With a potential big strike across film and television on the horizon, now is a great time to remember the 1941 Disney animators’ strike — and the absolute best-looking picket signs in US labor history. Enjoy.
So many good ones here:
• “I’d rather be a dog than a scab.”
• “There are no strings on me.”
• “Put a union button on Mickey Mouse.”
• “Happy Valley isn’t happy anymore.”
• “I’ve got a bone to pick with Walt.”
Animators even brought a working guillotine to the picket line with a mannequin of Disney attorney Gunther Lessing. (We should do this more often.)
If @IATSE goes on strike, if there’s picket lines, calls for boycotts, anything, y’all know what to do.
In the meantime, follow @IA_Stories on here and Instagram, sign the petition below, and use #IASolidarity to show your support.
Hey before we move on from that ship in the Suez Canal, can we talk about “flags of convenience” real quick? 🧵
Ever Given is one of the largest container ships in the world, with a capacity of more than 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs); that’s the same as 10,000 of the more common 40’ steel containers you see on trucks and trains criss-crossing the country.
Owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha, a subsidiary of Imabari Shipbuilding in Japan, Ever Given launched alongside ten other vessels of the same size in 2018. Referred to as their “Golden-class,” these ships are operated by the Taiwanese Evergreen Marine Corporation.
I’d be happy to. Prior to 1934, West Coast longshoremen (ie. dockworkers, those of us who load and unload ships) were hired through a daily routine known as the “shape-up” — “the most despised symbol of the longshoremen’s oppression.” 🧵
The shape-up was systemic throughout the maritime world, from SF to Boston, London and Durban, going back to at least the 1860s. It carried on elsewhere, but was finally eradicated here with the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, one of the most important strikes in US history.
The shape-up was a brutal and deeply exploitative hiring scheme. Men would gather along the docks in the morning, desperately hoping to get a shift that day. The company foreman would look over the men and hand pick them one by one, leaving most empty-handed.