RAT Mistuh Bretz, He said...

[Audie McCall <audiemccall@yahoo.com>]

Apparently the following message from Matthew Bretz
got posted to the BCT list, but not the RAT list. 
Allow me to rectify this egregious ommision.  

(And in the future, Mr. Bretz, keep in mind that every
RAT across the globe deserves access to your
brilliant, conscise, hotty radical thoughts.)

Contrary to over a century's worth of idiotic
interpretation of the 14th Ammendment, corporations
are NOT people and do NOT share their rights.  Power
to the people.  Power to SAG, power to the guy who
works craft service.

But enough of my bombast, here's wut Matty sayed:

Did anyone else hear the producer's rep on Which Way
LA yesterday and suddenly feel like Eugene V. Debs?
Man, these guys are greedy,  selfish and unabashed. I
miss my goat.

But I must say that I find the agents position
unconscionable. If our agents backed our strike by not
submitting actors period, it would be over in a week.
Does it seem outrageous to anyone else that we make
their money and they are selling us out by bolstering
non-union  rosters and sending out scabs to work in
our place?

I have great deal of sympathy for the non-union actor
who is now  offered a job and takes it because it
means food on the table. I don't  condone it and I
think that union actors should be thinking about why a
non-union actor should want to support the strike. How
are we about raising the living standards of all
actors? And what are we willing  to do for non-union
actors to get them to feel positively about joining 
the union and developing worker solidarity in the arts
community before  and after the strike? Remember, in
any other industry the union recruits! A union's power
is directly proportional to its ability to represent 
all workers in the industry. It is a "club". But it is
a club in which  we focus on the fact that we are not
competeing with one another for  jobs. We are
competing with producers who will not hesitate to play
us off  of one another to serve the consolidation of
capital in their hands, not ours.

At any rate, a limited strike will have limited
results. We have to find a way to shut the commercial
industry down and that requires the cooperation of
agents, not to mention coworkers like non-union
actors, writers, directors, grips, gaffers. How do we
develope a common interest in order to spread the
strike?

SAG actors --Would you walk out for an extras strike?
A craft service strike? Until you can answer yes to
this, I fear we cannot expect  much soldarity.

Matthew


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