This article examines the alienated labor of ALP writing instructors, who are being held accountable for a community college completion agenda that might not be best serving students. Discussing some of the larger historical forces and local institutional contexts impacting ALP teachers at CUNY, and drawing on recent studies of CUNY faculty, it argues that the neoliberal culture of speed, which emphasizes the numerical data of pass rates, has created increased pressure to accelerate students through composition courses. In particular, the speed-focused construct of the accelerated pipeline used nationally to promote ALP creates alienating conditions for faculty oriented toward the slower work of social justice education. With speed fetishized, learning compressed, and standards lowered--all in the name of social equity reform--instructors of ALP are becoming confused about priorities and unclear about the value and purpose of their teaching. Meanwhile, the work of basic writing instructors has been made substantially harder due partly to the pandemic.