Broadway actors come to Philly to knock on doors for Harris, Walz, and Casey

In 2009, actors Julianna Zinkel and Michael Stewart Allen starred in People’s Light Theatre’s A Tale of Two Cities. Fifteen years later, on Monday morning, the two had an unplanned reunion in Bridesburg’s Teamsters Hall. Both members of Actors’ Equity Association, the actors joined 60 of their union mates in canvassing for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz’s campaign, and for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s reelection.

“We’re going to go around to different neighborhoods in Philadelphia to make sure that our local union folks are going to be supporting our union-backed candidates, which include Harris and Walz, and Bob Casey,” said Zinkel, a Narberth resident and a cast member of Arden Theatre Company’s forthcoming production, Intimate Apparel. “We always knock on a few Trump voter doors as well, just to check in, because we really believe that standing there in person in front of another human being makes a difference.”

Allen, who lives in New York, arrived in Philadelphia with a bus full of his union colleagues to add to the efforts of the Philadelphia chapter of Actors' Equity and AFL-CIO, who have been knocking on doors of various union members to get the vote out for Harris and Walz since August. After Monday’s round of canvassing in Port Richmond, the Actors’ Equity has knocked on an estimate of over 10,000 doors in Pennsylvania. The 51,000-plus-member union is also organizing canvassing efforts around the country.

“If you look at it, there’s only one real ticket that’s supportive of the unions,” said Allen, who last performed in Philadelphia as a part of Warhorse’s touring Broadway cast. “Trump crossed the (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) picket line when he worked for The Apprentice. Harris and Walz have walked the picket lines with union members. They’ve been to union houses and they address union issues.”

Andrew R. Butler, cast member of the multiple Tony-winning musical Stereophonic, believes that Trump, who still owes money to the contractors who built Atlantic City’s Trump Taj Mahal, does not respect working people. Butler was using his Monday off to fight to preserve union power and to remind members of other labor unions that “Trump is a boss, and I said that in a derogatory way. And he is looking out for the super wealthy, and that ain’t me, that ain’t you.”

Daniel Point, seen sporting a Harris-Walz camo hat, spoke about how, in 2021, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of a $1.9 trillion stimulus package that included an estimated $74 to $91 billion in pension funds for Teamsters and other unions. Point, who is the chief of staff and political director of the American Federation of Musicians, thinks a Harris win depends on reminding “voters and union households throughout the Philadelphia area, how much of an ally Harris is.”

Although the national Teamsters union did not endorse a presidential candidate this year, Pa. Teamsters endorsed Harris last month.

The Actors’ Equity Association has been recognized by the AFL-CIO since 1919 but 2016 was the first time the union decided to back a presidential candidate — Hillary Clinton. It was because of, the group announced, Donald Trump’s opposition to arts funding and education.

In 2020, President Trump’s budget proposal aimed to stop “wasteful and unnecessary spending” and planned to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Congress prevented that from happening.

Tami Swartz, another Equity member, is a Harrisburg native and artistic and executive director of the Harrisburg Opera Association. As someone who was running an arts organization through the Trump presidency, Swartz, a former liberal Republican voter, has definitely seen the “malaise” that she said was caused by Trump’s years as president. “It just exhausted people and now they don’t even want to volunteer, don’t even want to care about the arts,” she said.

Her fundraising efforts have included a stress on diversity and an appreciation of the arts but it has been hard. “The pandemic also curtailed our fundraising, but we’re coming back slowly,” she said, “But I am about 10 years behind where we wanted to be, and I do think that Trump has a lot to do with that.”

For the AFL-CIO and its canvassing members, the focus of conversation has been “issues of livelihood, equal rights, and autonomy,” said member-organizer Khalil LeSando, who was also a part of AFL’s organizing efforts during the John Fetterman-Josh Shapiro election cycle. Actors and stage managers, he thinks, have the patience to talk to people and persuade them.

Eight days from Election Day, the work to get out the Harris-Walz vote is nowhere near done. As Philadelphia AFL-CIO’s organizing director Jana Korn reminded her comrades:

“Philly is center of the universe right now.”