Actors’ Equity Joins Unions Endorsing Biden-Harris Second Presidential Term

deadline.com:

Actors’ Equity Association has joined with other unions of the AFL-CIO in endorsing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign. “President Biden and Vice President Harris listened to Equity when our industry was in crisis, on issues like Covid relief and federal arts funding,” said Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity Association, said in announcing the union’s support for a second Biden-Harris term. “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.” Shindle continued, “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.” Equity had previously endorsed Biden and Harris in 2020, citing what the union said was Biden’s strong history of supporting workers’ rights, as well as his support on issues like LGBTQ rights and the fight for gun violence prevention.

Equity notes during Biden’s term, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts has increased by $52 million along with $135 million in supplemental funding for the NEA/NEH.

The union also cited the Biden Administration’s Covid assistance for arts workers, making special note of his American Rescue Plan and his support for the Performing Artist Tax Parity Act, a yearslong Equity campaign. “Only with President Biden taking a second term do we have a real chance of passing the PRO [Protecting the Right To Organize] Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing