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Disneyland was
not like anywhere else on Earth.
My parents would save all year long,
and we had one yearly trip to the park.
You had to have
the Peter Pan hat with the feather.
We would go in and we'd, you know,
have our little bit of money.
I mean, it was magic
from the minute you got onto the tram.
It was just... happy.
When I started working at the park,
the employees were so happy to be there.
You were proud
to be a part of this magnificent place.
And they were proud of you.
That's year one.
Everybody's always thrilled to get that.
That's Steamboat Willie.
Vanna White it.
The second one is five years.
Ten years...
to 20.
And...
40.
Financially, you know, they're not worth anything,
they're just...
little pieces of pot metal.
But when you've earned them, when you've worked hard
and you've given all those years to a company,
to be recognized with that, it really means a lot.
And...
it means that the company appreciated you.
Or at least it did.
Growing up,
Disneyland was like a home away from home
for my family.
That's me and my brand-new red coat.
We called Disneyland "the park."
We went to the park all the time
to see my grandpa, Roy Disney,
who, along with his brother, started the Walt Disney Company
almost a century ago.
They were kind of like Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket,
sort of id and superego.
Walt would go off and do some crazy thing,
and then Roy would figure out
where the money was gonna come from.
I'm really proud
of what my grandfather and great-uncle did.
They brought so much joy into the world.
I was raised on their story.
It was a story about bootstraps,
about rags to riches,
about the American Dream.
It's said that...
Somebody told me and I heard one time
that you could make one dollar a day for a long time,
and you support the family on a dollar a day.
What's a dollar a day?
Seven dollars a week.
By mid-century, their enterprise would help
create the largest middleclass
the world had ever seen.
Only later would I come to see
that there was so much more to the story.
When you're a little kid, you can't really understand
that you're growing up in something at all unusual
or unfair.
The only metaphor I can think of
is if you're a goldfish,
you don't really know how to describe water.
But then one day, you realize
your family is a very big and complicated deal.
And you get trained from childhood
not to speak badly ever in public
about the family or the business.
And I didn't.
For a long time.
We're delighted to welcome producer,
philanthropist, and social activist,
Abigail Disney.
You compare the dynamics of wealth to that of addiction.
I'm sorry, this is radical,
too much money.
There is such a thing.
If you have a billion dollars
and you wanna send your kid to school, congratulations,
you can send them to school for 20,000 years.
Abigail, why do you wanna pay more taxes?
We do not have a society
structured around fairness right now,
and the proof is in the pudding.
Having the last name "Disney"
is like having a weird superpower
you didn't ask for.
For years,
I've tried to do my best with it.
But I have to confess,
even though I knew things were
far from perfect at the family business,
it's always felt so impossible to speak out
because of the inevitable repercussions.
My dad went to battle
over the direction of the company twice.
And I saw the way he got threatened with lawsuits
and torn to shreds in the media.
Anybody would think twice about getting involved.
But then, one day, out of the blue,
I got a message from a guy named Ralph,
who worked at Disneyland.
He told me that he and his fellow cast members,
as Disney calls them,
were fighting for better pay,
and he asked me for my help.
Even though I have no role at the company,
I felt like I had to go to Anaheim.
Oh, oh, there she goes.
Go play!
Ready... set...
Go!
- No, I didn't say "Go!"
- I won! - You cheat!
- Opal, come on over!
- Are you having fun yet? - Come on!
Turn around, turn around.
Oh, here we go.
You two can race.
Somebody's a princess, you told me.
Who's the princess?
They're all three princesses.
They're all... Oh, okay.
We... we have...
MacKallien is the one that is the princess of all the lands.
MacKayla, our six-year-old,
she is the princess of the sky...
- The sky! - The sky!
And then MacKallien, our youngest...
I'm the mermaid princess!
She's the mermaid princess.
And she's the princess of all the seas, yes.
You've divided it up nicely.
Yes.
You guys met at Disney? You met each other?
Yes, he saw me in the parking lot,
and I said, "Do you wanna eat inside the park
or outside the park?" He said, "Inside the park."
And we've been together ever since.
So, it was an inside-the-park home run.
- Pretty much. - Pretty much.
Go, Kenzie.
Do you see your daughter?
Go.
At the time when we first met,
I had this idea
that we would move out
and have our family and everything.
Yay, Trin!
That's the way to do it!
- Get 'im!
Unfortunately, the economy does not...
allow that.
We live with my mother-in-law.
We're lucky enough to do that.
I've always wanted to have a house of my own,
always dreamed of one.
But I would settle even to have an apartment.
It would be nice to just have it where I can...
show my kids that I can do things on my own,
and not have to rely on my parents.
You want Mommy to come down with you?
Mm-hm.
Even with both of us working full-time,
we still fall below poverty level.
We try to do as much as we can
that doesn't require any kind of money.
Trick or treat!
We make 15 dollars an hour.
And for people who work at night,
we only get 75 cents an hour extra.
But for working the hours we work,
with the lack of sleep,
I don't think 75 cents is enough.
Third shift starts at 11:30
to about eight o'clock in the morning.
It's very physical work.
We're the people who do the pixie dust at night.
You scrub the kitchens, the floor, the toilets.
And I'm proud of what I do, I'm very proud of it.
And that type of thing
you'll find throughout all the parks.
The people who tend to work there
want to provide the best.
I go into work every day
because this is a place where magic is made,
- you know? - Uh-huh.
We don't want those memories of the first time
we were at Disney when we were ten years old,
and the walking down Main Street and it feeling
just so... such incredible joy and magic...
You don't want that to not exist.
For the first time in over 60 years,
the union started talking and we all found out
that we were all struggling with basically the same issues.
Right.
None of us were ever supposed to talk about
how much money we made.
I worked two jobs for eight years
to make ends meet.
Yeah, like, I, myself, am actually a student.
It's really expensive. I wanna be a teacher but, um...
I have two jobs.
I don't just work at Disney,
I also work at Knott's Berry Farm.
- Oh!
I work for the mouse and the dog.
Disney is an industry leader in terms of,
like, theme parks, right?
And the same things that are happening at Disney
are also happening at Knott's Berry Farm.
We've had cast members that have to make a decision
between medication or food.
And these are essential things
that you can't make choices like that.
By a show of hands,
how many of you have someone you know that works at Disney
that's on food stamps?
Wow.
How many of you know somebody who works at Disney
who's slept in their car in the last couple of years?
How many of you know somebody
who have gone without medical care
because can't afford it?
I do!
I know!
How many of y'all have children?
I am somebody who doesn't have kids.
I don't have the finances
to take care of a child in the way that I would like to.
It's affected my ability to family plan
and to look towards my future as far as my personal life.
And it's not... you know,
this is not where I thought I'd be at 33.
Aw, don't cry.
Aww.
You can borrow our kids.
Everybody thinks
that we can all just bootstrap it and move up.
If you're doing that job to the best of your ability,
it should be treated like a proper job.
I think I should be able to pay my bills
on my custodial job.
But, you know,
I've always had somewhat unstable housing.
I ended up living in my van for a few months.
Right now, I'm renting a room from a friend,
but she's planning to retire,
so I don't know
what my housing situation's gonna look like.
I look at the housing nearby
and it's very much out of my price range.
A studio apartment would take,
like, 80 percent of my take-home pay a month,
and, like, a one-bedroom apartment
would be more than I make in a month.
I am not finding anything
in the Anaheim/ Orange County area
that's in my price range.
All right!
I don't want anybody
to have to deal with
the same stress that I deal with,
and I know everybody around me does.
That's why I started getting more involved with the union.
My co-workers are my family.
So, I don't know about you,
brothers and sisters, but I'm ready to fight!
Are you ready to fight?!
Yeah!
Show them what democracy looks like!
This is what democracy looks like!
No justice!
No peace!
No justice!
No peace!
I am 26 years old.
I do school part-time and I do work part-time.
For the longest time, I did feel...
kind of like a failure, to be quite honest.
I thought that by now,
I would've moved out from my parents' house,
but now, it's just... it's a little more
like...anger, because I realize it's not just me,
it's, like, so many of us.
In 2018,
all the unions of Disneyland organized a campaign
to do battle with the company
over their wages and working conditions.
Disney was under an enormous amount of public pressure,
and so, they reluctantly agreed
to adopt a 15-dollar minimum wage.
But most experts say
that a living wage in Anaheim
is closer to 24 dollars an hour.
And so, the unions felt that they were being, um...
can I say "screwed?"
- Yeah. - Okay.
And so, the unions and the employees at Disneyland
asked me and my colleague to do a survey.
We were shocked by what we found.
One out of every 10 full-time workers
was homeless
at some point in the previous two years.
And two-thirds didn't have enough money to pay for food.
At the same time, in 2018,
Disney's CEO Bob Iger,
made $65 million in one year.
Iger's package was 1,424 times
the median salary of a Disney employee.
That's 2,000 times
the salary of a custodian.
In other words,
a custodian would have to work for 2,000 years
to make what Bob Iger makes in one.
The Disney Company is ground zero
of the widening inequality in America.
But there's a myth
that Disney's prosperity
will trickle down to ordinary people.
The city council and the mayor of Anaheim
have believed that if Disneyland does well,
then Anaheim does well.
Anaheim's a tale of two cities.
You have the resort district.
This is where Disneyland's at,
this is where the stadium is at.
Then, you get the south part of the town,
you have many of the working-class communities.
When you go around through the streets,
you see infrastructure that's not updated,
you know, you see gang problems.
When we first started covering Anaheim for Voice of OC,
the big argument was that all of the money in Anaheim
was spent
on the northern part of the town.
The south part of the town does not get the investment.
The only investment it gets is police.
One of the things, for me,
in being on Council is
how quickly I learned about...
the focus is so much on tourism,
and making sure that
the children of the tourists are happy.
- Mm-hm. - Right?
In the happiest place on Earth, and they forget about...
or don't even consider, they're just indifferent
to the lives of the actual children
who live in Anaheim.
We've seen a void in policies
that really are centered around people
and the lives that they lead here in Anaheim
versus policies that continue to give tax breaks
and more money to those who already have much.
So, tell us the legend of the parking lot,
'cause it's crazy to me.
Yeah, so in 1996,
the city took on a $500-million-bond.
Part of that bond was
to build a parking lot for the Disney resort.
The city then leased it to Disney
for a dollar a year.
Disney would keep all of the revenue.
All of the revenue.
If they fill up 300 days a year,
it's 10,000 cars, $25 a car,
that's $65 million in pure revenue.
So, basically, it's a business...
that they spent no capital creating.
Correct.
The corporation should not
be looking to get public dollars
to do its private business, to grow its business.
It's not a start-up company.
And even then, Walt Disney didn't ask for public dollars
when he was starting up.
And yet,
in the two decades leading up to 2018,
Disney had gotten the city of Anaheim
to cough up a billion dollars
in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.
These deals
moved through without a lot of opposition,
without a lot of debate.
You know, there's dark money of Disney influencing,
through a series of resort-related PACs,
and controlling governance of the city council.
So, here's a story from four years ago.
"For another meeting that went into the wee hours,
the Anaheim City Council narrowly approves a tax shield
for Disneyland that effectively strips residents
of their power to tax admission to the mega-resort
for up to 45 years."
So, they were protected against a tax
that didn't exist yet.
They were protected against the idea
of a tax for 45 years.
Yeah, exactly right.
Everything Disney was doing,
from skirting taxes to stiffing workers,
was happening at almost every big company in America.
I came home to my privileged life
feeling complicit.
Everything I had
came from inheriting company shares.
I had no role or influence at Disney,
and no idea where to start
if I wanted to make a difference.
My father always told me,
"First, you try quietly."
I knew it would go nowhere,
but I thought I owed Bob Iger
at least the courtesy of an email.
So, that's where I started.
"Dear Bob,
there is a painful irony in the idea
that someone working at the happiest place on Earth
is sleeping in his car."
"These issues are real and painful,
and don't represent who Disney is as a company
and who you are as a man."
"What if Disney chose to pay people well
and give them job security?
"What if you chose to lead?"
Send.
Is there a way to, like, sit with Bob and talk about it?
Do you think?
I don't think Bob's gonna meet with you, honey.
Yeah. I figured as well.
- Even if I asked him. - Yeah, yeah.
- And he likes me. - Yeah.
No, he's not gonna meet with you.
I always knew him to be a good guy but,
um... but he just needs to kinda wake up.
- Yeah. - Smell the roses, and yes,
I'll probably not stay friends with him
if he ever hears me say that.
My issue is not that he's not a nice person.
Right.
My issue is that nice isn't enough, you know?
And you know, honestly, it's not all Bob's fault.
He's just doing
what Wall Street tells him to do.
It's the culture that's wrong.
You know, and if tomorrow, he went out and said,
"Give everybody 24 dollars an hour,"
the share price would plummet, you know?
He'd get punished for it, he'd lose his job.
So, it's not exactly one CEO, or...
This is a culture-wide thing.
Well, Bob can rationalize it
because he's brought so much "value to the company,"
in the sense of stockholder value...
No question.
...and we have benefited from that,
and they pay dividends out, and we benefit from that.
Yeah.
But it's prioritizing the wrong thing.
It's not prioritizing people.
Yeah.
And it's... the core problem right there.
That's Grandpa.
Yeah.
You know, Grandma told me I was his favorite.
Did you ever hear that?
- That's just not true.
There's no way that's true,
'cause I thought I was his favorite.
It's just hard for me to imagine.
And correct me if I'm wrong,
but I cannot see
him taking $66 million home
for a year's work in the same year,
when, at the same company, people can't afford food.
I don't see that happening.
That would never have happened.
It was a different time. Now, it's about money.
- Greed is good. Yeah. - Greed is good.
I mean, Ayn Rand was one of the people
who kind of came up
with the idea that greed was good.
Mm-hm.
And she was seen as a fruitcake!
A nut! An outlier!
Well, maybe that's how they look at you, honey.
When Bob Iger wrote back,
he acknowledged the problems his workers were having.
But he suggested
that the government was failing them,
and that simply increasing their pay
wouldn't solve their problems.
He referred me to the head of HR,
who told me about the company's free education program...
which is nice, but it doesn't pay the rent.
It was exasperating.
What's up?
Iger put me in touch with the head of HR there,
and she was very nice and very helpful, and...
I don't know if they don't understand
what I'm getting at
or if they don't wanna understand
what I'm getting at...
but it was clear I wasn't getting anywhere.
So, I don't know what direction this is gonna go in.
So, you... you want higher taxes.
I do, I do.
I think that at least the wealthy
need to be paying higher taxes.
And what does that mean to you,
- when you say "higher taxes"? - Well...
So, after months of feeling paralyzed,
there I was doing a live segment about taxing the rich
when I got an unexpected question.
And then the other question I was gonna ask you
is there's a Disney shareholder meeting today,
- as it happens. - Yes.
Do you think that Bob Iger's overpaid?
- You know him. - I think that CEOs,
in general, are paid far too much.
I imagine you have a lot of Disney stock, right?
I'm not gonna come out and say that,
but I will say that if your CEO's salary is at the 700,
600, 500 times your median worker's pay,
then there is nobody on Earth...
Jesus Christ himself
isn't worth 500 times his median worker's pay.
Clearly, I'd struck a nerve.
She dove deeper into her remarks Sunday
in nearly two-dozen tweets.
Abigail Disney wrote,
"It's time to call out Disney
and anyone else rich off their workers' backs."
Disney is testifying before Congress today
over CEO pay.
This topic of income inequality
is really heating up on Capitol Hill.
My mother's voice is working overtime right now,
telling me to sit up straight
and asking me who I think I am.
It's sort of like, um,
"You need to feel awful about what you're doing,
but if you're gonna feel awful about what you're doing,
you should at least sit up straight."
- Okay, perfect.
Okay.
- I am so nervous. - What?
- I'm so nervous right now. - I know, breathe.
Did I ever show you this ring?
- Do you know what it is? - No.
Oh, it's bananas.
- No? - No.
- What is it? - It's a clitoris.
I gotta tell you, when I wear this,
it's always the men who say,
"Wow, that's a beautiful ring."
That's deeply disturbing.
And I just... I love it!
And so, I like to wear it to the most patriarchal places.
- And point it right at 'em. - Yeah.
Fight the power.
It did look like bananas at first.
- Thank you so much.
Okay.
- Thank you. - Here we go, girls.
- All right. - Let's do it.
Let's do it.
The Committee will come to order.
The hearing is entitled
A Review of Proposals
to Strengthen the Rights and Protections of Workers,"
and I now recognize the...
No, Madame Chair, I have a parliamentarian inquiry.
Okay.
I'd like to know the purpose of the filming.
It's highly unusual.
Is this a for-profit or not-for-profit entity?
It might be for profit entity,
but I've certainly never seen a profit on any of it
- but um...
Reclaiming my time, I don't believe this is a...
I don't believe...
The objections to my having
a film crew present
came seemingly out of the blue,
though I would later learn
that a Disney lobbyist had been working behind the scenes
pressuring both sides to prevent me from speaking.
Move to adjourn.
All those in favor of the move to adjourn,
say "Aye."
Aye.
All those opposed, say "Nay."
Nay.
In the opinion of the Chair, the nays have it.
Dr. Disney, you are now recognized.
Thank you.
Today, I hope to raise some simple questions
about CEO compensation.
Does a CEO's pay have any relationship
what his hotel maids and janitors get?
Do the people who spend a lifetime
at the lowest inch of the wage spectrum
deserve the dignity of a living wage?
This is a moral issue.
The burden is not just on Disney,
and Disney is a long way from being the worst offender.
Disney could tomorrow raise the salaries
of all of its workers to a living wage.
It was possible to do this
when my great-uncle and grandfather built the company,
it's possible now.
People made this problem,
and by people, it can be fixed.
Thank you.
The gentleman from Indiana is now recognized.
Well, Dr. Disney, I heard you several times say
what CEO pay should be, what living wage should be,
up and down the spectrum, sea to shining sea.
That is... We have a definition of that.
That is socialism.
Here we go with socialism.
We know what that is.
This idea that a company exists solely
to maximize profits, that is simply not true.
Companies have moral obligations to their employees.
If you don't wanna call this "socialism,"
I suppose you can call it
"Marxism," "neo-Marxism."
It certainly isn't the path
that made our country the world's land of opportunity.
The reality is the entire American workforce
is benefiting from this era of prosperity.
Where do you want the... uh, yellow onions?
- Next to the reds? - Right next to the red.
We got up at four o'clock this morning.
I haven't been feeling good,
and Ralph was up for...
over 24 hours.
He worked the night before, he got off work,
and he went over to the food bank.
Sometimes, we feel like we miss our kids, whatnot.
But at the same time,
we also want our kids to know
exactly what it's like to give.
Here, Ellie.
We have one more over there, too.
I'm gonna hand you the stuff over here.
Okay, sounds good.
Did you wash the apples?
- Si. - Thank you.
Snow White, I always wash the apples.
No, you don't.
The Disney Company did respond to Abigail Disney.
Disney fired back with their own statement...
Saying her statements are,
quote, "unfair and libelous."
"We strongly disagree with this
characterization of our employees
and their experience at Disney."
My colleague asked Bob Iger about that massive pay gap,
and he said, "It's not an issue I want to address"
but believes the interest of the employees
have been served, quote, "very well."
January, February, March,
we'll be having this once a month.
To be clear,
2019 was one of Disney's most profitable years ever,
as it was for many American companies.
And yet, food banks across the country
were struggling to keep up with demand.
The business narrative
had come totally unmoored from reality.
Abigail Disney, she's missing the big story,
which is we are reducing income inequality
through free-market capitalism and through the tax cuts,
more investment by businesses, a tight labor market.
That's the best thing you can do
for, you know, working-class Americans,
'cause we all want... look,
we all want Americans to climb the economic ladder.
So, lemme ask you about this. Okay,
here I am, hacking away
at trying to make a difference at this company,
partly because I think Disney's like a bellwether company.
Their power is so immense,
but they're being stalled by fear...
and conformity and... well, and greed.
I mean, am I wrong about that? If they change,
there will be those that follow behind?
No, you're gonna need Disney,
but you're gonna need one or two other companies
of people running them with a conscience.
But you've gotta get that first cog moved.
Yeah, exactly.
So, what's the strategy? What am I missing?
What do I need to do?
Make a movie about it?
There's that.
Well, that was meta.
But I did grow up steeped in the power
of stories to change the world.
My family is itself a story.
One that's invoked constantly as the embodiment
of the American Dream.
But an unexamined story is a dangerous thing.
That American story
about rising on your own
teaches us all to believe
that if you work hard enough,
anything is possible.
Climbing the economic ladder.
It's as if race doesn't matter,
gender, disability, or anything else.
It's magical thinking,
and you can hear it in the language we use.
"Shooting the moon."
"Reaching for the brass ring."
"Pulling on your own bootstraps."
I mean, think about,
you can't pick yourself up by anything on yourself.
It's physics!
But the language is always about rising.
Rising on your own.
My grandfather and great-uncle did not rise alone.
In the '50s, '60s, and '70s,
a full-time worker at Disneyland
could afford
a house,
food in the fridge, a car,
and the ability to raise a family.
I never intended to make a career out of Disney.
Never. It was a summer job.
But you could advance in the company,
and if they realized
that you were really happy there and worked well,
then you got quite the raise,
'cause I remember all of a sudden,
I was making pretty good money.
Roy talked about
how he hoped that some of us would go on
to stay with the company,
and he meant it!
Roy Disney, we call him "Roy,"
and they'll correct you every time
if you call him "Mr. Disney" or "Mr. Tatum,"
and that... doesn't that make you feel good?
It does me.
I remember him as a pretty regular guy,
who lived a no-frills lifestyle
by today's CEO standards.
In fact,
in 1967, his pay, including stock options,
was just 78 times his lowest worker's pay...
which was typical for a CEO of his time.
So, what was different then?
Why didn't executives in the 1950s and '60s
give themselves the kind
tremendous, tremendous salaries
and bonuses and stock options and everything?
You just didn't do it.
There was a certain ethics.
There was a certain way you behave.
Is it overly romantic for me
to think of my grandfather as someone who...
you know, thought about his employees
as important partners and...
and wanted to make sure
that people could raise families on their salaries?
I don't think it's overly romantic at all.
You know, the motto of the Harvard Business School
"Making a decent profit decently."
- Really? - Yeah.
And that wasn't that unusual.
It wasn't a crazy idea
that business was in service to society.
So, the economic situation we're currently in...
I think a lot of people assume is just what happens, right?
Yeah, people think
the economy is like the weather.
The economy is not the weather,
it's not a set of uncontrollable forces
that we just have to sort of try to protect ourselves from
as possible.
People set the rules for capitalism.
Greed's been with us forever,
and there have always been businessmen
setting the rules to favor themselves,
so what was holding them back?
In the middle of the 20th century,
norms and laws set a different standard and understanding
in terms of what Americans expected.
That basically was a social contract
between business, government, and labor
that said, "You know what?
We're all gonna do our part
to ensure that we all have
a pretty decent standard of living."
And you had really strong labor unions
that gave workers
a real voice in the conditions of their work
and of the business practices and business strategies.
It wasn't just the generosity of the CEOs
that made capitalism
a little more humane.
It was that the labor movement fought a fight,
and the government backed them up
with worker laws... workers' rights laws.
Those laws,
in addition to mid-century norms,
are what kept my grandfather and other CEOs in check.
I remember talk around the dinner table
about the notorious strike way back in 1941,
when nearly every worker
walked off the job to protest unfair pay.
Grandpa and Uncle Walt
didn't like being told what to do by anyone,
but they didn't have a choice.
Walt did everything he possibly could,
but unions were incredibly powerful.
And so, Walt Disney had to capitulate.
In terms of how employees were treated more often
and how companies
did not feel required
to take out every last possible penny like Scrooge,
um... it was different.
You know, in the 1950s and '60s and '70s,
tax rates on corporations
were high, higher than they've been in 50 years.
And yet it worked out.
It built up all kinds of things.
The interstate highways,
they were brand new and they were wonderful
and it was fantastic!
And, of course, it funneled
all those hundreds and thousands
and millions of people to Disneyland.
This is Disneyland.
Since its opening, 50 million people,
or over one-fourth of America's population,
have come here.
And in ten years, almost one
billion dollars have been spent,
all because of tourist money generated
by a unique recreation industry
in this vast Orange County area.
It sure seemed
like money was trickling down then...
even as companies were making profits
and the economy was going gangbusters.
You had the big hallmarks we think of
as middle-class life, paid for by tax dollars.
Things like massively subsidized housing,
the ability for someone on a working-class income
to get into home ownership without a down payment.
And the government subsidized
healthcare, free college.
It was the creation
of the greatest middleclass the world had ever seen,
the highest standard of living in the world.
The American Dream
was a gift of the American government.
But it was largely for whites only.
So, everything about the collective social contract
that built what we call "the middleclass"
in the United States
- was racialized. - Yes.
Like so many white people,
growing up, I hadn't been taught
that government policies
had actively stacked the deck against people of color
by limiting access
to all those on-ramps to the American Dream.
In the United States, we so often...
don't want to see...
the harm, the exploitation...
- Uh-huh. - The power.
It's...
that's the Disneyfication of American history
and of our American story.
To all who come to this happy place,
welcome.
Disneyland is your land.
And there's Aunt Jemima!
It's painful, and it took me a long time
to fully comprehend the role that my family,
the people that I loved,
played in perpetuating centuries-old
myths and stories
that made this racist system
seem perfectly natural and completely benign.
You know,
our original economic model in this country
was stolen land, stolen people, and stolen labor.
It's an economy in which
white men are sitting at the top of a hierarchy.
That's really our founding myth.
The idea that some people and groups of people
are simply better than others.
Here I am, down here on Main Street.
I've got my whole family with me, my lovely wife, Mary,
and my daughter, Melinda, and Bob.
You know, this is a Main Street, ladies and gentlemen,
just like my grandma used to tell me about
back in Joplin, Missouri.
When he created those amusement parks,
Walt Disney created not only a false reality,
but he also changed reality itself.
As Disneyland was being built,
Walt was very conscious
of creating that berm around the park.
And the idea of creating that berm was
that reality was out there...
and it didn't invade here.
But outside the berm,
it was getting harder and harder to ignore reality.
People of color were suddenly saying,
"We want a seat at the table."
"We've been contributing
to this great American engine of prosperity
and we want our shot too."
When the Civil Rights Movement and the gains in the courts
empowered Black Americans, the federal government switched
from being the enforcer of the racial hierarchy
to the up-ender of the racial hierarchy.
And millions of Americans, white Americans,
who had been taught to disdain and distrust Black Americans,
felt betrayed by that government.
The sense of betrayal white Americans felt
planted a deep seed of mistrust in the government...
which would only expand across the political spectrum
as unrest continued into the 1970s.
All kinds of people
weren't so crazy about the government
for a lot of reasons.
There was all this talk of revolution and socialism
and everything else.
Many CEOs and rich people
who wanted to maximize their wealth and power
thought, like,
"My God, are the guillotines gonna come for us?"
Some of 'em thought that.
And they thought, "We gotta get together and stop this
or we're gonna be washed away,
and the anti-business sentiment is just gonna ruin us."
The business class may have been fearful,
but in all this upheaval, they saw an opportunity
to use white fear and insecurity
to sell a new economic story.
They began to see that white Americans
would turn away from government and unions
and towards the quote-unquote "free market."
And that's when we began to see the business class
really organized, with a message that said,
basically, "Turn your back on the formula
that created your own middleclass prosperity."
And what we see today is
we have an economy
that always existed for Black and brown people,
and yet now, it's existing
for nearly the majority of American workers.
If you build into any system
a belief in a hierarchy of human value
that gives permission to exploitation of anyone,
ultimately, that system will sort of swallow us all.
All across America,
tourist attractions are shutting down.
Disneyland in California,
closing because of the coronavirus.
They are proceeding with the closure
of these parks.
Here's what's new at 2:05.
Disney will furlough 30,000
of its workers in Anaheim alone.
An additional 43,000...
What the company is asking them to do
is to certainly apply for state benefits
in the interim.
With no clarity about whether or when
permanent layoffs would come,
cast members wondered
how long their unemployment benefits would hold out.
To try to keep things fun and interesting,
we are in our tent camping in the front yard.
Cold!
It can't be cold, honey.
Mommy just got it off the grill.
It is cold!
Feel it!
Okay, I'll find a way to heat it back up.
How dare you?!
It's raining!
You like camping, huh?
Mm-hm, in the rain!
In the rain!
I like it.
It's good to see everybody!
There you go!
So, how's everybody doing?
It's the same day it's always been.
Tomorrow, I'll let you know about tomorrow.
And after that,
I'll let you know about the day after that.
You gotta roll with the punches.
People say, you know,
"We're worried about the future."
It's kinda hard to get worried about something
that you never had an opportunity
to have in the first place.
We're coming here to Michael's high school
and seeing if we can pick up food for everybody.
- Four. - Four?
- You like her mask? - Yeah!
It's so pretty!
- Thank you!
Just worried about today and tomorrow
and being able to just do the basic stuff.
We live day by day.
It's been difficult because of the pandemic.
I don't know what's gonna happen,
and, uh, I feel like I'm way off course.
I wanna graduate.
Hopefully, I get to do that someday.
But the way things are going right now...
it's not looking so good.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to...
move out from...
my parents' home. You know?
I'll just never move out.
Yeah.
Are you okay with that?
I just feel sad about it.
I feel sad that I can't even help.
- Yeah. - Because I need help.
It'll work out.
I know, baby, I know.
My poor cats are so confused.
Right now, I'm going to stay with a friend
because we had a pipe back up in my house.
They literally have to rip out a bunch of walls.
My roommate is letting me borrow the truck.
When you're in my financial situation,
you can't afford to have any emergencies at all.
I am fortunate
that I have people helping me out
and I have a place to stay with my cats.
I grew up in a very unsteady financial home.
And every time we ended up moving,
we'd lose something emotional.
I used to have my mom's ID,
which was my only picture of her.
And I can't find that anymore.
So, I... I kind of tend to associate moving with,
um, losing things that are important to me.
You know,
I'm kind of pushing that feeling to one side
and doing my best to move forward.
Hey, baby, want to look?
What do you think?
- Yeah?
CEO Bob Iger announced this week
he would forgo his entire salary
because of the crisis.
Early on, Bob Iger and top executives
made a big show of giving up their salaries.
But it was just a matter of months
before the Disney board
would quietly restore them fully.
Look at the $3 million check
Bob Iger gave back for his salary.
My first thought was
"But what about his stock options?
What about his... all those other things?"
We all know that that's not where
the majority of his money comes from.
They were never at risk of losing their homes.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
soared 358 points.
It was the best August for the Dow
since 1984.
In fact, as workers were struggling,
the 1% was better off than it had ever been.
In 2020, as the pandemic raged,
sales of super-yachts were up 46 percent.
When did this become normal?
What happened to the way my grandfather did business?
He died in 1971, and within a decade,
the country's personality had completely changed.
It didn't just change magically,
it changed because powerful people
changed those norms and changed those values
and put aside the values
that had operated for decades and decades in this country.
I use the word "confederacy" a lot,
but all of these people corporate CEOs,
uh, intellectual zealots, uh...
just plain rich people...
they worked together during the '70s and '80s
to change this system and this culture
into one that really is
about serving the rich guys and the business guys.
In 1971,
business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce
asked Virginia tobacco lawyer
and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell
to come up with a plan
put business firmly in the driver's seat.
They began this campaign
to change minds.
Government is not only not the answer,
government is bad.
Government is incompetent, government's corrupt.
Government can't do anything.
Get out of the way
and let business and Wall Street do everything.
- All that mattered is profit.
They created a road map for
an ideological takeover of American life,
from how business should organize and lobby
and contribute to politicians,
to how they need to go into the universities
to make sure that young people were understanding
the dangers of labor unions
- and government regulation.
"We gotta set up these think tanks,
we gotta create some media."
And this super-free market,
"Profits for all that matter" idea
was sold to the American people.
In any event, I'm not in favor of fairness,
I'm in favor of freedom!
And freedom is not fairness.
Milton Friedman was a celebrity economist
arguing corporations
have no responsibility whatsoever
beyond profits, full stop, end of story.
Milton Friedman said a corporation is a machine
for making money for investors
and maximizing shareholder value
would make everyone rich and free.
You don't have to worry about anything else.
All you have to do is put your head down and make money.
Did you ever have a moment of doubt
on whether greed's a good idea to run on?
Well, first of all,
is there some society you know
that doesn't run on greed?
The world runs...
on individuals pursuing their separate interests.
Milton Friedman thought,
"Greed is good, and that's what makes America great."
Of course, that idea
is a mischaracterization of our economic system
for more than a century.
They just re-wrote the story.
And suddenly,
that story was everywhere,
even on morning television.
What made it so easy for Americans to imagine
that the free market would serve their interest
any better than the government have?
On the one hand,
up front is the free market story,
and on the side is the dog whistle.
In Chicago, they found a woman
who holds the record.
She used 80 names, 30 addresses
to collect food stamps, social security,
as well as welfare.
I've always felt
the nine most terrifying words in the English language are,
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Reagan was able to win large majorities
of working and middle-class white people
by campaigning against the government itself.
The emotional logic was
"Government is on the side
of these lazy Black people who don't want to work."
"You are better than that."
"You are one of us."
"You, too, can be rich."
And he marketed it extremely well.
My friends,
thank you again for the gift of this magnificent parade.
Tomorrow evening,
I will address the nation
about a dramatic proposal to reform our tax system
to launch a new American revolution
and expand our economic freedom.
It became known as "trickle-down economics."
If the rich get richer, then it'll help everybody.
Of course, the result was
a set of policy changes...
slashing tax rates
on millionaires and corporations,
gutting social spending
that really helped working-class families,
and then, of course, attacking unions.
It really signaled the end of
the reign of organized labor in the country
as a way for millions of workers to demand
an equal slice of the pie they spent all day baking.
The changes that came
with this free market ideology
were reflected inside of Disney,
after my father helped bring in a new CEO
and corporate priorities drastically changed.
Management wants the workers
to give up some of what they already have,
asking a three-year wage freeze
and some cuts in benefits.
Workers say
they cannot accept a two-year wage freeze,
and they say they cannot understand
the company's attitude towards its employees.
The morale has been really down, and I honestly can say
I don't think it'll ever be the same out there.
Disneyland will open this morning as usual,
with or without its union employees.
They discovered
they didn't have to spend so much money
on people that they no longer appreciated anyway.
I was appalled at what they were telling me,
and I just thought,
"Well, this isn't the company I knew."
It was part and parcel
of this treating workers and employees
more and more like...
cogs, like something less than people.
Around this same time,
the average CEO
went from being paid 60 times the average worker
to 100, to 200, to 300,
to 600 times, in some cases.
And that's just because...
it was decided that they could get away with it.
The "they" in this case was Wall Street,
where a lot of things were suddenly possible
on what would become the proving ground
for the free market ideology.
You know, I think of it
as the asshole-ification of America.
Totally!
A word I... yes, indeed.
It is the asshole-ification of America.
This...
This is a great view from up here.
You bet it was a great view from up there.
And for the next four decades,
Wall Street and corporate America
would spend billions lobbying
to dismantle almost every law and regulation
keeping them in check,
stacking the deck further
and further against Main Street.
Rather than trickle down,
money has flowed relentlessly up to people like me.
Well, you know, trickling down always,
to me, sounded like urine, right?
I mean, that's what trickles, right?
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Do you know
that there was a version of trickle-down economics
in the 1890s
that was described as the "Horse and Sparrow Theory"?
If the horse eats enough oats,
they make their way through the horse,
and the sparrow gets 'em.
Ooh!
And yet, that trickle-down story
just will not die...
- no matter how much it stinks.
Big announcement from Disney,
and not a good one for Disney employees.
Today, Disney announced
that it will be laying off
about 28,000 domestic employees.
"Dear cast member...
The COVID-19 pandemic
has had a significant impact on our businesses."
"We have made the very difficult decision
to reduce our workforce."
It makes me scared.
Knowing that that many people lost their jobs now...
and I might end up losing mine somewhere down the line,
and I don't wanna lose it.
It's the ice cream guy.
Glad the kids aren't here.
See? I know how to make you smile.
- Took me a second.
You know, been through rough times before,
this is just a different format.
Don't worry about it, I got this.
- I got this! - We just laugh...
When I say the words "I got this,"
it means "I ain't got a f... clue what I'm gonna do,
but I gotta think of something fast,
'cause this shit is sinking.
It's like the Titanic and another... like,
the icebergs are ganging up and they're,
like, attacking the boat now.
The color of the day is green on Wall Street.
All three major indices closed at record high levels.
As stocks continue...
No matter how bad things got for workers,
Wall Street continued to ride high.
Disney could not have written a better comeback story.
The stock back at all-time highs.
Disney+ up big over the Christmas holiday.
Fans rejoiced over
upcoming Star Wars and Marvel movies,
and stockholders celebrated too.
Well, most of them.
Abigail Disney had a different reaction.
Her take was that share prices were divorced
from what was happening to the company's workers,
and she called that
"a complete moral breakdown of this entire system."
I don't believe the company and the magic
can survive this kind of corporate behavior.
I think you see this more broadly,
not as a Disney problem and emblematic of the problem
in boardrooms and corporate cultures across this country.
I'm saying... it's time to do it differently,
and I don't care what the business school says.
There's a certain level below which you cannot go
in the name of human decency.
You guys are ready to move up.
Merry Christmas and stay safe, all right?
Merry Christmas, thank you!
Have a merry Christmas, now.
They just told me
that there are over 300 people in this line,
and I believe it.
The line pretty much wraps around
this entire neighborhood.
All of us need this help.
All right.
All right, here you go.
This time, we got wipes.
I hear you've been real good boys.
- Really?! - That's what I heard.
You're on the Nice List, aren't you?
You're on the Nice List?
Yeah?
Remember the PS5 and the Switch!
Ho ho ho!
I just read an article about Bob Iger.
He literally became a billionaire
right before the holidays.
So, he got a wonderful Christmas present,
while everybody else was being handed pink slips.
That doesn't make sense.
When we have a pandemic, as we've had,
where almost 60 new billionaires were minted,
where the billionaire class increased their wealth
by almost 50 percent, while tens of millions of people
went without,
this inequality economy
is one that honestly looks a lot more
like the Gilded Age and the plantation economy
than the one that we
associate with the American Dream.
Well, the happiest place on Earth
is giving people a big reason to smile today.
Disneyland is back open
after being shut down for more than a year!
For the city of Anaheim this morning,
reopening, it's a big step toward economic recovery.
For the fans, it's just a day of excitement.
As the park reopened,
Ellie, Artemis, Ralph, and Trina
were all called back to work.
Shoulder to shoulder against corporate greed!
But many cast members
were not brought back.
A bunch of my crew is still laid off.
There are still so many messed up things happening.
Shoulder to shoulder against corporate greed!
Shoulder to shoulder, more respect and dignity.
How much are those little ears,
the Mickey Mouse ears?!
Thirty!
Thirty dollars!
And how much are Disney workers making?
Fifteen.
Fifteen bucks!
How about somebody with...
Our workload has increased,
our wages are the same.
It's just a never-ending fight.
I don't have love for the company anymore.
Hey, everyone, I'm a Disney cast member,
I'm a custodian!
I really wanted
to quote Walt Disney for you guys right now!
"You can design and create and build
the most wonderful place in the world,
but it takes people to make the dream a reality!"
Thank you! Well said, Ellie!
Okay, gracias, thank you for coming out.
After my time with the union,
I've come to really appreciate the work that they do.
I hear you're going back to college!
So, what are you gonna study?
Labor studies.
I...
That makes me really happy to hear you say that.
I mean, it makes me really happy to imagine you...
doing that... I can't tell you.
I have this new passion growing within me now
with working alongside unions
and building power
for working-class people like me.
Meanwhile, after months of searching and saving,
Artemis was able to find a place
within her price range.
Before, I was only living like a ten,
15-minute drive from work, but now
it takes about two hours. Or if I ride the bus...
Yeah.
It feels good in here. It's light.
- Yeah. - You have light.
Yes.
And you have Keanu, which...
He's very beautiful, he keeps me company.
So, when did you start back at Disney,
and how are you feeling about that now?
When I first got back, like,
it was really nice to just be working,
but I've been getting more and more frustrated
the last couple of months just thinking
about this job that was supposed to pay my bills
while I focused on the things
that are supposed to be what life is about,
about the things that make me joy.
You know, I haven't focused on any of those things
because I've been so focused on the fact
that I couldn't survive on this job.
You got a second job?
Yes, yes, I got a job at a school district
working as a sub-custodian.
It's kind of a foot in the door to potentially
become full-time at a school district.
So, you're laying the groundwork to leave.
Potentially, yeah.
So, is that something
that you've been thinking about for a long time?
It's something I probably
should have been thinking about for a long time.
I had a five-year plan when I went into Disney,
to be done with college and onto the next thing.
And that didn't work out.
It's nine years later now.
And it's just been frustrating
because I was brought up with the idea
that I'm healthy, I'm intelligent,
if I put in the work, I'm gonna be okay
and I'm gonna be able to make money
and take care of myself.
But... I don't think
that it's as true as a lot of people say.
Far and wide, the reputation of Disneyland...
stands out primarily for the courtesy...
and the cleanliness
and the friendliness of the place.
I've always said,
in my end of the work,
that it takes people to run a business.
You people have been the heart
and the running soul of this business.
And we appreciate it no end.
And we say congratulations
to you for doing the grand job that you have done.
- Thank you.
Humans are meaning-making creatures.
The idea of the economy
was to give us the resources we needed
so that then, we could tell the stories
and build the relationships
and have the meaning that we needed.
We've let the search for daily bread and for things
completely overwhelm...
what our ancestors called our "souls."
It's really good to see you guys.
It's been a hella-long time, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, it's been a year and something,
but it feels so much longer than that.
It feels like five to ten years.
Well, you look like Father Time now,
so that works.
I feel more comfortable this way.
So, Ralph, rumor has it you're not going back.
No.
Tomorrow is his official last day at the company.
Wow.
It's not an easy decision.
I mean, it's...
it's more like moving onto a different and new chapter
that'll be hopefully
more beneficial for our family overall,
and leaving a chapter behind
behind that really I'd like to forget I read.
I mean, there were some highlights but...
Tell me why you're leaving.
Um...
Right now, it's... I'm getting at that age,
it's wearing on me, it's a lot of physical work
that we were doing
for not a lot of financial reward,
and that's taken its toll.
So, what's next?
What are your options?
See, uh, where life takes us.
Happy birthday, Dad!
- Happy birthday, baby. - Thank you, Daddy.
'Cause I know you get everything good
when this happens, you get cake...
- Yes. - Yes.
Oh, those can't be for me, that's much too old.
- Happy birthday.
- Yes. - Surprise.
All right, here we go,
we're all gonna try to block the wind.
If you could tell Disney anything,
what would you tell them?
We'd like to be able to have a home.
Got a little help there, huh?
- Who wants one first? - I want cake!
- Me! - Me!
Me!
Is that good cake?
Yeah?
Come back here!
One, two, go, Daddy, get 'em!
Ahh!
Whoo!
Woo, that was tough, Mom!
Let's go.
"Dear Bobs...
"Yeah, this is for both of you.
Bob Iger
and Disney's new CEO, Bob Chapek."
"You didn't seem to understand my email,
so I made this film."
"This is for you
and for all the Toms, Dicks, Harrys, and Marys
running Wall Street and corporate America,
because this isn't just a Disney story,
it's the story of nearly half of American full-time workers
who can't make ends meet."
"These problems are the result of a complicated system
that constrains us all."
"It may not be our fault,
but it is our responsibility,
and you and I both know
that with imagination and courage,
it can be changed."
"Maybe I sound a little too Disney,
but trust me,
I'm not alone."
"To be continued."