“I was proud to be a member of the Disney cast. As of today, all I am able to feel is shame.”
“It’s hard to have any excitement and optimism for the future of the company right now.”
“This is not the company I came to work for some 15 years ago.”
Those statements appear among nearly 200 anonymous responses a group of Disney employees say they have collected and published to illustrate the “magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by” Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and push back against the company’s initially tepid public response to the legislation.
As the company prepares a town hall to address the response, some Disney employees are planning a full-day walkout on Tuesday to push for more meaningful action from the company. The planned actions, which come after weeks of controversy and damage control from Disney, underscore the rise in expectations for corporations to take public stances on some social, political, and human-rights issues.
Get me up to speed: A bill that passed the Florida House and Senate and is awaiting the signature of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, would prohibit most discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Disney, which employs tens of thousands of employees in the state, initially stayed silent, saying public statements can be “counterproductive,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek wrote to employees in an internal email; Chapek later told shareholders the company had attempted to “work behind the scenes to try to influence lawmakers not to pass it.”
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That stance has since changed. Disney, which has made political contributions to supporters of the bill, says it has paused political donations in the state temporarily and attempted to donate $5 million to the LGBTQ+ rights organization the Human Rights Campaign, which had as recently as this year named Disney a top workplace for LGBTQ+ equality. (The HRC did not accept the donation.)
“You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down,” Chapek said in a mea culpa to Disney employees. “I am sorry.”
Not enough: Some Disney employees have taken the rare tack of speaking out against the company. Benjamin Siemon, who wrote for Disney’s DuckTales reboot, called Chapek’s efforts a “half-hearted triage,” while Dana Terrace, a writer and animator who created the Disney Channel animated series The Owl House, tweeted that she was “tired of making Disney look good.”
Meanwhile, some employees from the animation studio Pixar alleged in a letter that Disney corporate executives asked for cuts to “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection” in its storytelling.—KS