'Bankruptcy is a chronic disease': Culture industry organizes tent protest

The protestors are not part of the state-subsidized arts institutions, but represent a wide spectrum of those employed in the independent performing arts and events sector.

By HANNAH BROWN
Cultural and Event Industry Action Committee in a tent protest (photo credit: Courtesy)
Cultural and Event Industry Action Committee in a tent protest
(photo credit: Courtesy)
“The coronavirus will pass, but bankruptcy is a chronic disease,” said Rami Beja, a producer and one of the leaders in the struggle of independent culture producers to receive financial compensation for their forced shutdown during the pandemic. Beja’s comments came at a press conference on Sunday morning at Knesset Square opposite the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem.
The event kicked off what the organizers called a “Week of Rage,” and set up a tent where they said they would stay until workers in their industry received appropriate compensation from the government.
The protesters are not part of the state-subsidized arts institutions, such as the national theater Habima, but represent a wide spectrum of those employed in the independent performing arts and events sector, such as concert promoters, event planners, lighting technicians, playwrights, performers and others whose livelihoods have been affected by closures caused by the Health Ministry’s restrictions due to the virus outbreak.
While large theaters that provide entertainment for seated crowds are reopening in mid-June with some restrictions ensuring that the auditoriums will not be too crowded, the private-sector independent culture industry that produces events such as outdoor concerts and business gatherings has neither been allowed to reopen nor received adequate compensation for the closure, organizers said.
Ofer Shytrit, owner of the Applause production company and chairman of the Cultural and Event Industry Action Committee, said that after three months of closure, “We came to the conclusion that we need to be here and stay here until we are heard.” This industry employs about 200,000, he said, and has fallen between the cracks of the various kinds of compensation that the government has paid to others, only receiving aid in March and April. “We want to shout out loud from an industry that is being destroyed.”
Yoni Feingold, chairman of the Association of Organizers and Producers, co-chair of the Culture and Event Industry Action Committee, said, “Our industry is collapsing. We have been crying out for three months, and although [government officials] have spoken to us and even declared our industry at risk, there is no grant or help for tens of thousands of companies and freelancers who find themselves unemployed. We are announcing today that we have run out of oxygen and air and we demand that they start treating our sector with due respect.“
The protesters wore black shirts with the slogan, “The soul or war,” with a graphic of a person on a ventilator, a play on the Hebrew word for “breath” which comes from the same root as the word for “soul.”
They appealed to the newly appointed finance minister, Israel Katz, to heed their distress call.
Several participants compared the treatment of the airline industry, which has been negotiating a government bailout, to how little they have received, noting that their sector employs about 10 times as many workers and vowing not to budge from the tent until their grievances are addressed.


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