The writers’ strike hit Boston in pressure Sunday — with a whole bunch boisterously becoming a member of Writers Guild of America members to protest Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s graduation speech at Boston University.
“(Zaslav) is a very misguided choice as a commencement speaker,” stated Nikole Beckwith, the WGA’s Boston space strike captain, on the picket line exterior of the ceremony on BU’s Nickerson Field. “I know he’s a BU alum, but to hold an exploitative capitalist CEO up as a model of success is very dangerous.”
Picketers represented the guild, in addition to many different Boston space unions and the BU group, and marched round two entrances to the sphere by way of the ceremony Sunday afternoon. Between 350 to 400 individuals confirmed up, Beckwith stated.
Sunday’s protest comes practically three weeks into the WGA’s nationwide strike. The guild’s 11,500 writers within the union are presently placing across the nation, demanding a brand new contract with higher wages and new provisions to deal with the streaming content material increase.
David Zaslav, Beckwith stated, represents a pressure “dangerously homogenizing the landscape,” with mergers like Warner Bros. and Discovery, and excessive company greed, with a wage of $246 million in 2021.
The strike pulled out the stops, flying a aircraft with a “David Zaslav, pay your writers” banner, marching with a small band and circling a monstrous inflatable smoking rat named Scabby.
“The bigger rat is inside,” stated Dan Albert, a member of Painters And Allied Trades DC 35, dutifully conserving Scabby inflated.
“He’s shown a real particular disdain for creators and writers in his business practices,” stated Beckwith. “There’s no question his priorities are with stockholders, shareholders. When he promised them $3 billion of cuts, those cuts came out of our livelihood, not his own, though he’s raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”
Picketers chanted “Boston is a union town” all through the day, a declare mirrored within the big range of enthusiastic union members on the road.
“This is a bigger crowd than I truthfully I thought there’d be,” stated June, who recognized herself as a union employee. “People from all sorts of unions — I’ve seen Boston teachers, hotel, hospitality restaurant workers, everybody coming out. … There’s also been a lot of reaching out, raised fists from people, like parents and graduates and stuff coming through.”
Protestors solely noticed Zaslav for a second after the ceremony earlier than the CEO slipped to another route out. The picketers stayed to cheer on a number of a number of grads who got here out holding pro-union indicators earlier than dispersing.
Beckwith stated the union was not there to get in the best way of the scholars and famous the significance of higher wages for the aspiring writers graduating.
“It’s their day,” stated Beckwith. “We’re supportive of and happy for them. But yeah, Zaslav is the storm cloud that were shaking our fists at.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”