DUBAI: Actress Yara Shahidi took to Instagram this week to support her “peers,” the writers and actors who are taking part in the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @arabnews.lifestyle Hollywood writers and actors are striking about pay and working conditions. Meanwhile, the Hollywood’s Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Comcast’s NBCUniversal on Tuesday, accusing the company of blocking a picket area. The unions said NBCUniversal infringed its freedom to picket and endangered its members by obstructing a public sidewalk next to the company’s studio lot in California with an ongoing construction project. The WGA’s complaint said NBCUniversal “forced picketers to patrol in busy streets with significant car traffic where two picketers have already been struck by a car.” SAG-AFTRA said members had been forced “to picket at the unsafe crowded location, exacerbating the dire public safety situation to interfere with striking members’ right to engage in the protected, concerted activity of picketing and patrolling outside the employer’s premises during a lawful strike.” “PROTEST IS A FORM OF OPTIMISM,” the “Grown-ish” actress, who is Iranian American, wrote on Instagram. “I stand alongside my peers in SAG who hold a deep belief that more equitable solutions must be created to continue on.” She shared a short clip of her saying in an interview: “I think it’s so easy to be a pessimist and rightfully so, there is so much happening in the world that when you see somebody that isn’t being ignorant, isn’t not paying attention to the world, knows everything that is wrong with the world and still chooses joy and still chooses to be a force for good in any space, I think it really (allows us to rethink) how we can respond to what’s happening.” Hollywood actors joined film and television writers on picket lines for the first time in 63 years last week as they demanded higher streaming-era pay and curbs on the use of artificial intelligence. Actors Constance Zimmer, Lisa Edelstein and SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher were previously spotted on picket lines. Oscar-winning actor George Clooney also made comments to CNN earlier this week saying: “Actors and writers in large numbers have lost their ability to make a living. For our industry to survive that has to change.”