At the end of the Not Another Bomb solidarity rally at Los Angeles City Hall on Sunday, Sunil Malhotra took the microphone before hundreds of protesters waving signs and Palestinian flags.
Days before, the SAG-AFTRA member was picketing with his fellow actors in front of Disney’s offices to demand proper AI protections for video game voice actors. Now, he was speaking as part of a grassroots organization called SAG-AFTRA and Sister Guild Members for Ceasefire, which has thrown its support behind Uncommitted, a nationwide movement of pro-Palestinian voters using their ballots as leverage to call on President Biden, Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and Congressional Democrats to withhold arms sales to Israel amidst its ongoing war against Hamas and rising civilian casualties.
“What if Donald Trump wins? Nobody here wants that,” Malhotra told the crowd. “But … if Donald Trump wins, it means the Democrats and Harris did not listen to all of us as our voices grew louder and louder demanding a change to the status quo.”
Malhotra continued: “Let’s do another thought experiment: If we refuse to become louder now and Harris wins without changing her stance substantively, then she will be vindicated in her belief that she didn’t need to change her stance. Where does that leave us?”
Uncommitted, along with the pro-Palestinian movement at large, has called on the current Biden Administration and a potential Harris Administration to enforce an arms embargo as a means to push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government into negotiations for a lasting ceasefire. A report sent to the U.S. government by Amnesty International USA said that Israeli forces had used U.S. weapons in attacks that were “inconsistent with best practices for mitigating civilian harm.”
So far, the Biden Administration has shown no sign of answering such calls. Last week, the U.S. and Israel completed a $20 billion arms sale that includes 50 new F-15 fighter jets, 30 air-to-air missiles, and tens of thousands of tank and mortar shells.
While those weapons will not be delivered to Israel until 2026 at the earliest, they serve as a sign of continued U.S. support for Israel as Iran has threatened to attack the country in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas’ political leader in Tehran.
Meanwhile, the Not Another Bomb rally in Los Angeles was part of a series of 80 rallies staged in 35 states on Sunday, as pro-Palestine orgs are set to continue holding protests throughout the week as the Democratic National Convention takes place and the party’s leaders convene.
The convention’s host city, Chicago, is home to the largest Palestinian community in the country and was where the U.S. Palestinian Community Network protested Donald Trump’s appearance last month at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention. At the event, the former president made racist remarks questioning Harris’ racial identity and claiming that undocumented immigrants were taking away “Black jobs.”
SAG-AFTRA and Sister Guild Members for Ceasefire, which consists of a nationwide group of entertainment workers across unions, ethnicities and religious beliefs, is expected to have a presence in Chicago. Aly Mawji, an actor who had a recurring role on HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” told TheWrap that his involvement with the group goes back to the days following Hamas’ deadly attack on October 7 while SAG-AFTRA members were still on strike.
“Right after Oct. 7, SAG-AFTRA put out a statement that was one-sided and standing with Israel and not acknowledging any of the atrocities that were happening in Gaza. Sunil and I and a few other people put together a letter, we got about 50 signatures, and we sent it to the guild leadership asking them to acknowledge that the atrocities were not a one-sided thing,” he said. “They ghosted us. Part of that was what was going on with the strike and the negotiations to end it, but we could tell it was a low priority thing for them.”
Mawji and Malhotra were later contacted by fellow SAG-AFTRA members Gabriel Kornbluh and Amin El Gamal, who were looking to connect groups across the union nationwide that were organizing in support of Palestine. That grassroots group that has since expanded to include members from other Hollywood unions including IATSE, WGA and Actors Equity.
This past March, SAG-AFTRA and Sister Guild Members for Ceasefire published an open letter with hundreds of signatures. In the letter, the members wrote that by not releasing a statement condemning the deaths of 113 journalists and tens of thousands of civilians and aid workers in Gaza from Israeli military attacks, the union had “made conditional which atrocities we choose to condemn and which innocent lives we choose to acknowledge and mourn.”
“Our guild leadership must join the largest and most diverse peace movement in a generation — the integrity of our legacy demands nothing less,” the letter reads.
SAG-AFTRA declined to comment for this story.
Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier, an actor and producer who attended Sunday’s rally, believes that the ceasefire movement being pushed by Hollywood workers is in keeping with their calling as artists, and proudly noted that SAG-AFTRA members raised $3,000 for Ele Elna Elak, a group that provides clean water to Gazans.
“Without empathy and compassion, how do we stay true to ourselves as artists?” she said.
Miriam Arghandiwal, an Afghan-American war reporter turned writer-director, also sees parallels between the organization’s push to support Gazans with the fight for more diverse representation in entertainment. She worked as a writer’s assistant on “The United States of Al,” the Chuck Lorre sitcom which turned its season 2 premiere into a serious episode in which its main character, an Afghani interpreter, races against time to get his sister out of Kabul following the withdrawal of American troops in 2021 and the subsequent return of the Taliban.
While there was initial support in Hollywood and in American culture for Afghanis stuck in the country, Arghandiwal feels that such support quickly subsided and hasn’t had the staying power that the entertainment industry has shown in support of Ukraine in its defense against invading Russian forces or for the Israelis killed and taken hostage by Hamas.
She sees that, along with the silence from union leaders towards the rising Gaza death toll, as the difference between “when white lives die versus when brown lives die.”
“We saw after the invasion of Ukraine how ‘Saturday Night Live’ and late night talk shows were quick to show support, and how quick everyone was to condemn the October 7 attacks — as they should — but can’t condemn the genocide that has happened for 10 months after that,” she said.
“This industry has dehumanized Palestinians, and on a wider scale it has dehumanized Muslims and helped perpetuate Islamophobia,” Arghandiwal added. “For us as storytellers of color who want to use this powerful medium that influences so many people, we need to be able to have these conversations from writers rooms to post-production.”
To date, The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) is the only entertainment union that has released a statement calling for both the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and a lasting ceasefire. They join a labor movement that includes major unions in other trades such as the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW) and and National Education Association (NEA).
For Mohatra, those unions’ support shows to him that their leaders understand what Members for Ceasefire understand: that the crisis in Gaza is not disconnected from the ongoing labor struggles happening in the United States.
“Unions are inherently political because we are fighting for things as a union that the powers that be don’t want to give us,” he said. “The way we believe we grow solidarity is to be in solidarity with those who are also in that fight against injustice. All we are asking is for our union to heed the call of fellow unions worldwide that are saying that this has to stop.”
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