Walt Disney Co. employees in the Bay Area joined their colleagues across the U.S. walking out on the job on Tuesday, protesting the company’s response to anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida serving as a model for other bills throughout the country.
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Workers at Disney-owned KGO and Lucasfilm in San Francisco, as well as Pixar in Emeryville, walked out on Tuesday, employees and walkout organizers said on social media.
It's unclear how many Bay Area employees participated. Press contacts and publicists for KGO and Lucasfilm didn't respond to KCBS Radio's emailed request for comment on Tuesday. Neither Industrial Light and Magic's San Francisco office nor Marin County's Skywalker Sound responded to KCBS Radio’s email prior to publication, and a Pixar publicist didn't return KCBS Radio's voicemail.
A Disney official told the Associated Press there were no interruptions in the company’s operations on Tuesday as employees around the U.S. walked out in protest of what they deemed Disney and CEO Bob Chapek’s inadequate response to the Republican-dominated Florida legislature passing a proposal critics have deemed the "Don’t Say Gay" bill.
The bill, sent to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' desk for signature, bars "classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity" in Florida primary schools. DeSantis said in a Tuesday press conference that he will sign the bill, and that its protestors were "by definition putting yourself in favor of injecting sexual instruction" to children.
The ACLU of Florida called it a "government censorship bill" that would ban LGBTQ students in the state from “talking about their own lives, experiences and families” and could "have a chilling effect on support" for LGBTQ children.
Similar bills have been introduced in other Republican-controlled states, including Georgia, where Disney threatened to pull its business in 2016 if the state enacted a law that would allow tax-funded groups to deny services to gay people.
Disney donated nearly $250,000 to politicians who voted to pass the Florida bill. Walkout organizers and participants have criticized Chapek, who apologized for not speaking out forcefully against the bill prior to its passage, for not taking a similar tact. He said the company would pause all political donations in Florida and fund advocacy groups fighting legislation similar to Florida’s.
Protesting Disney employees called for the company to stop donating to politicians – DeSantis chief among them – "involved in the creation or passage" of the bill, as well as to no longer invest in or relocate workers to the state "until hateful legislation is repealed." Organizers also demanded the company pledge to create a content brand for LGBTQ creators and demonstrate how it will expand LGBTQ representation in its own content.
Bay Area-based Lucasfilm, ILM and Pixar were among the first Disney subsidiaries to publicly denounce legislation in Florida and elsewhere last week, writing on social media that they stood with their employees and fans. Lucasfilm and ILM specifically wrote that the companies "unequivocally denounce the legislations in Florida, Texas, Idaho" and elsewhere.
Other Disney brands, including Disney+, ESPN and Hulu, expressed solidarity with their LGBTQ colleagues on social media ahead of Tuesday's walkout. Organizers said the statements were a direct result of employees’ advocacy, and "a true marker of how far we’ve pushed."
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