Kerry Washington, Martin Sheen shout for solidarity between Hollywood strikers and other workers
Actors Kerry Washington and Martin Sheen have delivered rousing speeches celebrating labor unity at a rally for striking Hollywood actors and writers and other workers supporting them
LOS ANGELES — Kerry Washington and Martin Sheen, a pair of fictional former politicos, turned Hollywood's strikes into a rousing campaign rally Tuesday with speeches celebrating unity across the industry and with labor at large.
“We are here because we know that unions matter,” said Washington, who played a political fixer on ABC’s “Scandal.” “Not only do we have solidarity within our union, we have solidarity between our unions, because we are workers.”
The rally outside Disney Studios in Burbank, California, coming more than a month into a strike by Hollywood actors and more than three months into a strike by screenwriters, was meant to highlight their alliance with the industry's other guilds and the nation's other unions, including the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO.
“The audacity of these studios to say they can’t afford to pay their workers after they make billions in profits is utterly ridiculous,” Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Yvonne Wheeler told the crowd. She added a dig at Disney's CEO, who has become a target of strikers. «But despite their money, they can’t buy this kind of solidarity. Tell Bob Iger that.”
Sheen, who played the president for seven seasons on “The West Wing,” was joined by most of the show's main cast members on the stage as he emphasized that the toll being taken as the strikes stretch out.
“Clearly this union has found something worth fighting for, and it is very costly,” Sheen said. “If this were not so we would be left to question its value.”
Washington also sought to highlight that
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