Danny Glover

Glover sought to make a film biography of Toussaint Louverture for his directorial debut. In May 2006, the film had included cast members Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Mos Def, Isaach de Bankolé, and Richard Bohringer. Production, estimated to cost $30 million, was planned to begin in Poland, filming from late 2006 into early 2007.[18]

In May 2007, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez contributed $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who was a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. The contribution annoyed some Venezuelan filmmakers, who said the money could have funded other homegrown films and that Glover's film was not even about Venezuela.[19][20]

In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover's film, which is still in planning.[21]

In 2015, Glover gave an update on the Toussaint project, stating, "The film that we always missed is a movie on the Haitian revolution and Toussaint Louverture. The company is fortuitously named after him and that was the movie that I wanted to do. We've developed a script. We thought we were going to get it done four years ago. We thought we were going to be making it right now. But also there are other kinds of things that intrigue me."[22]

Glover appeared at London Film and Comic Con 2013 at Earls Court 2 over 2.5 days during Friday 5th to Sunday, July 7. He participated in a panel discussion in McComb, Mississippi on July 16, 2015.[23] The event, co-sponsored by The Gloster Project and Jubilee Performing Arts Center, included noted authors Terry McMillan and Quincy Troupe.

On January 30, 2015, Glover was the Keynote Speaker and 2015 Honoree for the MLK Celebration Series at the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI). Glover used his career and personal story to speak on the topic "Creativity and Democracy: Social Change through the Arts". At the University of the Virgin Islands, Glover gave a speech that encouraged the graduates in their upcoming journey.[24]

It was announced in July 2018 that Glover will be the featured guest at the Port Townsend Film Festival in Washington State.

Glover speaks at a March for Immigrants Rights in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2007.

While attending San Francisco State University (SFSU), Glover was a member of the Black Students' Union,[32] which, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history.[33] It helped create not only the first Department of Black Studies but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.

Hari Dillon, current president of the Vanguard Public Foundation, was a fellow striker at SFSU. Glover later co-chaired Vanguard's board. He is also a board member of the Algebra Project, the Black AIDS Institute, Walden House and Cheryl Byron's Something Positive Dance Group. He was charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly after being arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington during a protest over Sudan's humanitarian crisis in Darfur.[34]

In 1999, he used his leverage as a former San Francisco cab driver to raise awareness about African Americans being passed over for white passengers. In response, Rudolph Giuliani launched Operation Refusal, which suspended the licenses of cab drivers who favored white passengers over black ones.

Glover's long history of union activism includes support for the United Farm Workers, UNITE HERE, and numerous service unions.[35] In March 2010, Glover supported 375 Union workers in Ohio by calling upon all actors at the 2010 Academy Awards to boycott Hugo Boss suits following announcement of Hugo Boss's decision to close a manufacturing plant in Ohio after a proposed pay decrease from $13 to $8.30 an hour was rejected by the Workers United Union.[36]

On November 1, 2011, Glover spoke to the crowd at Occupy Oakland on the day before the Oakland General Strike where thousands of protestors shut down the Port of Oakland.[37]

Glover was an early supporter of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries until Edwards' withdrawal,[38] although some news reports indicated that he had endorsed Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich,[39] whom he had endorsed in 2004.[40] After Edwards dropped out, Glover then endorsed Barack Obama.[41] In February 2016, Glover endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.[42] In February 2019, Glover again endorsed Sanders for US president in 2020.[43]

In 2017, he co-authored a petition along with Noam Chomsky, Mark Ruffalo, Nancy Fraser, Oliver Stone and Eve Ensler, urging French citizens to vote for candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2017 presidential election.[44]

Glover was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush, calling him a known racist. "Yes, he's racist. We all knew that. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died were Afro-Americans or Hispanics."[45]

Glover's support of California Proposition 7 (2008) led him to use his voice in an automated phone call to generate support for the measure before the election.[46]

On the foreign policy of the Obama administration, Glover said: "I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don't see anything different... On the domestic side, look here: What's so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street? He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black, and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman.... But what choices do they have within the structure?"[47]

Glover wrote the foreword to Phyllis Bennis' book, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.[48] Glover is also a member of the board of directors of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank led by economist Dean Baker.

Glover is an active board member of the TransAfrica Forum.[49] On April 6, 2009, Glover was given a chieftaincy title in Imo State, Nigeria.[50] His title, "Enyioma of Nkwerre", means A Good Friend in the language of the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria.

In 2018, Glover, as the UN Goodwill Ambassador, met with Lula to express solidarity and support for his presidential candidacy. During a trip to Brazil, he also met with the family of Marielle Franco, the City Council member and LGBT activist murdered in Rio de Janeiro.[51]

On January 13, 2010, Glover compared the scale and devastation of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to the predicament other island nations may face as a result of the failed Copenhagen summit the previous year. Glover said: "the threat of what happens to Haiti is a threat that can happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations ... they're all in peril because of global warming ... because of climate change ... when we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens".[52] In the same statement, he called for a new form of international partnership with Haiti and other Caribbean nations and praised Venezuela, Brazil, and Cuba, for already accepting this partnership.

Danny Glover had been an outspoken critic of the Iraq War before it began in March 2003. In February 2003, he was one of the featured speakers at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco where other notable speakers included names such as author Alice Walker, singer Joan Baez, United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland. Glover was a signatory to the April 2003 anti-war letter "To the Conscience of the World" that criticized the unilateral American invasion of Iraq that led to "massive loss of civilian life" and "devastation of one of the cultural patrimonies of humanity".[53] During an anti-war demonstration in Downtown Oakland in March 2003, Glover praised the community leaders for their anti-war efforts saying that "They're on the front lines because they are trying to make a better America. ... The world has come together and said 'no' to this war — and we must stand with them."

In January 2006, Harry Belafonte led a delegation of activists, including Glover, activist/professor Cornel West, and activist/Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos Founder and Executive Director Daniel NANE Alejandrez in a meeting with President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez. In 2006, Glover had begun working on a film about Toussaint Louverture, who led the 18th century revolt in Haiti and, it was reported, that Chavez supported the film, "hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression."[54][55] In 2007, Glover agreed with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez that the Touissant Louverture film would be financed by Venezuela. On May 19, 2007, the National Assembly of Venezuela approved giving Glover $18,000,000 for the film.[56] The following year, on April 9, 2008, the National Assembly of Venezuela, at the request of the Chávez, approved another $9,000,000 to be handed to Glover in order to "continue" the filming of the film about Touissant. Surprisingly, in an interview dated January 5, 2015, published in Filmmaker magazine, Glover says, "The film that we always missed is a movie on the Haitian revolution and Toussaint Louverture. The company is fortuitously named after him and that was the movie that I wanted to do. We've developed a script. We thought we were going to get it done four years ago. We thought we were going to be making it right now. But also there are other kinds of things that intrigue me". As of 2015, the film had not been made.[57]

Glover was also a board member of TeleSUR, a media network primarily funded by the Venezuelan government.[54] During the beginning of the 2014 Venezuela Protests, Glover extended his support to Chávez's successor, President Nicolás Maduro, calling members of his government "the stewards" of Venezuela's democracy. Glover also told Venezuelan government supporters to go fight for the sovereignty of Maduro's government.[58] Through the crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, Glover continued to show his support for the Bolivarian government and President Maduro's administration.[59]

On September 2, 2009, Glover signed an open letter of objection to the inclusion of a series of films intended to showcase Tel Aviv — without the participation of Palestinian filmmakers, at the Toronto International Film Festival.[60]

Glover has become an active member of board of directors of The Jazz Foundation of America.[61] He became involved with The Jazz Foundation in 2005, and has been a featured host for their annual benefit A Great Night in Harlem[62] for several years, as well appearing as a celebrity MC at other events for the foundation. In 2006, Britain's leading African theatre company Tiata Fahodzi appointed Glover as one of its three Patrons, joining Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jocelyn Jee Esien opening the organization's tenth-anniversary celebrations (February 2, 2008) at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London.