As workers across L.A. continue to strike, music uplifts the picket lines

Good morning. It’s Friday, Oct. 27. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

• As workers across L.A. continue to strike, music uplifts the picket lines
• Maine mass shooting leaves 18 dead
• The best agave bars in L.A.
• And here’s today’s e-newspaper

The sounds of L.A.’s strikes

Each day, Evan Shafran combs through KTLA, CBS, and FOX reports, trying to find news clips talking about the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“Hold onto your resolve,” Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president says in Shafran’s latest strike-themed mix. “This is our moment of truth.” The beats ramp up before the bass drops into another song.

Shafran has become the de facto DJ of the Netflix picket lines. Every morning, he drives 15 miles from his apartment in Shadow Hills to Sunset Boulevard and sets up his subwoofer in front of the company’s headquarters.

Picket lines are best known for chants and slogans. But as workers across L.A. went on strike this summer and fall, music became a consistent presence and pillar of morale for the writers, hotel workers and actors pushing for higher wages and better working conditions. Through music, striking workers have found community and their own subcultures.

“Otherwise, I’d be sitting at my house just sad and depressed and feeling helpless,” Shafran told me. “The music has saved me and I know that it saved a lot of other people.”

The DJ at Netflix

Shafran began DJing when he was growing up in Portland, Maine. A fan of artists like the Beastie Boys, the Roots, Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine, he credits rock and hip-hop as genres that have shaped his tastes in music. But more importantly, it’s hip-hop’s roots as a political movement that…