SaveDisney, the website started by Roy E. Disney to push for the ouster of Michael Eisner and reformation of the Disney Board of Directors, posts a letter from Abagail Disney today. Abagail is Roy O. and Edna Disney’s granddaughter. Abagail addresses what Cast Members have meant to the Company and her family and why that is motivation for the fight SaveDisney is in the middle of.
My Grandfather once said that “It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” And so you see why we are in this fight. I grew up understanding that Walt Disney Cast Members throughout the company are a rare and irreplaceable breed of people. They bring all of themselves to jobs that are not always easy and not always as well rewarded as they’d like. They do it because they work in a place that means something to them, and that is no small thing in a time when work is seen as merely another commodity for sale in an endlessly cheapening marketplace.
I have to echo Abagail Disney’s sentiments. Some of the most painful moments in the last decade or so have involved the layoff of unwanted Imagineers and Artists in what amounted to a purging of the creative spirit from the company. Can the tide be turned in time to Save Disney? who knows, but we shall see.