Last year on March 20, 2022, I delivered a speech in front of roughly a 1,000 people at #Rally4Animation, a union rally that took place in Burbank, CA in support of The Animation Guild's contract negotiations. I previously shared this speech online on a social media app that has now turned into a wasteland. Therefore, for the sake of posterity, I have decided to reshare it here. Without further ado, here is my #NewDeal4Animation speech as written, paired with visuals.

99 years ago, two brothers named Walt and Roy opened the first animation studio in Los Angeles. The choices they made, in combination with subsequent studios along the way, have gone on to reverberate for generations.

In preparing research for our last negotiations in 2018, I looked through every single contract in our Local’s history that is still in existence at the The Animation Guild office. In sifting through one contract after another, a story emerged.

This story spoke of an industry that catered to one type of person - only male pronouns once appeared in our contract. And it told the story of a segregated workforce - our wage classifications used to be divided into “Group A” and “Group B.”

Coincidentally, Group A contained male dominated positions and Group B, lower paying female dominated positions. With time, Group B was renamed “Ink and Paint,” and it’s that section of our contract that you can still find the craft of Color Design listed today.

What we must recognize is that our master agreement is a living document, and in many ways it better represents the animation industry of the past, then it does of today. This is what we speak to when we say we want a new deal for animation.

So what exactly do we need in a new deal? Well I say...

We need a new deal that treats people with different identities, equally.

We need a new deal that pays equally for our work regardless of what platform it airs on.

We need a new deal that equally recognizes every crew member on a production as a union member no matter where in the country they may be doing that work.

We need a new deal that pays artists and writers working under unit rates, equally to their full time counterparts.

We need a new deal that pays animation workers equally to our live action counterparts.

And we desperately need a new deal that awards equal pay for equal work!

But historically the studios have shown that they are not inclined to give us what we want. This was demonstrated by Walt and Roy when they refused for months to recognize that their workforce had formed a union,

which is what led a majority of their artists to walk the line along this same street 80 years ago. It is thanks to those artists that our story even began. The first chapter was written with the deal that they struck.

The time has now come for us to write a new chapter and it's up to us to decide what it will say.

Click here to view a video recording of my #NewDeal4Animation speech.