I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a few different committees with SAG-AFTRA. Some of the committees have been national ones and others have been local to LA. And each committee has its own way of organizing meetings. Depending on the focus of the committee, sometimes the meetings are all about news specific to that committee. For example, the National Conservatory Committee usually discussed things regarding the SAG-AFTRA Conservatory with each local and what the national committee could do to support them. And the LA Local Organizing Committee was mainly about sharing industry news and events that we should know more about and could benefit all members to learn about.
The only committee that I’m in right now that has been able to have meetings has been the LA Local Communications Committee. I’m grateful that we’ve had regular meetings because there are a lot of things we want to get done within the committee. I haven’t written any articles yet for the local membership, but I have submitted ideas for several and one is being worked on by a union staff member so it can be published (some articles are written by members, but others require staff to help us and the one I suggested needs staff to work on it). And since we are busy planning articles and other forms of communication that we want to get out to the LA Local, our meetings are typically just focused on that and we don’t have a ton of additional education.
But for the meeting that we had this past week, that changed. We still spent quite a bit of our meeting planning articles and other items, but we also got to have some time to learn about the union archives and what that entailed. I know what an archivist does for museums, but I wasn’t aware of exactly what they would be storing for the union. Before our meeting, we had a chance to submit questions that would be asked during the presentation. And since I didn’t know much about what they would do, my questions were pretty basic and simple. But I figured if I was unaware there probably would be at least one other person who was clueless too. So I put down all my simple questions and hoped that they would be able to be answered.
Only a portion of our meeting was dedicated to discussing the union archive, but I think the staff that was a part of it did a great job with their presentation and going over several of the questions that we had submitted. I learned that a lot of the items that have been kept have been about the creation of the union or artifacts from the first few years of the union, such as old membership cards. And I don’t know why I wouldn’t have thought of this, but they do keep information related to past elections and contract votes. It’s smart to keep all of that since there have been so many votes regarding contracts and ratifications that are important to remember. And if someone has a question about the changes in a contract, this would provide a resource to be able to see what historically has been in contracts and what was just something that was assumed to be in there.
I do wish we had more time for the archive presentation and to learn more about how we can share more information with other members and maybe some opportunities for people to understand more about it, but I am grateful that we had some time for education about the union. With everything being virtual and board meetings not open to all members like before, I feel like I haven’t had as many chances to learn about union things. I have missed that and even though observing board meetings isn’t really a time to learn, I always had notes after being there of things I wanted to look up and learn more about. So this committee meeting having the presentation brought back a little bit of that feeling and really helped to make me feel more connected to the union again.
And besides getting to feel more connected to the union, any committee meeting or event I’m able to be a part of really just reminds me of what I’m really pushing for in my life. Sometimes it’s easy to just be sucked into the day-to-day with my day job, especially since I haven’t had many auditions lately. It can feel like I’m not really pursuing my career and just working my jobs. But this gave me some time to be a part of what I have striving for and hope to have as my main focus in life one day.
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