A Message From the Hawaii Local President

Aloha Hawaii Local Members!

Summer is moving quickly here on the islands! We are fortunate to still have work opportunities and many events to participate in at our Local. Our Hawaii Local continues to grow; we are strong and we are moving forward together. 

Thank you to all the members who attended our annual membership meeting on April 26. We were honored to have SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, “Zoom in” and share our progress since the strike, and explain about the hard-fought gains in our contracts. As I mentioned at that gathering, our Hawaii Local Board and our committees, along with our Local Executive Director Mericia Palma Elmore, have been working hard to plan even more events and opportunities this year and going forward into the fall — because more participation is NOT a problem, it is a total WIN! We encourage your participation and your service to our union.

We had many events across May and June, too. Thank you to all the members who attended our pau hana with our Hawaii legislators on May 8, our young performers mini golf event on June 14, and our Hawaii Local family picnic on June 29. 

Thank you also to our Hawaii convention delegates, who participated in our SAG-AFTRA national convention across the entire weekend of June 22 and 23. We appreciate your volunteer time and representation for our local members at the convention. Many positive resolutions were reviewed and passed that should help us to improve our policies and contracts going into the coming years.

If you missed out on any of these opportunities this past spring and are ready to keep your skills strong and toolbox ready, consider these events coming up in August. We have declared August to be Actors Month in Hawaii. You should have received an email on July 3 with the details and signup info. In case you didn’t know, here are some of the amazing workshops, panels and gatherings offered to help our local members grow! All of these events are FREE to local union members in good standing.

There will be a panel on the business of acting, along with Actors Helping Actors: Scene Study, where actors can work on scenes and audition materials. There are three Saturdays on Oahu to choose from for the scene studies, along with a Thursday morning on Maui. And, finally, there’s a Zoom opportunity titled Telling Our Stories: Using the Micro-Budget and MicroPod Agreements for Content Creation and Storytelling.

All of these workshops still have spaces available, so you can register now to reserve your spot. You do need to RSVP to attend. 

Many of you know that I end my president’s letter each time with a phrase that former President Barack Obama spoke while visiting our islands some years ago: Pupukahi i holomua!  

It means "unite to move forward.” A union needs to be united; it’s literally what the word means. We work together, protecting all our members and our contract, and we all progress, together. It is literally in our SAG-AFTRA mission statement: “[We] seek the strongest protections for media artists throughout the world” — and our Hawaii Local is doing just that, working together, growing stronger, helping each other and moving forward!

Pupukahi i holomua! 

Andrea “Andy” Sikkink
Hawaii Local President