From KERA News:
Film and television workers from North Texas and beyond gathered in Dallas for a rally Saturday morning to support the efforts of actors and writers on strike nationwide.
At least 120 people showed up at Reverchon Park sporting black, white and yellow T-shirts and pins representing the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the union hosted the rally, which includes members from North Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Nikki Dixon, president of the chapter, said it was finally time for a local event to bring together members of SAG-AFTRA and other unions.
Dixon hoped the negotiations would be short, but said the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have so far been unresponsive on key proposals.
“This is a marathon, right?” Dixon said. “We are in this thing for the long haul.”
Those proposals include protections against what’s known as “geographic discrimination” in contract proposals. Dixon, who lives in Grand Prairie, has had a 20-year career in television and film and recently starred in the 2023 film “Hypnotic” with Ben Affleck.
But the fight for better pay as a Texan actor is compounded by the struggle to be taken seriously compared to stars from Los Angeles or New York, she said. And so far, AMPTP has been unresponsive to the issue of geographic discrimination.
“A lot of times, they’ll bring in somebody from L.A. or New York and pay them more than what they would pay someone that they would hire here locally,” she said. “And why is that? Because they think that those in L.A. or those in New York are better. And that is a misconception, and again, something that we are trying to fight to dispel.”