Mark Webber on the Screen Actors Guild Strike

I am proud to be a member of both the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) of Philadelphia.

SAG has become very well-known this year for conducting a bitter six-month strike against the advertising industry under extremely difficult conditions. The strike led to a tentative settlement, finally reached on October 22, which covers such key areas as payments for ads on cable TV and for union jurisdiction over Internet advertising.

The KWRU is not very well-known, despite being the key player in historic mobilizations of poor people's organizations on a regional, national, and international basis. This is because poor people have been made to disappear in America, either through a concerted effort by the corporate-controlled media to black out their growing struggles or through their death from enforced disease, violence, hunger, and exposure to the elements.

But SAG and KWRU do have a lot in common. While the same corporate media that ignores the poor would have the public believe that all actors are rich, over 80% of SAG members make less than $5,000 a year from their profession. The KWRU and the dozens of other poor people's organizations in the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign are also similar to SAG in that their ranks are overflowing with people who have great creative talents.

I want to offer love and congratulations to my brothers and sisters in SAG. My heartfelt wish is that, over the next year, SAG members will begin to work together with my brothers and sisters in the KWRU, finding ways to express themselves creatively and strengthening their mutual determination to eliminate poverty once and for all.

Peace--

Mark Webber

October 23, 2000