Poetry and Power... and a Fork in the Road

My dear fellow AFTRA member,

For the last six years, it has been my distinct honor and my great good fortune to serve as your President. Being President of AFTRA has been one of the peak achievements of my life; the happy association with so many talented and brilliant elected leaders and staff has raised the level of my game personally; and what we have all accomplished together is little short of miraculous.

Now as many of you know, I am stepping down as President on Monday, March 12, and beginning a new chapter in my service to our fellow performers as National Executive Director of Actors’ Equity Association, our sister union representing over 45,000 Actors and Stage Managers in the Theater.

This will be a big change for me and my family, but for AFTRA there will be continuity in strong leadership as one of America's greatest radio talents takes on the Presidency: Bob Edwards of XM Satellite Radio and Public Radio International.

With a star of Bob's magnitude as President, along with his great intellect and heart, AFTRA will have no worries concerning leadership. Along with our National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth and our officer corps led by Vice President Roberta Reardon, Bob will continue our AFTRA legacy of building the union and supporting your careers.

In consciously creating a Leadership Team that is not dependent on a single personality or intellect, we have kept our “Eye on the Prize” at every step. We have focused on two main strategic imperatives that define that prize:

Your leadership is proud of you, proud to represent you, proud of who you are and what you do. We are proud in part because we are you: The vast majority of AFTRA elected leaders work full time as actors, broadcasters, and recording artists in every corner of the media from TV, radio, and sound recording to new media, videogames, and advertising. And we all know that for most of us, you've got to be ready to cross all kinds of programming genres and lines of endeavor to put together a living: freelance TV journalist today, radio DJ tomorrow; “General Hospital” actor this week, the voice of a Singing Toothbrush next; “American Idol” contestant this week, recording star next; “Rescue Me” guest star this week, “Spiderman: the Video Game” voice actor next... You get the picture. It's a picture you live in.

And it's all good. It's good work. It's good to work. And to build a career, AFTRA artists have to Do It All, and we do. In order to Do It All, we have to have enough union work available to make a career sustainable, so AFTRA is out there organizing new jobs in every corner of the media and entertainment industries without regard to a lot of ridiculous or pretentious notions about what jobs are worthy. If a job is being produced as a professional production, we are on it! In a real 500-channel universe—hell, let’s face it, a ten thousand-channel universe, if we're throwing in YouTube, MySpace, and iPods—there is room for every kind of production from junk to genius. And as you know, it’s all out there. Our job is not to critique it; our job is to organize it.

In addition to AFTRA's strategic imperatives, we also live by a couple of important principles about our union:

I'm proud that AFTRA's 50,000 actors speak the poetry of truth to America's hearts; I'm honored that our 12,000 broadcasters report the truth to America's people; and I'm thrilled that our 10,000 recording artists sing the truth to America's soul.

Together we are the poets of our country's better angels. That's a proud legacy and mission. In short, AFTRA and her member artists have a moral role to play in our nation's story.

And as I close, I want to point to a couple of examples of that moral role in illuminating our nation's good.

Lowell Bergman, the great “60 Minutes” reporter, now at PBS's “Frontline,” is in the midst of a multi-episode series called “News War.” This amazing series details the growing crisis in the news "business" both print and broadcast, by examining how the maniacal bottom-line agenda of corporate media is undermining the integrity and independence of news-gathering and reporting that evermore clearly constitutes a clear and present danger, a direct threat to the health of our American republic and democracy.

And I hope you saw Bob Woodruff's remarkable return to ABC news last week when he reported on the awful incidence of severe head and brain injuries suffered by our troops in Iraq, often badly diagnosed and poorly treated medically. This report came just as the scandal at Walter Reed Army Hospital broke, underlining the lack of US government commitment to the citizen-soldiers bearing the brunt of the purposeless waste of the Iraq War on the US side, not to mention the countless Iraqi civilian casualties. As you will remember, Woodruff himself sustained serious brain injuries from an IED that blasted his Humvee to shreds as he reported from the front. We welcome back Brother Woodruff and honor his guts, sensitivity, and class as a newsman.

In music, I salute the Dixie Chicks' comeback triumph at the Grammys this year. After suffering a vile and reactionary corporate and government campaign that included manufactured boycotts, CD burnings reminiscent of Nazi book burning, as well as corporate-staged "rallies" of "angry fans" attacking the Chicks' free speech rights, the Dixies roared back with a smash-hit nationwide tour, huge fan support, and a big Grammy sweep.

Nice to see Truth Spoken to Power pay off.

And as for our actors, I can't even begin to detail the exciting range of opportunities to speak to America's hearts represented by the giant wave of new AFTRA scripted dramas and comedies in primetime broadcast and cable, not to mention the incredible number of AFTRA pilots in the pipeline. Taking into account all day-parts AFTRA already covers 75% of television, how much higher will our share go as more and more shows convert to digital production, our natural medium? It is a special pleasure to acknowledge the 6,000 new AFTRA jobs created in San Diego when we organized Fox's six English-language telenovelas on My TV starting with Morgan Fairchild and Bo Derek in “Fashion House”… 410 1-hour drama episodes full of AFTRA jobs for professional performers at union rates.

I do want to pay special tribute to our pioneering daytime drama “Passions” that brought a real sense of fun—and literally magic—back to daytime. As this terrific show winds down, I want to thank our wonderfully talented cast, contract players, guest stars, and background actors alike, for years of great television, and wish them all the best as they move on to the next stage of their careers.

All the above are examples of Quality AFTRA Programming. My favorite phrase.

And I want to thank the nearly 1,000 AFTRA members who responded to last week's AFTRA Take Action Alert for their barrage of emails and phone calls to Congress to put the Employee Free Choice Act way over the top in the House of Representatives. Now, on to the Senate to nail down our freedom to join a union.

Finally, as much as it tears me up to leave AFTRA, I am also honored and excited to return to my parent union, Actors' Equity, to serve as National Executive Director. This opportunity is not without sadness because it flows directly from the tragedy of losing my friend of 35 years AEA President Patrick Quinn who should be Equity's National Executive Director right now, but is working the stages of Heaven instead. I'd trade this job in an instant to have him back.

I could never have agreed to take up this challenging job at all, without the trust of Equity Council and President Mark Zimmerman; without being completely confident in the continuing strength of AFTRA's elected leadership and staff; and without the total support of my wife Bronni, my son James, my comrades, and all the people who I love.

Bronni has served selflessly as AFTRA's First Lady with exquisite grace and charm, adding her own ineffable spirit to building our union. She has been a treasure.

When I told AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth and Vice President Roberta Reardon that I had accepted Equity's offer but that I couldn't bear the thought of leaving AFTRA, they both—independently—said: "John, you're not really leaving AFTRA; you'll just be sitting next to us."

And so I shall. After all, Actors' Equity is not only my parent union, it is AFTRA's parent union, too. In 1937, Equity gave $100,000 to our founder George Heller and his band of intrepid Broadway actors to go organize radio drama… and so they did… and so was AFRA born.

Thanks AEA. We're all Brother and Sister Artists when all is said and done.

My work as President has been fundamentally inspired by the great AFTRA President Reed Farrell who 20 years ago took a ragtag bunch of young-ish actors and gave us more responsibility than we wanted or thought we could handle, and led us to re-create our union to meet the 21st Century, and to create a new AFTRA culture that reflects that family relationship of sisters and brothers. Solidarity, mutual respect, and affection are the watchwords of our culture. If I have a legacy to bequeath to my beloved AFTRA, and to you, my dear members, that's it.

Live it. Love it. Own it.

It's the key to our future.

Thank you for every minute of every day of my happy AFTRA life.

Now go run for delegate to our 70th Anniversary National Convention this summer. That's how I got started. Your turn. Your Union.

With Affection & Solidarity,

John P. Connolly
President
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFL-CIO