How Three Generations of San Pedro Union Workers Inspired a New Activist Group

By Rosie Knight, Columnist

In a new series, we will highlight the work and members of Latinas Acting Up. In this Labor Day edition,  we interviewed Sara Portillo, one of the members of the activist group. 

Latinas Acting Up is the brainchild of actors Diana Maria Riva, Lisa Vidal, Constance Marie Angelique Cabral, and Gina Torres who came together during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes to craft the activist group focused on highlighting the voices of Latinas in Hollywood. 

“They are the pioneers who made this possible for any of us to be brave enough to step onto those picket lines,” San Pedro resident and LAU member Sara Portillo told Random Lengths News. “They welcomed us without ego, with open hearts. They are the game changers. I am simply adding strength to something they already created.” 

The group met on the picket lines, and as Portillo put it, “Realized that there was a need for collaboration. And that we could help win this fight, as well as raise our visibility, united and collectively.” 

It was a huge moment for Portillo who had been out of the acting game for over two decades. “Before I went to the picket line I was very scared and nervous because I’d been out of the industry for 25 years. I debated even showing up because I wasn’t sure I was worthy.” That feeling was something sadly familiar to Portillo. “As Latinas in any sector, we tend to have this mindset that we’re never enough. You’re not Latina enough, you’re not Mexican enough, you don’t speak Spanish enough, you’re never enough. Unfortunately, that is a very common misconception and a generational curse that many of us share.” 

But Portillo had a secret superpower: Three generations of San Pedro union workers who had very distinct thoughts on whether she should be at the picket. “I called on my brother, who is a tugboat captain with the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific and he had to remind me very swiftly, ‘Hey, we are a union family. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got one credit, two credits, or 20 credits, your union needs you, and you are a proud Mexican American, so you get your butt out, you fight for what’s right.’ Next up was her dad. “I consulted my father who is a Vietnam Veteran who told me ‘You better push through your fears and do what’s right.” 

Finally was her Grandfather a 94-year-old pensioner — retired after a life at the docks — “We have a very long history at the Port of Los Angeles. He told me ‘As long as you’re benefiting from Union privileges, then you go do what you were raised to do, and that is to fight for the greater good. And that has literally been my mindset this entire time.'”

The founding of Latinas Acting Up feels like something akin to divine timing to Portillo. “I came in with all these fears and all of the strength, combined with my family backing me, and together, we formed this really strong platform.” 

A year after the strike the group’s aims are distinct, the first and foremost is the existential threat of AI to all workers in the industry. Next up and equally as important is to raise visibility for Latinas in the industry. “We’re all actresses first, and we want the roles that have been withheld from us since the beginning of time.” That’s something that speaks deeply to Portillo who obviously has personal experience with that very issue. “I want to challenge labor laws, and I want to challenge discriminatory practices within the entertainment industry. Yeah, there are way too many Brown roles over the course of time that have been handed to white Americans.” 

Speaking of visibility the group has been one of the few organizations showing up at the continuing picket lines for Video Game Workers in LA as the org strives for better rights. “It’s a no-brainer. You know? These are fellow humans that we will be working with forever. Hopefully, Solidarity in Hollywood is probably really coming to fruition for the first time in many years, right? It’s an ego field industry, and the jobs are not guaranteed. These artists are working five, six jobs just to do what they love and make other people happy. So if we can unite on that common ground, well then we’re unstoppable.” 

That mindset of solidarity is key to LAU and their view on Hollywood as a whole a year after the strikes. 

“We are at a standstill until everybody gets what they want. Whether that’s the video game performers, the casting agents, the writers, the animators, the musicians,” Portillo said. 

“We are all working-class artists, and I strongly believe that prior to our strike,  the misconception with the rest of the unions in the world, we [thought we] were untouchable… that Hollywood is all about glitz and glam and movie stars and everybody is a millionaire.

Portillos said she feels that the curtain was pulled back on the “reality of who is behind the making of this entertainment, of these movies, of these TV shows, of these cartoons.” 

“I want to point out to the laborers, yeah, the Hollywood laborers never got the credit they deserved prior, and now it’s just like, okay, we are all in this together,” the actor and budding film producer said.

As for the future of LAU, the group is planning to go national with a chapter in Chicago recently launched and New York and Texas next. The group was represented at Labor Notes and LAU is in the coalition at the Port of LA, with Portillo the first SAG-Aftra member in 45 years.