Former President Barack Obama expressed solidarity Thursday with striking movie and TV writers, saying helium was “very supportive of the writers and the strike, and I’m hopeful that they get a just stock of the fruits of their labor.”
Obama made the remarks during a promotional lawsuit for his caller Netflix docuseries, “Working: What We Do All Day.” Inspired by legendary writer Studs Terkel’s publication of the aforesaid name, the bid features Obama interviewing and pursuing assorted kinds of workers crossed the country.
On Thursday, Obama referred to the “embattled” Hollywood “studios and streamers” connected the different broadside of the bargaining array from the writers, noting that those companies “wouldn’t beryllium astir if it weren’t for writers creating the stories that matter.”
“My anticipation is that arsenic idiosyncratic who’s truly supportive of the Writers Guild and arsenic idiosyncratic who conscionable believes successful storytelling and the trade of it, I’m hoping that they volition beryllium compensated and the value of what they bash volition beryllium reflected successful immoderate settlement’s arrived at,” Obama said. “I’m precise supportive of the writers and the strike, and I’m hopeful that they get a just stock of the fruits of their labor.”
Among those studios and streaming companies is Netflix, wherever helium and erstwhile archetypal woman Michelle Obama’s media institution Higher Ground Productions have had a multi-year woody to marque movies and TV series.
Since May 2, the 11,500 TV and movie members of the Writers Guild of America East and West have been connected strike implicit issues specified arsenic equitable wage successful the streaming epoch and preserving TV and movie penning arsenic a livelihood. (HuffPost’s unionized unit are besides members of the WGAE.) Writers person described the onslaught arsenic emblematic of an existential crisis, not lone for them but besides for different originative industries.
During the lawsuit Thursday, moderated by “This American Life” big Ira Glass, Obama besides mentioned immoderate of the existential challenges facing workers close now, including the usage of artificial quality and its imaginable to regenerate humans’ work. That contented has become a cardinal country of contention successful the writers’ combat for a just contract. Writers projected protections astir the usage of AI, specified arsenic rules that would marque definite AI could not constitute movies and TV shows oregon their root material, and that writers’ enactment couldn’t beryllium utilized to bid AI programs. Studio executives rejected those proposals and alternatively suggested “annual meetings connected the usage of technology.”
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden also expressed his enactment for the striking writers. “I sincerely anticipation that the writers onslaught successful Hollywood gets resolved and the writers are fixed the just woody they merit arsenic soon arsenic possible,” Biden said May 8 earlier a White House screening of the caller Disney+ bid “American Born Chinese.” “This is an iconic, meaningful American industry. We request the writers, and each the workers and everyone progressive to archer the stories of our federation — and the stories of each of us.”
The pursuing day, Vice President Kamala Harris canceled an quality astatine an lawsuit for MTV, reportedly successful solidarity with the writers’ strike.
Other salient Democratic and progressive lawmakers person besides expressed their enactment for the writers, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). On Thursday, writers successful New York held a rally successful Times Square, which included remarks from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
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