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locally based and 100 percent non-profit, meaning nothing we
raised would be siphoned off for the employee or administrative
costs. Every dollar we raised went directly to the chosen charity.”
In year two of what has now become a fun, spirited day of
Atlanta union members squaring off with names like “Team
MacGyver,” “Team Godzilla,” and “Team Get Scene Studios,”
Local 479’s Kickball Tournament raised $27,000 for the Georgia
Fallen Firefighters Foundation (GFFF). Cheatham recalls how
GFFF Chairman and Co-Founder Dennis Thayer “pulled me
aside during the tournament and said: ‘our yearly annual budget
from [the State of Georgia] is fifteen thousand dollars. You
guys nearly doubled that in one day!’
“One of the things GFFF does,” Cheatham adds, “is oversee
the full-dress funeral processionals for other fire fighters; the
2016 [Kickball Tournament] took place on September 11, and
it was such a good feeling to tie in this localized activism with
something that impacted working families on the national level.”
Speaking of national, on the other side of the country, in Los
Angeles, CA, Sound Mixer/Sound Utility Eva Rismanforoush,
who co-chairs Local 695’s Young Workers Committee with
Sound Mixer Timothy O’Malley, tells a similar story, substituting
L.A. River and beach cleanup days for Cheatham’s kickball
tournaments.
“All the IATSE Young Workers Committee chairs [in Los
Angeles] have been meeting once a month to find something
we could do collectively for the community,” Rismanforoush
explains during a lunch break from her current TV episodic,
9-1-1. “Recently, the Costumer Designers Guild invited us to
co-host a blood drive at Local 80. The event will be in January
and we plan to sign up 15-20 people from each Local to donate
blood, in a partnership with the Red Cross. Our events are open
to any IA Local, and we hope to get a big turnout to help make
a real impact.”
Rismanforoush says that while the Red Cross blood drive is
a combined event with other Locals, last year saw the kickoff of
an event generated within the Local 695 Young Workers Committee
that is geared toward helping the environment in L.A.
communities.
“We did a beach cleanup in 2016 at Playa Vista that was very
well attended,” she continues. “So this year [2017], we did an L.A.
River cleanup in conjunction with a popular nonprofit group
called “Friends of the L.A. River”, who one of our members had
already been involved with. Tim and I wanted something simple
that didn’t require a lot of funding. We’re both really into the
environment and these cleanups fit that bill perfectly – they’re
relatively easy to arrange, and have a very low cost attached but
with a big social impact.”
Community outreach work like the kind Rismanforoush
describes is also thriving in the Southeast thanks to IATSE
members like Lorenzo Mack, chair of Local 322’s Young Workers
Committee for Stagehands in Charlotte, NC. Mack, an audio
engineer and rigger, has been a member of Local 322 for just
over five years. He began his committee after returning from the
Young Workers Conference in Portland, OR in 2014, with the
hope of starting the group and “piling up some quick and easy
wins,” he smiles. “We had no money – I mean, zero funding, so
the imperative became: ‘what could we do with just elbow grease
and sweat?’ The best option was a food and clothing drive, and
that’s the direction we went.”
Nature hike for Local 695 Young
Workers Committee Members.
FOURTH QUARTER 2017 13