Articles

BY ED RAMPELL Image courtesy of Fork Films. Abigail Disney, who proclaims that “Class traitors are my patron saint,” is probably the Magic Kingdom’s most disloyal royal. As the grandniece of Walt Disney and granddaughter of Roy Disney, Abigail was born into true show business royalty. But increasingly dismayed by the Walt Disney Company’s contemporary unfair business and labor practices, she became a dissenting heiress, who decided to speak out against inequality and injustice at Disneyland and beyond. To do so, by 2006 Abigail parlayed her inheritance – in terms of both treasure and storytelling panache – into making films that stand up for the underdog. To do so Abigail co-created Level Forward and Fork Films, to make anti-racist, pro-gender equity, gun neutral, progressive...

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Amchitka blast. Image: elin o’Hara slavick. Amchitka Island sits at the midway point on the great arc of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, less than 900 miles across the Bering Sea from the coast of Russia. Amchitka, a spongy landscape of maritime tundra, is one of the most southerly of the Aleutians. The island’s relatively temperate climate has made it one of the Arctic’s most valuable bird sanctuaries, a critical staging ground for more than 100 migratory species, as well as home to walruses, sea otters and sea lions. Off the coast of Amchitka is a thriving fishery of salmon, pollock, haddock and halibut. All of these values were recognized early on. In 1913, Amchitka was designated as a national wildlife refuge by President William Howard Taft. But thes...