SAG - Call To Arms

(We want to welcome SAG Member Justine Bateman as a regular contributor to United Hollywood. We hope to continue opening the site up to more voices from SAG and other unions. Justine reminds us that this fight belongs to all of us. We're all on the same page.)

Attention all SAG Actors:

I believe it's appropriate at this time to call all actors into action in support of the Writer's Guild on strike.
I know many of us have been walking the picket lines and attending the rallies, but I want to challenge ALL SAG members to see if they can commit an HOUR-A-DAY to walking the picket lines.
The AMPTP has been jerking the Writer's Guild around.
1. They offered nothing but insulting Roll-Backs to the WGA in the negotiations that caused the strike.
2. They have planted "trolls" to post on the industry internet sites(corporate-paid people who troll the internet for places to pretend they are writers, crew members, and fans and post AMPTP propaganda).
3. They called WGA back to the table on Monday with no intention of settling as they AGAIN presented that rejected Roll-Back proposal. Their purpose in getting in the room again looks only like a weak PR move to get the public and the fans to change their tunes about calling a Christmas Boycott of DVD and downloads. I believe the fans will NOT call those Boycotts off now.
4. They tried to discredit Nikki Finke and deadlinehollywooddaily.com by planting mis-information about this weeks talks in an attempt to crush the spirits of the writers.

Ultimately, this is OUR strike. If the WGA had not called this strike, we would all be participating in MASSIVE stockpiling. Then, in June when our contract expires, the AMPTP would have offered US the no-gains-play-your-work-for-free-and-how-bout-some-rollbacks offer we're now familiar with.
And SAG would have to go on strike, but because of the stockpiling, we would have NO leverage. The AMPTP would have said to us, "Strike all you want. We have enough material stockpiled for 6 moths, maybe more."
And we would have been on strike for months and months and months.

So I urge you, get out there on the lines. Go to www.wga.org and look at the list of picketing locations. There's a studio near you. Pick a gate, become their SAG mascot. Maybe there's a studio that is on the way to a meeting or near the school you drop your kids off at or on the way to where you need to run errands. Just park the car and pick up a picket sign for an HOUR-A-DAY.
These guys need us. We're 120,000 strong. Let's get out there and let them know we're WITH them.
Let them know we are Fighting For The Future, too.

Here are some links. Send any videos you think are important to your friends and family.

www.unitedhollywood.com
www.speechlesswithoutwriters.com
www.wga.org
www.sag.org

Best,
Justine Bateman
SAG Member