NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking about the American Dream with Abigail Disney

Wel­come to the ninth and final install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Abi­gail Dis­ney, activist and film­mak­er. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

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Read the transcript

(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia. I’m your host, Caya Berndt. We’re glad to have you with us for this installment. 

We are excit­ed to be joined by film­mak­er Abi­gail Disney!

Abi­gail, thank you so much for join­ing us!

ABIGAIL: Thrilled.

CAYA: And we’re real­ly thrilled to have you, too. So, can you tell us a lit­tle bit about your­self? Who are you, and what do you do? 

ABIGAIL: Well, my name is Abi­gail Dis­ney, and that’s usu­al­ly the first thing peo­ple notice about me, is I have this very funky last name.

My grand­fa­ther was Roy O. Dis­ney, who co-found­ed the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny with his broth­er, Walt. They called it the Dis­ney Broth­ers Com­pa­ny for a few years at the begin­ning there. My father worked at the com­pa­ny for fifty years. So, you know, I kind of grew up under the shad­ow of the Walt Dis­ney Company.

CAYA: And tell us about this film that you are mak­ing. We had that screen­ing at Netroots. 

ABIGAIL: Yeah, we just had a great screen­ing at Net­roots, I’m very hap­py to say. Stand­ing ova­tion. A lot of appre­ci­a­tion for the film, which is… I can’t tell you how much that means to me. I grew up going with my grand­fa­ther to Dis­ney­land. That was one of the perks of being a “Dis­ney Princess.” 

And we used to go through the back entrance, the employ­ees entrance. So when he parked in the employ­ee park­ing lot, or the cast mem­bers, as they call him at Dis­ney­land, he would get sort of mobbed by employ­ees who were so hap­py to see him. He was a real­ly, real­ly nice man. And, and I know that I’m say­ing this, I’m very con­scious that I’m say­ing this, about a guy who belonged to the John Birch Soci­ety, right? So it’s a lit­tle hard to you know, rec­on­cile one thing with the oth­er. I under­stand that. But I only knew him as this love­ly man. It was­n’t until, as an adult, that I began to put into a per­spec­tive his polit­i­cal ideas.

But I knew him as this man who was sweet and kind and warm, and who real­ly cared about every­body. The expe­ri­ence of walk­ing into the park with him was that he remem­bered every­body’s name. He cared. He asked about their kids. 

He hat­ed when they called him “Mr. Dis­ney,” he hat­ed it. He did­n’t see him­self at the top of a hier­ar­chy. He was just a guy. And when we’d come in, and the rea­son I know this, is because when we’d get inside the park, with­in about a hun­dred feet, he would always find a piece of garbage and pick it up off the ground. 

And I asked him one time why he always did that. And he said, “because nobody’s too good to pick a piece of garbage. And I want you to know that. And I want every­body who works here to know that.” 

That real­ly shaped me a lot. And he was real­ly strong with me about like, “you treat these peo­ple with respect, they work hard. There’s no bad behav­ior for the employ­ees here, you treat them well.” So he, in spite of what we know to be his pub­lic pol­i­tics, the per­son­al side of him was very human, very car­ing, and he taught me that. That was the lega­cy he left behind for me. 

CAYA: And can you tell us about the con­tent of the film, and why you made it? 

ABIGAIL: Yeah, so I kind of answered the first half of the ques­tion and not the sec­ond! It’s kind of some­thing I do. 

CAYA: It’s all good!

ABIGAIL: Yeah, so, flash for­ward many, many years. I’m in my six­ties, and I get a Face­book mes­sage from a guy who works at Dis­ney­land. And what he says is: “For years we’ve been fight­ing for bet­ter pay at the parks and bet­ter treat­ment. It’s real­ly bad here. And I won­der if you would help us.”

So my first reac­tion to that was, There’s noth­ing I can do to help. I don’t have a posi­tion at the com­pa­ny. I don’t even own that many shares. Like, what can I pos­si­bly do? And then my sec­ond reac­tion to it was, Well, you know what? Just say­ing “no” isn’t real­ly a sat­is­fac­to­ry answer.

So I went out to Ana­heim, and I sat with him and some of the oth­er folks who worked at the com­pa­ny, and lis­tened. And what I heard real­ly just made me so angry, because of the way it came into con­flict with my every mem­o­ry, every good mem­o­ry, I had of the way that place started. 

In the 1950s and 60s, as a cus­to­di­an at the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny, in the Dis­ney­land, you could afford a mid­dle class life. You could afford a house, a car, and food in the fridge. You could afford these things. Now, two-thirds of work­ers are on food stamps. Two-thirds of the hourly work­ers at Dis­ney­land in Cal­i­for­nia are on food stamps. One out of ten of them has been home­less in the past year. 

That just made me livid, and I came away think­ing, “Well, what can I do? What can I do?” And that’s how I made this film. I guess I could maybe try and make a film about it, and see if I can get peo­ple to watch because it’s not a Dis­ney sto­ry. It’s real­ly, every­thing Dis­ney has done to destroy the work envi­ron­ment for peo­ple at that park, has been done by every com­pa­ny in America. 

They’re just being typ­i­cal. I’m dis­ap­point­ed in their wish to be typ­i­cal, of course, but more than any­thing, it seemed impor­tant to track, because when it hap­pens at Dis­ney, it hurts more. You know? Because Cin­derel­la is sleep­ing in her car, for God’s sake. It just, the feel­ing of that gets you in the gut, when you know that, it’s real­ly impor­tant, and you should take that with you into your encoun­ters with every sto­ry you hear from Ama­zon, and Star­bucks, and every­where else. 

So it just seemed like if I could tell the human sto­ry of what’s changed, and how it’s changed, and why it’s changed, and real­ly con­nect with peo­ple’s hearts at the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny, and tell it in a way that real­ly shows that this is a broad prob­lem, that it was man-made, and caused by indi­vid­ual peo­ple with a plan… then maybe we could try to start to imag­ine our way out of the situation.

CAYA: Yeah. And going back to what you were say­ing about the gut punch: I think the greater the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance between what you’re see­ing and the back­stages, and espe­cial­ly for some­thing as emo­tion­al­ly charged as Dis­ney­land. A lot of peo­ple have real­ly strong feel­ings around Dis­ney. This is nos­tal­gia. This is fam­i­ly. And when you real­ize that per­haps your enjoy­ment is at the expense of oth­er peo­ple’s liveli­hoods, or that it’s built on the backs of some real­ly inhu­mane prac­tices, that is painful.

ABIGAIL: It’s very painful. And also, one of the rea­sons we’re where we are is because it hap­pened grad­u­al­ly. And I think Amer­i­cans are not very good…they’re good at the sud­den, trag­ic dis­as­ter. Every­body shows up with mon­ey and blan­kets and all the rest of it. But when it hap­pens slow­ly? Actu­al­ly, we’re ter­ri­ble at it. 

And we were warned! Every­body said, “this is what’s gonna hap­pen.” And here it is, hap­pen­ing. And look, I’m telling you, this is hap­pen­ing. We have a mil­lion Cas­san­dras lit­ter­ing the road behind us, try­ing to warn us. So we’re at a place that we could eas­i­ly have known, and pre­vent­ed, had we had the will, or the resources, or any­thing else. And that’s a whole oth­er story. 

So now that we’re here, let’s have a look at where we are.

Let’s real­ly, sud­den­ly, stop the train that’s been mov­ing this slow­ly, and take stock of where we’ve land­ed, and ask our­selves: is this real­ly the soci­ety we wan­na live in? Is this real­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our values? 

Are humans being pri­or­i­tized here? And if the answer to any of those ques­tions is “no” … well, then how do we go about mak­ing it better? 

CAYA: What are the biggest pri­or­i­ties that the Dis­ney Com­pa­ny can do in order to cre­ate a more equi­table, bet­ter work envi­ron­ment for its employees?

ABIGAIL: It needs to start… I mean, for me, what’s formed at the Dis­ney Com­pa­ny is typ­i­cal of any cor­po­ra­tion in Amer­i­ca, which is there’s a C‑Suite class. So the peo­ple in the C‑Suite are the exec­u­tive suites, the top man­age­ment at the com­pa­ny. What hap­pens in cor­po­ra­tions is they are so sep­a­rat­ed from the work and life of the peo­ple who are employed there, that they cease to feel they have any rela­tion­ship to it at all, which is why one set of reporters will call me to talk about work life at Dis­ney and a whole sec­ond set of reporters, total­ly unre­lat­ed to each oth­er, will call me about CEO pay. 

I nev­er get a call from some­body who wants to ask those ques­tions togeth­er, because they’re not seen as hav­ing any rela­tion­ship to each oth­er! That is how thor­ough­ly the cul­ture has swal­lowed the idea that the peo­ple who inhab­it the top have noth­ing to do with the peo­ple who inhab­it the bottom.

I hate call­ing it “the bot­tom” for nor­ma­tive rea­sons, but I’ll just use it for now. So the first thing that needs to hap­pen is the nobody’s too big to pick up a piece of garbage thing. Which is that the CEO needs to under­stand he’s no bet­ter than any­one else. He’s no more deserv­ing than any­one else. That the peo­ple who break a sweat every day aren’t being paid for their sweat. While I know he works hard, there’s no plan­et on which he works hard enough to jus­ti­fy that difference. 

CAYA: I’m curi­ous to know a lit­tle more about your expe­ri­ences, if you’d be will­ing to share them: you men­tioned that when you intro­duce your­self to peo­ple, the first thing that peo­ple notice is your name. And you were talk­ing a lit­tle bit before we start­ed record­ing about how that pres­ence has shaped [you]. How do you think going, mov­ing through life, with such a rec­og­niz­able name has shaped you as a per­son, and as a film­mak­er and artist? 

ABIGAIL: Well, you know, like any­thing you’re born with, whether it’s that you’re breath­tak­ing­ly beau­ti­ful or that you have a hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble prob­lem of some kind, what­ev­er it is you reck­on with it, or you live in per­il of, liv­ing a very, well…not well-formed life. I have spent a lot of years reck­on­ing with it, and when I was in col­lege, it was every­body was like, Oh my God, have you met the Dis­ney girl yet? Oh my God, what’s the Dis­ney girl like? So that hap­pened. That was the first time in my life that hap­pened, real­ly. And I was a lit­tle shocked by how much peo­ple cared. It was my first glimpse into just how big a thing it was. 

And as I began to trav­el inter­na­tion­al­ly, just how big a thing it was, was a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, because there isn’t a coun­try I can go to, or a cor­ner of a country…I mean, in the Con­go, they asked me if I’m related. 

So, it’s a moment that you have at the begin­ning of every inter­ac­tion with every per­son when they find out your last name. You have to make a deci­sion about whether or not you’re gonna lie when they say, are you related? 

For the first many years after col­lege, I lied and said I was­n’t relat­ed, and it seemed eas­i­er. But you know, I used to watch a lot of “I Love Lucy.” 

She was always lying, and then always wound up being the worst thing. I kind of form my ethics from Lucy! But I did real­ize it was actu­al­ly com­pli­cat­ed to lie, and there was some­thing. When it came time to be mar­ried, I of course had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to change my name. And I had always said I could­n’t wait to change my name! And I did­n’t. And I did­n’t, because part of me under­stood that some­thing was being asked of me by it, and that to just duck it like that would be… I’d miss some­thing impor­tant. That some­times felt like a bur­den, but was tru­ly, in fact, an oppor­tu­ni­ty. And I had to admit that I loved it in a cer­tain way. 

So the rest of my adult life, I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out what’s being asked of me by it. I car­ry a respon­si­bil­i­ty and a lega­cy. And it’s a lega­cy that is com­pli­cat­ed, espe­cial­ly if you’re a pro­gres­sive, it’s a real­ly com­pli­cat­ed lega­cy, ‘cause, you know, Walt picked up the phone and called Joe McCarthy and said, “May I please tes­ti­fy?” And you could find him on YouTube tes­ti­fy­ing, and not only nam­ing names, but spelling them, and giv­ing home addresses! 

I mean, he was not kid­ding! He was a seri­ous busi­ness right-wing dude! 

And what we know about how the Song of the South was made, and every­thing. So there’s all kinds of stuff in there that’s so yucky and hard… and yet, you love your fam­i­ly, you know? So you have to find a way to make one thing mesh with the oth­er thing. And that’s what I spent my adult life doing, is try­ing to find a way. And there is a lot to be proud of. 

One of my favorite moments with my name was meet­ing Medgar Evers’ daugh­ter in Jack­son, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and she was tak­ing us on the tour of the fam­i­ly home. And I noticed there were a lot of Dis­ney books on the book­shelf, because it’s been kept exact­ly as it was when he was shot.

And I asked her, “So, were those impor­tant to you? Did you read them?” And she said, “Oh my God. I read them con­stant­ly. They were every­thing to me.” 

She said, “after my father was shot and we had to leave, the harass­ment did­n’t stop just because my father had been killed.” And so they moved to San Bernardi­no Coun­ty and she said it was worse there than Mis­sis­sip­pi for one thing, which is… kind of an amaz­ing thing to know.

And she said, “My moth­er worked so hard as a maid, [she] raised the five of us, and she saved and saved and saved and saved, and every chance we got, we went to Dis­ney­land. And the rea­son we did that was because we felt so whole there, we felt so seen and wel­comed. So in spite of all that we know about Walt’s his­to­ry and all of that, what he cre­at­ed there did­n’t have that. Or at least not inso­far as many, many, many peo­ple expe­ri­enced it.”

And when I stand at the gate of that park and watch peo­ple com­ing out of it, I mean… it’s a cliche, every descrip­tion, every race, every nation­al­i­ty… but that’s what you see com­ing out of Dis­ney­land. And they’re all homog­e­nized in a way by the fact that they’re so hap­py. That these fam­i­lies came togeth­er, that they made mem­o­ries togeth­er, that they were joy­ful, bond­ing mem­o­ries. I don’t want that not to exist in the world. I don’t want that not to exist in the world. I real­ly don’t want that not to exist in the world. I feel like, and espe­cial­ly, of all the awful things this coun­try has had to offer the world, this is actu­al­ly the good thing.

We should remem­ber that we offered this to the world too. And I don’t want greed and short­sight­ed­ness and all the prob­lems that come with mod­ern cor­po­rate cul­ture to eat that alive, too. Along with all that it’s eaten. 

CAYA: Yeah, it sounds like… I think the cog­ni­tive dis­tanc­ing is the part that I keep com­ing back to. You know, you have some peo­ple who could just as eas­i­ly argue, well, as long as the end prod­uct is cre­at­ing this illu­sion, or this world for peo­ple to kind of come in, and exit, and just feel those hap­py moments, then who cares about what goes on behind the scenes?

ABIGAIL: Yeah. And there are plen­ty of peo­ple who come and go from the park feel­ing that way, and know per­fect­ly well what’s going on behind the mag­ic cur­tain. There will always be peo­ple like that. 

But I think that one of the spe­cial things about Dis­ney­land, espe­cial­ly, is that a real rela­tion­ship forms between the peo­ple who work there and the peo­ple who come there, because from the begin­ning, those peo­ple who work there were seen as part of the expe­ri­ence of being at Dis­ney­land. They help you take pic­tures, and they help you find a bath­room, and they help calm your cry­ing baby. I mean, they’re very much woven into the ide­al expe­ri­ence of a vis­i­tor to Disneyland. 

So there’s a nat­ur­al affin­i­ty that forms between the peo­ple who work there and peo­ple who come there, espe­cial­ly the peo­ple who have scrimped and saved for so long because the prices have got­ten so high.

So I think that mak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty between the peo­ple who come there, and peo­ple who work there is a pret­ty easy task. 

CAYA: Actu­al­ly, fun fact: I have nev­er been to Dis­ney­land. I have nev­er been to Dis­ney­land! I have nev­er been to Dis­ney World. I’m at the age now where I don’t want to go to Dis­ney­land. Not because I feel like I’m too old for kids movies, because I’m absolute­ly not, but because I’ve heard too many sto­ries from for­mer employ­ees, from back­grounds and I could not, in good con­science, walk into the hap­pi­est place on earth and know that that hap­pi­ness does­n’t extend to everybody.

ABIGAIL: Right. And that’s exact­ly why it needs to be saved from itself. That’s exact­ly why it needs to be saved. You can hide that infor­ma­tion for only so long. 

CAYA: And it’s real­ly encour­ag­ing because I feel like our pub­lic’s appetite for that is grow­ing, espe­cial­ly with [the] renewed labor union orga­niz­ing that’s been hap­pen­ing across the country. 

ABIGAIL: Absolute­ly. And in 2018, when I start­ed film­ing, the unions had come togeth­er for the first time, because, you know, it’s almost sur­pris­ing that there are unions at Dis­ney­land, because it opened in 1955, and they were both such anti-union guys that you wouldn’t have expect­ed… but of course, in 1955 the gov­ern­ment was pow­er­ful, and it sup­port­ed unions. And so you could­n’t open that park with­out unions! Those unions were lit­er­al­ly grand­fa­thered in, so you can’t get rid of them, which is great, but they were pit against each oth­er, and they just con­stant­ly used a divide-and-con­quer strat­e­gy to keep wages low.

And so it was final­ly in 2018 when they said, “Oh no, we’re not doing that any­more. We’re not just nego­ti­at­ing this con­tract and that con­tract, we’re gonna come togeth­er and we’re gonna make a case for… there used to be one base pay, and it can’t be as low as it’s been.”

When I start­ed talk­ing to peo­ple, it was $11.25, $11.15, maybe. 

In 2018 or 2017, I can’t remem­ber which year, by the time we start­ed shoot­ing, it had gone up to $15, which felt like a vic­to­ry, but it was­n’t a vic­to­ry, because the liv­ing wage in Ana­heim is $24 an hour. So a lot had to be done, and a lot of ground has to be made up. I will say that, and I’m very proud of this, there are nois­es com­ing out­ta the union. The nego­ti­a­tions are still qui­et right now, but the nois­es are that there’s gonna be a big move by Disney. 

A big move, in offer­ing a sub­stan­tive­ly large raise to the hotel work­ers, the cus­to­di­ans and jan­i­tors at the hotels. So if that’s true, and God, I hope it’s true, that means that the unions have fig­ured out exact­ly what’s the right com­bi­na­tion of noise and nego­ti­a­tion, and they have come togeth­er in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and worked togeth­er to enhance their pow­er. And I hope that this film had some effect already, even before it’s out. And that feels like a dream come true. 

Talk about a Dis­ney story!

CAYA: I wan­na see a Dis­ney movie about a union organizer. 

ABIGAIL: Yeah, exactly!

CAYA: So, we are just about at time. I just have a cou­ple more ques­tions for you. One of the things about union­iza­tion is that both employ­ers and employ­ees can fall prey to dis­in­for­ma­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and anti-union pro­pa­gan­da, even though, his­tor­i­cal­ly, unions ben­e­fit employ­ees as well as employ­ers. What can peo­ple do to con­vince man­age­ment, or have those con­ver­sa­tions, to con­vince them that union­iza­tion ben­e­fits everybody? 

ABIGAIL: You know, I’m all over the place about this, because I real­ly think that the anti-union belief sys­tem is so deeply wired into the con­tem­po­rary crop of CEOs, who are all of one par­tic­u­lar gen­er­a­tion, and who real­ly cut their teeth on an ide­ol­o­gy that came from Mil­ton Fried­man. They were told not only that unions are evil, but that if they weren’t mak­ing as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble, they were bad peo­ple. They were giv­en moral cov­er for bad behav­ior, and they cling to that like it’s the last life­guard on the boat that’s sink­ing. I some­times won­der that they’re a lost gen­er­a­tion, and that there needs to be a new generation. 

What I’m hear­ing from busi­ness schools, espe­cial­ly my friend at the Har­vard Busi­ness School, who teach­es the ethics class, which, when she start­ed, was an option­al class that was three weeks long and nobody paid any atten­tion to it. 

It’s now a required two-semes­ter class, and it’s one of the most pop­u­lar class­es at Har­vard. And what she says is, what she’s teach­ing is, it’s pos­si­ble to do this well. It’s pos­si­ble to do this with­out destroy­ing peo­ple, and let me show you all the ways. And she said half of the first year busi­ness stu­dents are already there. 

She does­n’t have to per­suade any­body of any­thing.

And that’s real­ly heart­en­ing, because busi­ness school class­es are self-select­ed groups of peo­ple who are very com­mit­ted to cap­i­tal­ism, but at least, regard­less of what you think of the future of cap­i­tal­ism, at least it will be pop­u­lat­ed, at least at the high­est lev­el from the Har­vard Busi­ness School, by half of them, peo­ple who are deter­mined to do it dif­fer­ent­ly and better.

I don’t count on the idea that the kind­ness of CEOs, every­body just lock­ing arms and singing “Kum­baya,” it changes any­thing. But I also don’t think lock­ing arms and “Kum­baya” singing is to any­body’s detri­ment, and it would­n’t hurt for peo­ple to expect bet­ter behav­ior from them­selves, and from every­one around them, in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. That will get us halfway there.

CAYA: I’m sure you’ve got­ten this ques­tion quite a bit, but what was the most chal­leng­ing part of mak­ing this film?

ABIGAIL: I got shad­owed by the pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment at Dis­ney every step of the way. As an exam­ple, when I went to speak before Con­gress, I found out that the Dis­ney lob­by­ists had per­son­al­ly called and harangued peo­ple on both sides of the aisle to pre­vent me from speak­ing at all. This is a very pow­er­ful com­pa­ny. This is the largest media com­pa­ny in the his­to­ry of the uni­verse, and how much they own, and how much they con­trol, and how much they con­trol just by being scary is… if we were at any oth­er time in his­to­ry, we would be talk­ing about antitrust laws. Because they should not have the pow­er they have.

So there’s been, for me, a cer­tain amount of fear. That I might get smeared, that I’ll get attacked. And I prob­a­bly still will, I think they’re wait­ing for the film to come out to do that. And then, deal­ing with the fear of oth­er peo­ple who don’t wan­na piss them off, in terms of dis­tri­b­u­tion, get­ting trail­ers cut, and all that kind of thing. I had five dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tors say, “I would love to work with you, but I’d like a future too.” So, there’s… I have to deal with that. And I knew I would, and it’s not the worst thing, but it does make me sad. 

CAYA: Yeah, it’s sad to con­front that in real time. I mean, I’m, kind of feel­ing like, my palm start­ed sweat­ing just a bit while you were talk­ing about hav­ing this big cor­po­ra­tion loom­ing over your shoul­der, and hear­ing from peo­ple, “Hey, I want to help you, but I can’t because I’m afraid, too.”

ABIGAIL: Yeah. And I can’t tell you how many times that’s been the case. So, that is a chal­lenge. And it only makes me mad­der. So, that’s actu­al­ly kind of, like a supercharged…

CAYA: It has the effect of actu­al­ly get­ting you going even fur­ther. Like, “that’s why I need to put this film out!” 

ABIGAIL: Yeah, exactly.

CAYA: I just real­ized we nev­er actu­al­ly said what the film was called!

ABIGAIL: Oh! Let me just sum it all up for you. It’s called “The Amer­i­can Dream and Oth­er Fairy Tales,” and it opens on Sep­tem­ber 23rd. 

CAYA: That was gonna be my next question.

ABIGAIL: And it opens, well, it’s gonna play in Orlan­do first, and then in Ana­heim night, one night, and then the next night, because I want to put out a red car­pet, and I want the work­ers to walk the red car­pet. That’s been my fan­ta­sy since I start­ed this freak­ing film! And then on the 23rd, we’re gonna open in, I think, eight cities, and on the online plat­forms that charge TVOD – it’s called trans­ac­tion­al video on demand – so, unfor­tu­nate­ly, one of them is Amazon. 

I’m sor­ry, I’m sor­ry, I’m sorry….

CAYA: I mean, you got­ta do what you got­ta do! 

ABIGAIL: But it is what it is. I can only get out­side the sys­tem so far. I’m a salmon swim­ming alone up the stream. So, it will be avail­able. And if you come to our web­site, which I can­not remem­ber, come to the Twit­ter page or what­ev­er, we’re @amer­i­can­dream­doc, and you can find a place where you can sign up to host screen­ings. We’re gonna have a dis­cus­sion guide. We real­ly encour­age peo­ple to host screen­ings because the con­ver­sa­tion after the screen­ing is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant. And we real­ly wan­na screen as much as pos­si­ble in the run-up to the elec­tions because peo­ple like Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to in Neva­da and oth­er places, they need all of the bod­ies to show up at the polls.

This is huge. We can’t let Neva­da go down the rat hole. 

We can’t let Flori­da go any fur­ther down the rat hole. We want every­body to come stream, host, sign up, what­ev­er it is, please, please. 

CAYA: Thank you very much. And I will put the infor­ma­tion in our post on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate for our lis­ten­ers. So if you’re inter­est­ed in check­ing out, more about this film, how to sign up and host your own screen­ing, if you have any local indie movie the­aters at home that you want to maybe kind of nudge and say, “Hey, have you con­sid­ered this?”

ABIGAIL: And I should tell you, we just got a stand­ing ova­tion here at Net­roots Nation.

CAYA: That’s so amazing. 

ABIGAIL: I’m very proud of that. 

CAYA: You should be proud! You have a lot to be proud of! So my final ques­tion, I end all my inter­views this way, is: what is bring­ing you joy lately?

ABIGAIL: What is bring­ing me joy late­ly? This con­fer­ence is bring­ing me actu­al­ly some of the first gen­uine joy that I’ve had in a while. 

I’m an extro­vert. And there was a peri­od dur­ing the pan­dem­ic where I was think­ing, “Oh my God, have I been trans­formed into an intro­vert? This is ter­ri­ble!” And I was like, even for a long time after we were set free, I was kind of hat­ing being in pub­lic. And this con­fer­ence is the first time where I’m gen­uine­ly in heav­en being among peo­ple, my peo­ple, peo­ple I love, peo­ple I admire. And I’m feel­ing this new ener­gy com­ing back, and it’s great. 

CAYA: That’s fan­tas­tic. Thank you very much for join­ing us, Abigail. 

ABIGAIL: Thank you. That was Abi­gail Dis­ney at NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022. Thank you very much for join­ing us again! Stay tuned for all of our install­ments. You can find them on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Again, I will be drop­ping the infor­ma­tion about the film in our post. 

So, for NPI, I’m Caya Berndt, we’ll see you next time! 

For more infor­ma­tion about The Amer­i­can Dream and Oth­er Fairy Tales, check out the film’s web­site. The trail­er is avail­able to screen here.