Writers Guild of America Statement on Georgia Election Law
April 2, 2021 (New York and Los Angeles) – The following is a statement from the Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) about Georgia’s voting & elections bill:
One of the most precious features of democracy is the right of the people – all the people – to make their voices heard. The Writers Guild of America exists to ensure that people who craft stories for a living have a voice in decisions affecting their careers – how their work is valued, how the industry’s constant changes affect their ability to make a living doing the work they love.
An even more fundamental aspect to ensuring that people’s voices are heard is the right to vote. The right to cast a ballot for the representatives who run the government and make the laws. The right to cast a ballot without restrictions based on income or geography or party or race. We should not be naïve: Georgia politics, for many years, have been a battleground in the struggle to overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and structural racism. This week Georgia took a giant leap backwards in that struggle.
The fight to ensure that everyone can vote affects us all. Depriving one person of the ability to vote deprives all of us of true, representative democracy. Our government is better when it is shaped by all of the people, not just some of us.
The voter suppression bill rushed through the Georgia legislature and hurriedly signed by the Governor does violence to these basic principles of democracy, and it cannot stand.
The WGA and its members do not decide whether film and TV projects are produced in Georgia. But we do have members who live and work in the state – many of whom are BIPOC and who are deeply troubled by the new law and the damage it does to them and to their state. Together we stand in opposition to all efforts to suppress the vote, including this regressive new law. If Georgia wants to benefit from the thousands of good jobs our industry brings to the state, it cannot attack the democratic rights of its own people.
The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) are labor unions representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, digital media, and broadcast news. The Guilds negotiate and administer contracts that protect the creative and economic rights of their members; conduct programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to writers; and present writers’ views to various bodies of government. For more information on the Writers Guild of America, East, visit www.wgaeast.org. For more information on the Writers Guild of America West, visit www.wga.org.
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