Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made a case against corporate greed while walking the picket line with striking actors and writers in New York City on Monday.
The left-wing politician rallied workers outside Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery’s neighboring Manhattan offices, where she was joined by AFL-CIO union President Liz Shuler and performers Sandra Bernhard, F. Murray Abraham and Tatiana Maslany.
“Frankly, while this is a fight against AI, more than AI, this is a fight against greed,” she told a crowd at the demonstration, per The Hollywood Reporter. “This is a fight against Wall Street, and this is a fight against the endless pursuit of more wealth.”
“Direct action gets the goods, now and always,” Ocasio-Cortez went on. “The only way that we can do this is by showing them that we are stronger. That our solidarity is stronger than their greed, that our care for one another will overcome their endless desire for more.”
While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter after the picket line, Ocasio-Cortez said, “The idea that the transformation of workplaces should transform and erode workers and their wages pretty much unilaterally and only have downside for workers and only have upside for CEOs and shareholders is completely wrong.”
She later added, “I also think it’s really important for CEOs to understand that there is only so much you can erode the fabric of the society before it starts to rip. They, too, rely on that fabric.”
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The 11,500 television and film writers represented by the Writers Guild of America began striking at the start of May after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) became deadlocked.
SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 workers, followed suit in July after its own contract with the AMPTP expired.
Writers and actors are pushing for major updates to the Hollywood system, an industry which workers say has been upended by the world of streaming services.
Among the unions’ core issues are residual payments (a type of royalty based on viewership numbers) and establishing guardrails for the use of artificial intelligence.