Actors’ Equity Association has shared its endorsement for the 2024 presidential campaign, supporting the reelection of President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Actors’ Equity, the labor union that represents professional actors and stage managers in theater, previously endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket during the 2020 election.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris listened to Equity when our industry was in crisis, on issues like COVID relief and federal arts funding,” Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity Association, said in a statement. “But four years of a pro-worker administration is simply not enough to put labor laws back on the side of workers, safeguard our democracy and our climate, address systemic racism, protect gender identity and bodily autonomy and so much more. For those of us who aren’t members of the billionaire class, everything is on the line. We need to flip to a pro-worker House, increase our pro-worker margin in the Senate and return Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.”
The Biden-Harris administration has supported the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which has increased by $52 million along with $135 million in supplemental funding for the NEA and National Endowment for the Humanities.
In addition, the administration’s COVID-19 relief plan proved crucial to arts workers. The administration granted labor unions (like Actors’ Equity) access to paycheck protection program funds and supported pandemic unemployment insurance, which was vital for entertainment industry workers.
The Biden administration has also supported the Performing Artist Tax Parity Act (PATPA), which has been a yearslong AEA campaign. The leaders of Actors’ Equity believe that maintaining the current administration is key to helping legislation like this pass.
“Only with President Biden taking a second term do we have a real chance of passing the PRO Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the restoration of the Voting Rights Act,” Al Vincent, Jr., executive director of Actors’ Equity Association, said in a statement. “Everything is on the line this election, and I look forward to the union making a historic push to get President Biden and Vice President Harris across the finish line.”
In the years following the 2020 election, Actors’ Equity has formed a political action committee to, among other actions, encourage its members to vote.
