Huge Turnout For Animation Solidarity Rally Ahead Of AMPTP Negotiations (VIDEO)

A huge mass of animation workers, cartoon fans, and union members from other crafts gathering in the IATSE Local 80 parking lot in Burbank on a sweltering hot Saturday afternoon for the Stand With Animation Rally. The historic gathering drew a crowd that appeared to be well over one thousand people, making it possibly the largest-ever labor-related gathering in animation history.

This afternoon’s rally was intended as a show of strength by animation workers, represented by The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, who’ll begin facing off Monday with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to negotiate a new Master Collective Bargaining Agreement. The event was hosted by The Mitchells vs. the Machines director Michael Rianda, who introduced a large group of speakers that included Burbank mayor Nick Schultz, Animation Guild president Jeanette Moreno King, actor Adam Conover, and top animation talent including Rebecca Sugar, Genndy Tartakovsky, Alex Hirsch, Peter Ramsey, Shion Takeuchi, and James Baxter. Additionally, rank-and-file animation workers from different departments of The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, took turns to speak about key labor issues that were important to their specific crafts.

Throughout the speeches, there were certain topics that repeatedly drew boos from the crowd, including mentions of artificial intelligence and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Storyboard artists Nora Meek and Charlie Jackson led a popular chant of “No Contract, No Cartoons,” while calling out executives and their specific actions:

Tell Reed Hastings after he laid off 300 Netflix Animation employees and killed the animation division as we know it – no contract, no cartoons.

Tell COO of Dreamworks Randy Lake who is outsourcing animation jobs to non-union studios with worse conditions – no contract, no cartoons.

Tell David Zaslav, after he axed a slew of [Warner Bros.] shows and movies that will never see the light of day and sold off the historic Cartoon Network building for scrap – no contract, no cartoons.

Rianda acknowledged that studios were already incorporating AI into their pipelines and summarized the existential stakes of the upcoming contract negotiation. “Dozens of members of this Guild have told me, ‘If we don’t win this contract, there might not be another one,’ because this industry could be decimated,” he said. “That’s the bleak future we’re looking at. But we have the power to look at that future and say, ‘No, we will not accept that reality.’ And we will say no. We need to face this issue with iron resolve, strategy, and bold action, and we’re going to.”

A livestream of the rally can be seen below. It was difficult to see what I was recording in the glare of the sun and the video is rather shaky, but considering the historical nature of the gathering, hopefully you’ll agree that the value of what is being said is more important than the recording quality: