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Donald Trump and the Rockettes. in happier days
Last night I announced I would be starting a new series of posts devoted to ways we all can Resist Trump Every Day in our own little ways. In this, the first installment, I’d like to draw your attention to a small protest with a great symbolic power.
As you may already know, Trump’s people have been having trouble finding big name acts to perform at his inauguration — though they have managed to snag an 80s cover band called The Reagan Years. No, really.
So when Trump’s party planners signed up the Radio City Rockettes, the legendary high-kicking dance troupe, there must have been some big sighs of relief in the Trump camp.
At least until some of the Rockettes said hell no, we won’t go. And their union, according to media reports, replied by telling them that hell yes, they have to go.
According to Vulture.com,
many Rockettes dancers, who share in a Broadway community that vehemently opposes Trump, do not feel comfortable performing at the event. Now, Broadway World has obtained an email reportedly from the American Guild of Variety Artists, the union that represents the Rockettes, suggesting that full-time employees will be coerced into performing, whether or not they object.
Lovely.
Per the site, the aggressively worded email from “a high-ranking member of the union’s administration” says: “We have received an email from a Rockette expressing concern about getting ‘involved in a dangerous political climate’ but I must remind you that you are all employees, and as a company, Mr. Dolan obviously wants The Rockettes to be represented at our country’s Presidential inauguration, as they were in 2001 & 2005. Any talk of boycotting this event is invalid, I’m afraid.”
As Amanda Duarte, a writer and performer who has taken the Rockettes’ case to social media, has observed, this is a pretty Trumpian situation indeed.
“It’s perfect, actually,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
What could be more fitting for this inauguration than forcing a group of women to do something with their bodies against their will?
Duarte is encouraging people to contact the show’s producers as well as the American Guild of Variety Artists and the Madison Square Garden Company to express their support for all of the Rockettes who want to boycott Trump’s big party.
Email the producers directly:
Jill.DeForte@msg.com
larry.sedwick@msg.comfeedbackradiocity@MSG.com
Call AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists)
as well
212-675-1003
make sure you express that if a Rock does not wish to perform, she shouldn’t have to and there should not be a repercussion.
Be firm, but polite. Help the boycotting Rockettes to just say no to Trump.