30 Rock Protest Draws Big Names & Huge Crowds In NYC

Dispatches from the picket lines, Day 22.

The WGA strike enters its fourth week and shows no sign of petering out. In fact, the number of protestors is growing witness the thousands of people who showed up in NYC yesterday. From Deadline:

As the WGA strike entered its fourth week, Tony Kushner swore, Steve Earle sang, Wanda Sykes led union chants and Busy Philipps told CEO jokes for more than 1,000 demonstrators and hundreds of onlookers who filled the street in front of NBCUniversal headquarters Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan.

With a starry speakers list, celebrities dotting the crowd and turnout from several local labor unions, a “Rally at the Rock” outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza in support of striking movie and television writers filled one barricaded side of West 49th Street between 5th and 6th avenues — the equivalent of three city blocks — with cheering, sign-waving protestors who stayed for more than two hours. It was the largest turnout for any event organized by members of the Writers Guild of America East since the strike against film and television producers began May 2, a WGA representative told Deadline.

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One of the most fiery speeches came from Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans screenwriter and Tony-winning Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, who criticized the members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — and anyone backing them against the writers — in sweeping terms.

“If you’re supporting the AMPTP’s shameless endorsement of greed and injustice, then you’ve forgotten what fairness is and what decency is and what words like ‘honor’ and ‘honesty’ mean,” Kushner said. “It makes sense that you’ve forgotten the meaning of words. That’s what happens when you devalue writers; you lose language. We are writers We know what words mean. We know the difference between truth and malevolent, cynical, self-serving horseshit.”

“Being out on strike his really hard,” Kushner said. “It’s costly. It’s scary. It’s enervating and infuriating in equal measure. So workers go out on strike only when we have to. Workers strike not because we’re greedy but because our bosses are greedy.”

Here is the entire speech by Tony Kushner:

For the rest of the Deadline article, go here.

For the latest updates on the strike and news resources, go here.