way of saying that I have been cheated out of my wages (and yes, that did drive home an important lesson about contracts). At a meeting of activists and organizers, I listened to a high-minded discussion about how the role of progressive media would be to engage more fully with the public on vital issues, and that no holds were to be barred in terms of everyone’s sacrifice. When I asked who would be paying the writers, all eyes turned to me as if I had dared to ask the cost of the china. Independently wealthy people, some with staggeringly large fortunes, dominate the publishing and foundation world, and they have no idea what it means to try to produce work while worrying about rent or food. Nevertheless, my question seemed, and still seems, a reasonable question: Writers provide the content that garners the advertising that keeps publishing alive. Why, then, are they the last and least to be paid? Why are writers made to feel like their work is only ancillary to the carpet and automobile advertisements in a newspaper, magazine, or website? Much of this exploitation has come at the hands of people who are deeply embedded in the arts/social justice world, who assume that their devotion to their causes justifies treating their workers like crap.