Citing unspecified “potential safety concerns,” SAG-AFTRA announced Thursday night that planned picket lines in New York and Los Angeles on Friday have been canceled.
“In light of potential safety concerns that are unrelated to our ongoing strike, there will be no SAG-AFTRA pickets in New York City or Los Angeles on Friday, Oct. 13. Stay safe and see you on the picket lines next week,” the guild said in a statement posted to X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter.
The guild didn’t specify what those safety concerns are. An individual with knowledge of the matter told TheWrap only that there are concerns about “a heightened security environment”
This is however likely related to the ongoing conflict in Israel which began Saturday morning with a devastating, coordinated terrorist attack by Hamas. This week, Khaled Meshaal, the former leader of Hamas, declared Friday, Oct. 13 to be a “day of Jihad.” And in a recorded statement that was released to the media, Meshaal called on supporters of the terrorist organization to “head to the squares and the streets of the Arabic and Islamic world.”
Those statements only directly addressed Muslims living in Israel’s direct neighbors — Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. But there are heightened concerns across the globe about the possibility of terrorist violence in other countries where protest demonstrations in favor of both the Israeli and Palestinian causes have erupted.
So far, there have been no credible or specific threats of terrorist violence in the United States, but there are rallies planned in several U.S. cities by supporters of Palestinian statehood that have nevertheless sparked security fears. Subsequently, police in Los Angeles and New York will be on heightened alert.
Meanwhile, the actors’ strike has now lasted 91 days and unfortunately shows no signs of stopping soon, despite the recent favorable contract won by the Writers Guild of America.
On Wednesday night, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing studios in negotiations with guilds, abruptly returned to the strategy it unsuccessfully deployed against WGA in August. After declaring it was pulling out of talks, which SAG-AFTRA leaders said came as a total surprise, AMPTP published the details of its most recent contract offer, a move critics contend was a blatant attempt to anger and divide the union.
For its part, AMPTP says the guild’s revenue-sharing proposal poses an undue economic burden, a claim SAG-AFTRA disputes. Read more about it here, and here.
For all of TheWrap’s Hollywood strike coverage, click here.
