Anita Hill-Led Hollywood Commission Urges Industry To Step Up In Wake Of Killing Of George Floyd

The Anita Hill-led Hollywood Commission said today that it “mourns the murder of George Floyd” and urged the film and TV industry “to make our workplaces safe from harassment, discrimination, abuse and bullying in our business that undermines real and lasting progress and replicates harmful power imbalances in our society.”

Formerly known as the Hollywood Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality, the Commission said that “We share in the collective despair felt across the world and reflect on what steps can be taken in our personal and professional lives to create change.”

“According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the film and TV industry supports 2.6 million total jobs and directly employs workers in 34 states, making it a bigger industry than farming and mining,” the Commission said in a statement. “As the creators and arbiters of popular culture, Hollywood’s global impact is incalculable.

“With that economic power, size, scope and influence comes responsibility. The responsibility is to make our workplaces safe from harassment, discrimination, abuse and bullying in our business that undermines real and lasting progress and replicates harmful power imbalances in our society.

“Every day, with every deal that gets inked, every production that begins, every casting choice, every script green light, every recording session and every assistant trained, the entertainment industry has an opportunity to demonstrate respect for human well-being and to reflect the diversity of the world in which we exist.

“Hollywood’s opportunity in this moment is to interrogate the systems and power abuses that have allowed injustice, harassment, discrimination and bias to flourish across our business; to hold ourselves accountable to members of our community and viewers; to lead with empathy, understanding and fairness and to live up to every gesture and word of support with deliberate action.”