Hollywood strike has implications in Glens Falls
Rockwell Falls Library closes doors after director leaves position
By Ken Tingley
The Adirondack Film Festival was postponed last week because of the Hollywood strike.
National events can have local implications.
National debates such as the one raging around the use of artificial intelligence can become local issues.
The discrepancy in wages between management and workers is important to consider locally as well.
“The Adirondack Theatre Festival stands with union writers, actors and all professional artists who seek fair wages and respect for the uniquely human work of art-making,” ATF Producing Artistic Director Miriam Weisfeld said in a press release. “The Adirondack Film Festival is the nation’s only film festival produced by a professional theater company. As such, we feel doubly responsible to advocate for those who write and perform new work for a living.”
I have served as a screener on the film festival committee for the past two years and I’ve been a long-time supporter of the theater festival so I was disappointed by the decision, but I understood the need to support actors and writers.
The actors’ unions would not allow their members to participate in the promotion of any of their work while the strike continued. That made it impossible for the film festival to have filmmakers in attendance. That’s what makes the film festival special.
The theater festival depends on union performers every summer and believed support for them was critical.
I can relate to their struggles.
My fellow journalists were grossly underpaid considering the amount of money newspaper chains made at the time. Some newspapers had unions, most did not. I’m not sure if readers understood the plight of reporters and editors.
My father was a union worker in Connecticut. He went out on strike several times and had to get a second job during the strike just to put food on the table. He eventually soured on the union and crossed the picket line the last time it went on strike so I’ve seen strikes from both sides.
It was good to see the writers union have their demands met.
It’s good to see the issue of artificial intelligence get closer scrutiny.
What may be even more important is addressing the gap in wages between front line workers and those at the top tiers of management.
In my latest collection of columns due out next month, I remind readers of the consequences when a strike goes badly for the workers with a column I wrote during the 2001 strike at Finch Pruyn. What is more revealing is what happened afterward.
After 159 days, the strike ended after the company hired nearly 400 replacement workers.
Officers of the two largest unions signed a new 5 1/2 year contract, followed by the mill’s five other unions. Under the new agreement, the company agreed to pay 65 percent of workers’ health insurance costs, compared with 90 percent before the strike. The workers also agreed to eliminate double time pay on Sundays and reduce holiday pay. The contract also made union membership voluntary for the first time. Few of the 600 workers who walked off the job in June were expected to immediately reclaim their jobs. They were placed on a “preferential hiring” list for future openings.
The union and many long-time workers had lost. If you look at the Finch, Pruyn website today, there is no mention of the strike.
I suspect there is not nearly as much concern about the writers and actors in Hollywood as there is with the auto workers on strike. But that strike cost Glens Falls an event. The city will survive, but we are a little poorer because of it.
Library closes
The Rockwell Falls Public Library announced on its website that it will be closed until further notice.
The small library in Lake Luzerne has been the focus of controversy over the past six months beginning with the cancelation drag show reading event and continuing with the election of board members sympathetic toward banning books.
The July 18 meeting ended with police being called and the board going into secret executive session after Library Director Courtney Keir walked out of the meeting.
“It is a challenging time for the Rockwell Falls Public Library. In one week, we have lost two thirds of our staff, including our Director,” it says on the website. “Until we can resolve this issue, the library will be closed to the public.”
It appears that Keir no longer works at the library.
Keir reported in the July meeting that the board was not addressing harassment toward her and the staff.
"We have written a few different incident reports to this library board. We have asked you. We have implored you to please do something about it," The Post-Star reported in July. "It has fallen on deaf ears… We are tired, we are uncomfortable, and to be quite honest, we are starting to become scared."
Banned books
Mark your calendar for Oct. 5 and the event “60 years of Banned Books” at Saratoga Springs Public Library.
Seven local authors will read from books that have been banned at one time or another as a way to support free speech in our country.
“Banned Books Week” was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores and schools. Unfortunately, recent years have also experienced a shocking uptick. The annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.
“When we ban books, we’re closing readers off to people, places, and perspectives,” The American Library Association reports. “But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book. We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let Freedom Read!”
The event will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. and I will act as the host and introduce each of the writers.
I hope to see you there.
Some weekend thoughts
Rex Smith, the former Times Union editor who writes “The Upstate American” on Substack, wrote this about today’s politicians over the weekend and it seems about right.
“To be sure, my experience both inside government and during many more years as a journalist covering it also has given me a view of how government can be corrupted — not in the financial sense, usually, although that happens, but I mean corruption in the sense of politicians using their position mainly for ego gratification or as a platform for ideological argument, often with shamelessly little regard for the lives of the citizens they affect.That behavior corrupts government. It’s reprehensible, and it is rampant just now.”
Can anyone think of a politician this does not apply?
Murdoch leaves stage?
James Poniewozik wrote about Fox News found Robert Murdoch’s decision to step away from the business he helped create.
“On Fox, the news was a serial drama filled with enemies and heroes, victory and peril. But like on a long-running thriller, each new twist had to top the last. The stakes had to heighten. Bushian Republicanism gave way to the string-on-a-bulletin-board theories of Glenn Beck, until, eventually, Tucker Carlson was mainstreaming racist “replacement theory” for one of cable TV’s biggest audiences. There is a Frankensteinian fittingness to Mr. Murdoch and his network’s losing control of the very passion, fury and sense of righteous injury that Fox News conquered the ratings by encouraging. It is one thing to stoke that flame, another thing to try to turn it down like a burner on a stove. A man who made his fortune giving the people what they want has no business being surprised to learn what they inevitably want next: More.”
That also seems just about right.
Doing the right thing
I saw this quote from a Georgetown University law professor named Paul F. Rothstein over the weekend.
“The system is held together by people doing the right thing according to tradition, and Trump doesn’t.”
That also seems about right.
Sacrifices made for the greater good. These strikes need to happen and people need to make a living wage. CEOs continue to make more and pay less in taxes while the working people who get them their treasures suffer to survive. That doesn't even begin to touch the need to reign in AI before it is out of control.
Regarding the library-I never thought I'd see the day that politics impacted every aspect of our lives the way it does now. My mother won't go to Target or read a book with the Oprah label on the cover. I'm so tired of the craziness....Thank you Republicans for making life just one big political insane asylum.
It’s sad that the Rockwell Falls Library seems to be a victim of politics. I’d hoped we were above that in NY.