Solidarity

This afternoon in London, I went to a rally hosted by Equity UK, the British actors’ union, in support of their American sister union, SAG-AFTRA. There were lots of famous faces there, including Brian Cox, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, and my friend Rob Delaney, who served as emcee. (Actually, I’m not sure Rob and I are “friends” so much as professional acquaintances, but in show business that counts as friends, perhaps even family.) There were loads of other British actors there I didn’t recognize, but my wife did because she pretty much only watches British television so, for her, it was a little bit like suddenly waking up inside of the BBC. The rally was upbeat, positive, and best of all, brief. An hour of clapping and people saying “solidarity” and then off to a good Indian lunch. All of this to say, I feel like I did my part for the day, which was not very much at all.

Pictured: British celebrities

I mention all of this both to name-drop and to contrast it with the news from home, where Ron DeSantis is now making noises about suing Bud Lite for the crime of giving some beer to a trans person? The trans person in question is over the legal drinking age so I’m not exactly sure what laws were broken, yet somehow it all makes sense in the world of American Republican politics, where solidarity has taken on a much darker cast.

The American right has nothing holding it together except shared hatred; their solidarity is born from fear, the creeping feeling that the things they hold most dear: diet beer, high-powered weaponry, specific lightbulbs, propane cooking implements, traditional genitalia, and above all else, whiteness. They fear of this is being stolen from them just as surely as their forefathers stole an entire continent. Rather than the solidarity of working people finding common cause to build a more just future for everybody based on a belief in the common good, theirs is a vision of exclusion which rejects these values in the name of… what, exactly?

Speaker after speaker at today’s rally spoke of working together. Building together. Not only among the creative class but railway workers fighting their own looming redundancies, the health care workers being threatened by cuts to the National Health Service, Labor fighting Tories over the insanity of the folly of leaving the European Union. The name “Margaret Thatcher” came up several times, and never in a good way.

It was Margaret Thatcher who unleashed a series of anti-union laws in the 80’s, the same sorts of laws which the American Right has been pushing in states across the nation for decades, resulting in wage stagnation and less job security for American workers. I’m sure everybody has seen the graphs showing American productivity increases outpacing American wage growth. I’m sure most people have felt job insecurity, either through technological innovation, outsourcing, or the capricious demands of the stock market. Without unions, workers are left to fend for themselves against corporations whose only responsibility is to their own wallets. No wonder the Right wants to focus your attention on petty grievances that distract you from the powerful forces arrayed against your best interests. It’s much easier to get mad at a book about gay people than the multi-national conglomerate picking your pocket.

Nobody feels that bad for actors and writers. I get it. We work (when we work) in an industry that often feels shallow, even preposterous. But the work we do is real work. It’s work that adds value to people’s lives. Anybody doubting that only needs to walk around London today and see the sea of girls wearing pink in support of the new Barbie movie. The struggles we face are no different than the ones your family probably deals with every day: rising prices, health insurance, unstable work. The solidarity we feel for our brothers and sisters in our union extends to the solidarity we feel for working people everywhere, regardless of their profession. Everybody is out here doing the best we can. We’re all struggling to do good work, no matter the kind of work, for good wages. It’s not a lot to ask.

Do actors and writers tend to be more liberal? You bet we do. For good reason. Our industry attracts outsiders. Storytellers have always been the people who live on the fringes. They observe and report back what they’ve seen. Those stories get circulated back into the mainstream and help tell the story of ourselves. No wonder we get bent out of shape over people being abused, maligned, and mistreated. No wonder, in our stories, the bad guy always gets his in the end.

The American Right would have the bad guy triumphant. Bigotry, banned books, intolerance elevated as a virtue. In Ron DeSantis’s Florida, American history is being rewritten to include language that says “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Any curriculum which says anything other than slavery was an unmitigated evil is, itself, evil. That’s what the modern GOP is trying to do to America. These are the issues around which they want to build solidarity. I’ll take our version, thank you very much.

Solidarity.