From SAG Chicago President,

Todd Hissong

"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

"They have every right to say what they say, as I have every right to tell them to shut up."
Membership First, 2005

And there you have your choice. Could it be any clearer?

In a shockingly short period of time, the newly elected leadership of the Screen Actors Guild has taken it upon themselves to make radical changes to your union. They claim that a thin majority in the boardroom and a 5% margin of the last popular vote has given them a "mandate." Apparently that mandate dictates that we all must now blindly - and silently - follow them like lemmings off a cliff. Consider:

• SAG 2nd National Vice President Paul Christie’s column in the latest edition of Screen Actor Magazine has been censored. This unilateral action was taken by the National Chair of the Communications Committee - a proud follower of Membership First.
• Membership First Hollywood Board Members are seeking the dismissal of SAG Pension & Health Trustee Claudette Sutherland for doing nothing more than expressing an opinion they didn’t like.
• National committees have been reconstituted placing Membership First followers in positions of authority. Oddly enough, New York and Regional Branch Division Members who are supposed to be serving on those committees often don’t receive adequate notification to participate.

So much for a new era of "openness and transparency" for our Guild.

What really gets me though is the fact that those who speak out against these various hypocrisies are branded as troublemakers who seek to "drive a wedge between East and West." It never occurs to these folks that it is the policies - not the outcries - that are damaging our union and threatening our livelihoods. They attempt to placate us with rhetoric like: "What’s done is done. We can’t do anything about it now. Let’s work together!"

And then before they’re even finished speaking, they turn around and do something equally abhorrent.

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."
T.S. Eliot

Hmmm...

Todd Hissong