LISTEN: Abigail Disney Talks ‘The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales’
Abigail E. Disney discusses “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales on this week’s episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour. Photos courtesy of Fork Films
By Bob Hennelly
In the first half of this week’s Tax Day episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we speak with Abigail E. Disney, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, philanthropist, and host of the podcast "All Ears."
Abigail E. Disney, whose family founded the company that bears her name, advocates for real changes to the way capitalism operates in today's world. As a philanthropist and social activist, she has worked with organizations supporting peacebuilding, gender justice, and systemic cultural change. She is a documentary filmmaker who won an Emmy for her debut film, “The Armor of Light.” Her latest film, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” which she co-directed with Kathleen Hughes, made its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Disney’s groundbreaking film weaves five narratives together; the thread of her own family; Disney’s ‘greed is good’ corporate arc; the American economy writ large; as well as the stories of Sam, Ralph, Trina, Ellie, and Artemis, who all worked for Disney. And then she chronicles COVID and the dislocation it caused in the “Magic Kingdom” for the workforce that it had long exploited.
Disney also discusses her work as a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, who are committed to realigning the US economy so that corporations and America’s wealthiest households shoulder a greater share of the nation’s taxes.
Listen below:
Protesting poverty wages inside the Magic Kingdom.
ALSO: Over the weekend the unions representing 9,000 education workers on strike at Rutgers University suspended their week-long strike so classes will resume today at the Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick campuses because they say they have the “framework” of a deal brokered by Gov. Phil Murphy which will see adjunct professors get a 43 percent pay increase and graduate worker a 33 percent bump in salary. It will be retroactive to July of 2022.
The Rutgers strike can’t be seen in isolation but as part of a massive national movement looking to counter the corporate takeover of higher education that’s helped to accelerate wealth inequality to historic levels.
As was been demonstrated in last year’s six week long strike at the University of California, and several others around the country, the higher ed workers represent a new militancy informed by COVID.
For decades now, starting with President Ronald Reagan’s busting of PATCO, the air traffic controller union, American higher education has morphed into a multi-billion pyramid scheme that’s shackled a generation in debt while paying out obscene salaries to coaches and administrators. It’s nominally tax-exempt, but deeply anchored in the “greed is good” philosophy of Milton Friedman.