“Visibility is a responsibility. Those of us who have a platform must use our voices to ensure that speaking out is not outlawed altogether.”
Last week, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, hosted an annual fundraising dinner in Los Angeles, where Hacks actor Hannah Einbinder was presented the HRC Visibility Award. Einbinder took the opportunity to speak out against big oil’s destruction of our planet and to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
Einbinder began her speech by acknowledging the urgency of climate change. “2024 was the hottest year in recorded human history but you wouldn’t know that based on the fact that the cumulative media coverage on climate across all major news outlets was only 13 hours and 52 minutes total in 2024.” She bravely called out CEOs of big oil companies despite the dinner being sponsored by large corporations like Chevron and Shell. “We know exactly how it happened and exactly who is responsible,” she said. “We don’t expect these CEOs to wake up one day, cured of their sociopathy, we won’t hold our breath waiting for them to do the right thing.”
She’s right—we can’t sit back and hope that the CEOs of these corporations will have a change of heart. The destruction of our planet is a systemic problem, one that can only be solved by working people taking control from these corporations.
Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, we’ve seen many celebrities with large platforms fold under pressure, staying silent in the face of mass murder funded by American tax dollars. Hannah Einbinder instead used her platform to bring awareness to urgent societal problems that are often muddied or ignored in mainstream media. “My queerness is a tradition of social justice as is my Judaism,” she continued, “To me, these are traditions of humanity.” As a Jewish person herself, Einbinder condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the name of Jewish people. “Israel’s actions are not in the name of Jewish safety and it is the very conflation of Israel’s actions with the Jewish people that continues to endanger Jews around the world.”
Einbinder also spoke of the attacks on student activists: “Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia organizer who protested the bombardment of his people, is sitting in an ICE detention center in Louisiana because his cry for humanity is in opposition to the military interests of our country and the agenda of the Trump administration.” As we watch ICE kidnap activists and organizers, it can feel scary to continue to speak out against the atrocities we witness in the U.S. and around the world. However, when we take a stand against these attacks, we inspire others to join us in the fight.
We see such heavy repression of activism because the billionaires are ultimately afraid of our collective power, so we must continue organizing to build our numbers. Those with platforms need to use them to confront social injustice and bring light to the truth, just as Hannah Einbinder courageously did with her HRC acceptance speech. We need to come together across differences to demand better treatment of humans and the earth.
As scary as it is, we can’t stay silent in the face of repression. Just as Einbinder said in her speech, “All struggles for liberation will be won by loudly opposing the corporations who fuel the destruction of our planet and the institutions that fuel mass death of our fellow human beings.”
