Perhaps there will be egg on our collective faces and we’ll have to update this article with a vast number of photographs showing the throngs of Disney employees who walked out in protest. However, at this point, we can’t find a single photo or video of a large scale protest at any Disney location. Conversations with sources around Disney World say that planned protests have either fizzled or were never really planned for the Florida resort beyond internet chatter and company rebels. In California, maybe a hundred or so employees walked on the sidewalk, but that’s it. A quick stroll and return to work doesn’t seem to match what was advertised. A perusing of articles around the internet also finds that there simply isn’t anything substantive reporting on a major protest we’ve just happened to miss.
Instead, there’s the threat of a real walkout:
Disney Finds Balancing Act with Threat of Walkout
But there’s no actual walkout that we can find. Is it that the vast number of Disney employees do not care about this issue or do not support it? Recall the demands from the Disney Walkout organization are that employees will not be required to work in Florida, be transferred to Florida, no investment or construction will occur in Florida, and Disney will advocate politically for Disney Walkout’s political causes in Florida. Yet there’s nobody participating in any of this today that we can see. If there’s a random dozen-or–so somewhere, is that ultimately a failure?
The only thing that has happened so far is that perhaps a hundred Disney employees at their California headquarters marched around the sidewalk chanting “say gay”. Unless that keeps up for a while, is that a real walkout or a fifteen-minute signal? Chanting “say gay” doesn’t even address the demands the organizers seem to want. While Steve Desaulniers claims there are hundreds of protesters, we certainly don’t see evidence of big numbers like that… and the protesters are even laughing after they pass the camera where they stop chanting.
Hundreds of Disney employees walking out at company HQ in Burbank #DisneyWalkout pic.twitter.com/n9QpNmAHIf
— Steve Desaulniers (@steve_desaul) March 22, 2022
Are Disney executives facepalming in this moment that they agreed to fight the state of Texas over laws criminalizing sex change operations on minors? How much did Disney give in that they might wish they could take back now that nothing has materialized?
If a real walkout and real action happens with Disney properties and studios, we’ll cover it here. We were expecting it. But as of now, all we have is a relatively small number of people walking on a sidewalk. Operations at all Disney Parks seem to be going off without a problem. We don’t have any reporting of any studios being hampered by employees walking out. Should that change, we’ll update the site… but as of now, there’s not much going on with 1:30 PM EST having already been reached.
Leave a comment below and keep reading That Park Place for all the latest news that should be fun.
Update 3:00 PM EST, 3/22/2022:
Deadline is now confirming that there are essentially no protesters today. This may signal that there is very limited support despite the various Disney subsidiary statements that have been released today.
