"Laid Off? Same!"
Clark Park
4300-4398 Baltimore Ave.
Philadelphia
Aug. 21, 2025
What is your unemployed friend doing on a Thursday at noon?
Hanging out in West Philly’s Clark Park, playing card games — and letting go about having been let go.
That’s, at least, what I found myself up to last week at “Laid Off? Same!” an event for the unemployed people of Philadelphia. The new social series gives positive shape to the often aimless experience of living without a steady job.
The event was organized by friends Sabrina Iglesias and Lou Balikos. Iglesias, a reporter who was recently laid off by her outlet, recalled “freaking out” during a recent hang with Balikos in Clark Park over the state of the journalism industry; she was part of a Slack Channel for journalists of color which reported anecdotes of “another journalist being laid off everyday.” What better way to deal with digital doom than getting together in-person with other people facing the same problem?
The gatherings are not about networking or job hunting; rather, they’re a respite from the lonely and unstructured reality of unemployment, and a chance to connect with other people enduring the same alienating hardship.
At “Laid Off? Same!” much went unspoken. This event aimed to make a positive space for the unemployed, ripe with friendship rather than the onslaught of dreaded questions we are often faced with. There was no “What do you do during the day?” or “What kind of jobs are you applying to?” Those questions are reserved for job fairs or awkward first dates. The state of being unemployed is that of trying to avoid those questions at all costs — and also asking yourself the same ones over and over and over.
As someone who was laid off a year ago, I found the meet-up a source of fresh friendship and levity. The facilitators made room for each of us — a group of around 10 — to talk about our individual experiences with getting laid off, which offered broader insight into the unfortunate state of Philadelphia’s job market right now. It was an emotional conversation that shifted into hours of drinking coffee, eating snacks and playing light-hearted games like Code Names and Cambio.
My own experience of unemployment has been long and unrelenting as a Disabled former teacher. Attendees connected over the similar reasons why we were laid off. Present at this event were: diversity fires (myself included), Philadelphians affected by cuts to arts programming, and people who resigned as they were pushed out of their positions due to budget cuts.
Someone sitting across from me during a game of cards described being pushed out of their job rather than outright fired; their position was “dissolved,” and they were asked to do “thrice the amount of work for around the same pay.” They reminded us all: “If you don’t get fired, your employer doesn’t have to pay severance.”
As with most diversity fires, many of us who attended this event can’t comment directly on where we worked and the messy details of how we got laid off. However, in speaking with journalists at the event, it was easy to connect the dots to a well known controversial lay-off that took place at The Inquirer earlier this year. Kiara Santos of The Philadelphia Tribune wrote about the Inquirer’s “move to shut down its Communities and Engagement desk, which resulted in the loss of several Black and Latino reporters.” In that article, Santos quoted a WHYY reporter as saying: “Talking to Black people is not revolutionary. It should be a regular thing.” Gabriel Escobar, the Inquirer’s editor and senior vice president, defended the decision with the following words: “The size of the newsroom is directly related to the revenue that the company generates. So this is a business that has to thrive as a business — it has to succeed as a business.”
In today’s increasingly anti-DEI professional world, people staying employed in their respective fields has become aggressively uncommon. Events like “Laid Off? Same!” provide a space for people who have faced everything from budget-cuts layoffs to workplace discrimination, to be in each other's company and simply exist. Though it presents itself as a simple idea — offering a place for unemployed people with nothing to do in the middle of a Thursday to socialize — this event proved itself to be a slice of life in 2025, where Philadelphians are laid off at increasing rates for nefarious reasons.
Iglesias, at the end of the event, described wanting to organize more unemployed social mixers. She continued that perhaps the event would move inside a library space in the winter, to allow for solace and hope in the months when unemployed folks need it most. I look forward to the continuation of this event, though I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I hope to be employed the next time around.
