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13th anual SF DocFest screens three films three films of Latino film

[Author]Compiled by Laura Alvarellos[/Author]

 

San Francisco DocFest 2014 will screen 3 films of Latino interest. The names of the movies are The Engineer, directed by Juan Luis Passarelli and Matthew Charles; Of Kites and Borders, directed by Yolanda Pividal; and Life on the Line directed by Jen Gilomen.

In The Engineer, Israel Ticas is the only criminologist working in one of Latin America’s most dangerous countries, El Salvador. He has made it his mission to find the hundreds of missing teenagers who have fallen victim to the country’s brutal gang conflict. In Of kites and Borders, the film is made through the eyes of four working children in the city of Tijuana; we see the daily struggles of children living on the U.S-Mexico border. Finally, in Life on the Line, an eleven-year-old girl, Kimberly Torrez, finds her family separated by the U.S./Mexico border while her mother awaits a visa and her father awaits a liver transplant.

The SF DocFest will be June 5-19. For more info, visit www.sfindie.com or contact DocFest at 415-820-3907

The Mexican Museum is going to be part of the Yerba Buena Art Walk

The Mexican Museum will be participating in theYerba Buena Art Walk, the 7th annual spring art event hosted by the Yerba Buena Alliance. The full-afternoon event offers a colorful and creative array of exhibits, artists talks, receptions, wine tastings, and other events, all presented by the many art exhibitions, galleries, and institutions in the Yerba Buena neighborhood.

The Yerba Buena Art Walk is located between Market and Harrison and 2nd and 5th Streets in downtown San Francisco and this event will be taking place on Saturday, June 7, 2014

 

The Lariat, a new opera by Lisa Scola Prosek

The Center for Contemporary Opera, San Francisco International Arts Festival and Scolavox are pleased to present the first public rendition of the score and libretto of a new opera titled The Lariat.

The libretto created in collaboration with the Costanoan/Ohlone Esselen Nation of Monterey County will be in both the English and Esselen languages. The opera reveals intimate cultural details and beliefs of the Esselen tribe of Big Sur as its people face the influx of Spanish Missions towards the end of the 18th Century. The opera depicts the difficult relationship between the Missionaries and the Esselen and the gulf between the two religious worlds.

The show would be on Saturday, June 21, at 7 p.m., at Un-Scripted Theatre. 533 Sutter Street (Second Floor). San Francisco. Tickets: $15 General Admission.

Almodóvar believes a film’s success is not dependent on awards

[Author]by the El Reportero’s news service[/Author]

Pedro Almodovar returned Saturday to Cannes as producer of “Wild Tales” by Argentina’s Damian Szifron, a film competing for a Palme d’Or that the Spaniard doesn’t believe it will win, but also believes that a movie “doesn’t have to win a prize for it to take off.”
Three years after presenting “The Skin I Live In” at the festival, Almodovar and his brother Agustin showed up as the producers of “Wild Tales,” a film full of well-known faces like Ricardo Darin, Leonardo Sbaraglia and Dario Grandinetti, and which was received at Cannes with laughter and applause.
This is a dark, violent comedy, which was exactly what attracted the Spanish moviemaker.
“I was seduced precisely by what the title suggests, the wild side,” he said in a brief statement to the press after the film’s official screening.
He was specifically talking about the episode starring Darin – the film is made up of six independent stories – who explodes with rage when a tow-truck drags his car away for being badly parked.
“Everybody would naturally do something like Darin against the bureaucracy we live under,” Almodovar said.
He also described as “liberating” what Darin does, not because citizens “have to go around blowing up offices, but because this is a movie, this is fiction, and violence is one of the great cinematographic themes.”
However, the Spanish director does not believe this dark comedy will pick up a prize in the official Cannes category in which it is competing.
“But I believe that afterwards it will take off in the rest of the markets – I think people are going to like it a lot,” he said.

Pitbull, JLo releases video of official World Cup song
Pitbull premiered on his official YouTube channel the official song of the World Cup in Brazil, “We Are One (Ole Ola),” which he sings together with Jennifer López and Brazil’s Claudia Leitte.
The music video shows the artists singing and dancing amid a boisterous Carnival atmosphere packed with those famous Brazilian girls and colors of the flags of all nations competing in the tourney, to be contested from June 12 to July 13.
Also seen in the video, which lasts slightly more than four minutes, are historic sequences from previous World Cups and some of soccer’s all-time stars like Lionel Messi from Argentina, the Brazilian Neymar, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, England’s Wayne Rooney, the Spaniard Andres Iniesta and more.
The video was shot in February on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Miami.

Message to Latino immigrant parents who study at public Schools

[Author]Elisa Rodríguez Furey
Facilitator for the Parents for Public Schools
[/Author]
Dear parents, Parents for Publics Schools of San Francisco (PPS-SF) is asking for your immediate attention to inform you about the new changes for funding San Francisco’s public schools. PPS-SF is committed to inform our Hispanic community of the new financial changes in the public schools in San Francisco and we want to make sure Latino families know that they have a right to express their thoughts on what is working or what needs improving in our city schools.
Many of our Latino students are English Learners. There will be additional funding to support these students to succeed academically across California’s school districts. Each year, a subset of English Learners are evaluated on their English language ability through a proficiency assessment called the CELDT (California English Language Development Test). Students who pass the test are reclassified as Proficient English students. It is imperative that our children get reclassified in order to help them expand their education options during their education period.
As a parent, do you know if your child’s school is preparing him or her to pass the CELDT test? Do you have access to information or are able to participate in your child’s school? What is happening at your school in terms of the school climate and student access? How is the school supporting our English Learner students in other academic areas such as math, science, and language arts? How is your school site implementing the new Common Core Standards and how is it making sure it will provide English Learners with the help they need?
How this change in funding will impact San Francisco’s public schools
California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was signed into law by Governor Brown in July 2013. Under enactment of the law, three distinct changes will occur. First, districts will receive increased support from the state in terms of resources, with “full funding” being reached across districts by 2020. Second, districts will have more flexibility in how funds are used across school sites; with additional funding being allocated to support students from low-income backgrounds, English learners, and foster youth. Lastly, districts will be requi ed to be more transparent with key constituencies – students, families, teachers, and the broader community – about how resources are being distributed and what student outcomes are being reached with these funds.
What is the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP)?
With this added flexibility comes additional accountability. To ensure accountability toward student outcomes under the LCFF, districts will be required to design and implement a district-wide plan known as a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). The LCAP will comprise the district’s thinking regarding how they will use state funds toward services and programs that help students be successful. The LCAP creation process will require districts to work with parents, teachers, students and other community members to make sure the plan reflects what they think is important.
Each district’s LCAP has to include three general kinds of information: First, each district will be required to explain how their communities were engaged in the process. Important evidence will include what types of engagement opportunities were designed and facilitated in cultivating stakeholder input. Second, the district will be mandated to include information describing the district’s goals and indicators of success. Third, a description of the services districts will provide students, along with its funding stream, will be required.
What is the timeline?
Districts have until July 1st to finalize and approve their district LCAPs before budgets are approved for the 2014-2015 school year. On May 22, the San Francisco Unified School District will present the first draft of the LCAP at an open meeting. The meeting will be held at 555 Franklin Street in the main boardroom and will begin at 6pm. This meeting will be an opportunity for parents and community members to provide written feedback on the LCAP. The Board of Education will vote to approve the LCAP at an open Board of Education meeting on June 24.
What can I do as a Latino parent to get involved?
You can attend the next LCAP open meeting on May 22 at the San Francisco Unified School District. The meeting will be held at 555 Franklin Street in the main boardroom and will begin at 6 p.m. You can share prepared remarks on the LCAP and learn more about what is happening.
You can also get more information at your school with the staff at your school site.
You can visit the SFUSD web site www.sfusd.edu
You can contact PPS-SF at www.ppssf.org or 415-861-7077 if you have any questions.

We call ourselves a free people in the land of liberty – but, are we?

[Author]Dear readers, in this edition, I am introducing you a concise article about the concept of freedom, who we really are, and which directly can challenge anyone perception on whether he or she is really free. Published by The Spoonfed Truth, the following lines will make you think again, before you say that you’re truly a free man or woman.[/Author]

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison

“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” — Mark Twain

First published by The Spoonfed Truth

— Our anthems proudly sing the praises of this nation, and we raise our voices, wave our flags and join in song — but how many Americans realize they are not free? This is a myth perpetuated by the powers-that-be in order to avoid any major civil unrest, and to keep us all living under the thumb of a militaristic corporate Big Brother within the illusions that have been created for us.
The truth of the matter is this: what freedom has not been stolen from us, we have surrendered willingly through our silence and ignorance. As Americans, most of us have no idea how our freedoms are maintained — or lost. Don’t point to that beloved parchment, the Constitution, as a symbol of your enduring freedom. It is representative of a form of government which seemingly no longer exists in this country today.
The Constitution has been thrown out the window, the Republic shoved aside and replaced with a democracy. The thing is; most people in this country remain unaware that this is so because they simply do not know the truth — what lies beyond the myths. Your so-called government is not going to tell you, either.
Both the Constitutuion and the Declaration of Independence require that “all men are created equal” and that all “persons”, including governments, are treated equally IN EVERY RESPECT.
That means that no creation of men, including a government, can have any more authority than a single man. All ‘persons’, whether human or artificial are, in fact EQUAL in every respect, with the possible exception that artificial entities are not protected by the Bill of Rights. Any attempt to treat any government as having more power, authority, or rights than a single man, in fact, constitutes idolatry.
The source of all government power in America is The Sovereign People as individuals, who are human beings and are also called “natural persons”. Rather than being self-governing sovereigns as they were born, most people become obedient tax-paying debt slaves, not by choice, but coercion, deceit, threat and duress. Those who learn of their invisible shackles often wish to break free. Those who don’t… well… they go right along with the rest of the herd. You are told early on in life that paying taxes is your duty as an American. You are convinced that having a Social Security card is required, when it is optional, just as is paying taxes.
Men are born with free will, so why do they behave as slaves? Most in this country believe that the politicians are civil or “public” servants, while the common man is king. Most believe, because they cast a ballot to choose their “leaders,” that they are free, but the politicians among us are really the masters of a population of slaves. To paraphrase Charles de Gaulle, the politician simply poses as a servant in order to become the master.
In America today, the many are ruled by the few. The many allow this tyranny voluntarily, and with open arms. The only men who can be reduced to servitude are those who choose to do so. For men who cling to liberty with passion can never be ruled, and will never allow their freedom to be taken from them. These are men of truth and character, and sadly, they are the extreme minority. These men of integrity are now directly in the cross hairs of this oligarchy called America, and without them, the rest of society is doomed to a life of serfdom.

To obey the restrictive rules crafted by the politicians, and without resistance, is to guarantee the destruction of liberty. It is not only a fatal form of apathy, but it is also the basis for the destruction of our soul. Politicians after all, are the lowest form of man, and do not deserve respect when their aim is to rule over and control the rest of us.
For what are we if we simply do as others in power demand, without the courage to stand up for what is right? What are we if we bow our heads in fear when our fellow man is being trampled? What are we when we allow all that we have earned to be taken from us by force and say or do nothing to stop it? What have we become when the worth of a man is judged by his allegiance to the state?

Five foods that can treat insomnia and improve sleep

[Author]by Michael Ravensthorpe
[/Author]

According to the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, nearly 1 in 10 adults in the United States suffers from insomnia. Although most of these people suffer from short-term insomnia, many of them also suffer from chronic insomnia (i.e., difficulty falling or staying asleep for more than six months). Such sleep deprivation can significantly decrease the quality of one’s life.
While stress related to work and family remains the number one cause of insomnia, eating the wrong foods — such as those rich in sugar, caffeine, gluten or polyunsaturated fat — can also contribute to insomnia. Therefore, improving one’s diet is an important first step toward ending insomnia, especially if one favors foods that are known to improve sleep.
Five foods that aid sleep

1) Almonds — Almonds are one of the best foods for treating insomnia since they’re excellent sources of magnesium, which is a natural muscle relaxant and contains anti-stress properties. A study published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences in December 2012 found that magnesium supplementation could “improve subjective measures of insomnia, such as ISI score, sleep efficiency, sleep time and sleep onset latency, early morning awakening, and likewise, insomnia objective measures, such as concentration of serum renin, melatonin and serum cortisol, in elderly people.”

2) Cherries — Cherries and cherry products have often been linked to improved sleep. For example, a study published in the European Journal of Nutrition in December 2012 found that volunteers who consumed a tart cherry juice concentrate for seven days demonstrated “significantly elevated” total melatonin content in their urine compared to the control group. Consequently, the study group experienced improved sleep quality and efficiency.
3) Bananas — Many people are often surprised to find that bananas can aid sleep, since they’re well-known for boosting energy. Nonetheless, bananas are also rich in magnesium, potassium and tryptophan, which are the “magic trio” of sleep boosters. Tryptophan is especially effective in this regard since it is the precursor to the two neurotransmitters, serotonin and melatonin, which modulate sleep.

4) Valerian — The root of the valerian plant, which is usually consumed in tea or tincture form, has been used as a sleeping aid since Ancient Greece and Rome. Moreover, its sedative and anxiolytic properties have been proven by numerous studies. For example, a 2011 study published in Menopause found that valerian extracts provided a “statistically significant” improvement in sleep quality among postmenopausal women suffering from insomnia. The study authors concluded that the “findings from this study add support to the reported effectiveness of valerian in the clinical management of insomnia.”

5) Oatmeal — Although oatmeal is usually associated with breakfast, its nutritional composition — high in magnesium and potassium — also makes it a suitable evening food. Even the very nature of oatmeal (warm, soothing and soft) is indicative of sleep and calm. Moreover, oatmeal tends to be mixed with milk, which is one of the best-known relaxation drinks.

Colombian gov’t, FARC reach agreement to combat drug trafficking

[Author]by the El Reportero’s wire services[/Author]

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas pledged to sever all ties to drug trafficking and contribute to a definitive solution to the problem of illegal narcotics in the Andean nation once a final peace accord is reached with the government.
The FARC’s commitment was announced as part of an “agreement on illicit drugs” reached on Friday in Havana, the third accord that government and rebel negotiators have hammered out since the peace talks began in 2012.
Earlier, partial agreement was reached on land reform and the guerrillas’s participation in politics, while other issues, including the disarmament of the rebels and reparation for victims of the conflict, remain pending.
The FARC pledged to “contribute effectively and with the utmost determination, in different ways and through practical actions, to a definitive solution to the problem of illegal drugs.”
The guerrillas said that once the decades-long conflict is brought to a close they will end any links they maintained to drug trafficking as a “function of the rebellion.”
Colombian officials and their U.S. patrons say the FARC is deeply involved in the drug trade, while the insurgents insist that they merely impose a “tax” on illicit crops in areas under their control.

Vigilante leader cleared of homicide charges in Mexico
The founder of the self-defense groups that were formed to battle the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel in the western Mexican state of Michoacan has been cleared of accessory to murder charges due to lack of evidence, judicial officials said.
Hipolito Mora, who walked out of the prison where he had been held for just over two months at around 8:30 p.m. Friday, read a message in which he said he was confident that judicial authorities and the Mexican government would solve the crimes for which he was arrested in March.
The vigilante leader also said he would join a newly formed rural defense unit in the town of Buenavista Tomatlan and register all of his weapons. He added that the time he spent behind bars surely “saved my life” consider all the threats he faced from drug-trafficking gangs.
A spokesman for the court in Michoacán that ordered Mora released told Efe that Judge Plácido Torres Pineda upheld his defense team’s appeal against a March 19 decision ordering him to stand trial.
Judge Juan Salvador Alonso Mejía handed down that ruling eight days after Mora was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders of two suspected members of the Los Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel: Rafael Sánchez Moreno and his driver, José Luis Torres Castañeda.
The burned bodies of Sánchez Moreno and Torres Castañeda were found March 8 in Buenavista, a town near La Ruana in the Tierra Caliente region, which straddles Michoacan, Guerrero and Mexico states.
Luis Antonio Torres, leader of one of the self-defense groups that operates in Michoacan and a friend of Sánchez Moreno, accused Mora of being an accessory to the double homicide.

Current sexualization of children predicted in 1932 novel

[Author]by Kit Daniels Book review
[/Author]

Alarming similarities between current trend to expose kids to sex and Brave New World

The current trend to “sexualize” young children, that is to expose children to sexual issues as early as kindergarten, shares striking similarities to the dystopian novel Brave New World in which children are encouraged to start exploring sex at a young age.
In the latest example of the trend, a couple of YouTube filmmakers produced a video in which they described homosexuality to children as young as five and asked for their opinions on the subject.
The filmmakers defended the video by stating that the “raw opinions of children” offer “incredibly valuable insight on our current society,” but the youngest of these kids likely had no clue about the subject until it was explained by the producers.
In a similar incident, a Kansas father of a 13-year-old girl became infuriated after discovering a poster hanging up at her school which listed several recreational sex acts, such as anal sex for example.
The school’s spokesperson referred to it as “district approved curriculum,” but the father disagreed.
“This has nothing to do with abstinence or sexual reproduction,” he said.
But Chicago public schools even went further than that by requiring mandatory sexual education in kindergarten classes.
As if these incidents weren’t concerning enough already, just compare them to Brave New World, a 1932 novel written by Aldous Huxley which anticipates a future society that is centrally controlled by a powerful government through the use of various techniques such as the sexualization of children.
In the book, the central planners encourage the populace to explore recreational sex starting from early childhood. The intent is to remove romantic relationships by cheapening sex in order to ensure that the citizens have complete allegiance to the state and not with each other through personal connections such as families.
This is further aided by the elimination of natural reproduction in favor of “creating” children in “hatcheries and conditioning centers” so that the World State in the novel can permanently limit the population to two billion people who are conditioned from birth to completely obey the government.
“The society described in Brave New World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to keep their subjects from making trouble,” Huxley wrote in his later essay Brave New World Revisited. “This they achieve by (among other methods) legalizing a degree of sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New Worlders against any form of destructive (or creative) emotional tension.”
“In 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.”
He also added that children are also highly susceptible to propaganda, a fact that really highlights the danger of exposing young kids to sex.
“They are ignorant of the world and its ways, and therefore completely unsuspecting,” he wrote. “Their critical faculties are undeveloped.”
“The youngest of them have not yet reached the age of reason and the older ones lack the experience on which their new-found rationality can effectively work.”
With all that said, it should be no surprise that the current sexualization of children is occurring mainly in the public educational system, which has a built-in bias towards large, powerful government.
Additionally, families in real life are also being frowned upon just like in Brave New World, such as the notable example in which MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry stated that your children are not yours – they belong to the community.
“We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” she said, adding that kids belong “to whole communities” instead.
Now although the current sexualization of children and the attacks on families in our society haven’t quite reached the extremes presented in the novel, the similarities between these current trends and Brave New World are alarming nonetheless, and it’s not entirely far-fetched to believe that our future society will inch even further towards Huxley’s complete predictions. Infowars.com

In another book comment:

The global warming tipping point is near

by Andrew Thomas
American Thinker

Malcolm Gladwell’s great book The Tipping Point presents the case that sudden seismic shifts in society can result from small events, if the right factors are present. Tipping points happen when momentum toward an idea builds and finally crosses a threshold where it is evident that a major cultural change has occurred. The global warming tipping point is coming, but not the one anticipated by climate change “experts.”
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been dominant for the past three decades as absolute fact in the public mind. In the last several years, however, cracks in the fortress of “settled science” have appeared, and public opinion has begun to shift. Increasingly, alarmist predictions have failed to come to fruition.
In 2004, NASA’s chief scientist James Hansen authoritatively announced that there is only a ten-year window to act on AGW (presumably by transferring mass quantities of taxpayer funds to global warmist causes) before climate Armageddon destroys humanity. Well, that window has now shut tight, and AGW is AWOL.
Al Gore, the high priest of AGW theory, has closed all of his Alliance for Climate Protection field offices, and laid off 90 percent of his staff. Contributions have all but dried up since 2008.
Australia’s conservative government has severely curtailed the country’s climate change initiatives and is in the process of repealing its business-killing carbon tax. A group of German scientists predicts dramatic global cooling over the next 90 years toward a new “little ice age.”
Of course, even many “low information” folks have an awareness of the record increase in Arctic sea ice, as well as the current highly-publicized predicament of the cadre of wealthy global warmists stuck in record-high sea ice while on a cruise to the Antarctic to prove the absence of sea ice.
Now the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quietly downgraded their prediction for global warming for the next 30 years in the final draft of their landmark “Fifth Assessment Report.” The effect of this is that they are tacitly admitting that the computer models they have religiously relied-upon for decades as “proof” of AGW theory are dead wrong.
The tipping point is near. I can smell it.

What César Chávez missed: the diversity of the farm workers movement

[Author]Roundtable conducted by David Bacon[/Author]

The new movie, César Chávez – History is Made One Step at a Time, directed by Diego Luna, tells the story of the Grape Strike of 1965.
This epic 5-year labor battle led to the organization of the United Farm Workers, and made César Chávez a social movement hero. The movie has provoked controversy over its depiction of his role, and the accuracy of the history it recounts of those events.
In this roundtable, labor journalist David Bacon, a former organizer for the UFW and other unions, explores these themes with four guests.

Eliseo Medina was a farm worker when the strike started, and became a noted labor organizer, first in the UFW and later in the Service Employees Union.
Doug Adair was an activist in the 1965 strike, and then worked the rest of his life as a farm laborer in the grapes in the Coachella Valley.
Dawn Mabalon is a professor of history at San Francisco State University, and an authority of the history of Filipinos in California.
Rosalinda Guillen comes from a farm worker family in Washington State, worked as a UFW organizer, and today organizes farm labor in Skagit and Whatcom Counties, north of Seattle, with Community2Community.
David: How did the movie square with your memories of the grape strike as a participant?
Eliseo: It’s a good time for this movie to come out and show not only the challenges immigrants face, but also the fact that they’re willing to struggle and that when they do they can win, regardless of the power structure. It could’ve done a much better job of telling the full story, but it’s impossible to tell 10 years worth of history in 2 hours.

David: The film presents the UFW as a movement mostly of Chicanos and Mexicanos, but it was also a multinational union, including African-Americans, Arab, and even white people. That doesn’t come through as much.

Eliseo: When I was a farm worker, before the strike began, we lived in different worlds — the Latino world, the Filipino world, the African-American world and the Caucasian world. I do wish that that had been more explicit because certainly the contribution that was made by the Filipino workers to the strike and the movement was an incredible part of the success of the union. The fact that we also had Caucasians and African-Americans participating in the strike never even gets brought up.
David: There has been criticism of the movie’s portrayal of Filipino workers. How do you feel about that?
Dawn: Filipinos had been organizing, not just that year, but for decades before. The growers had always divided Mexicans and Filipinos. What was so powerful about that moment in Delano was that those two groups defied this. But the way they came together was downplayed. There was so little context that there’s no understanding that it was these other people, in particular Larry Itliong, who really sparked the strike.

Larry went to Delano in the early 1960s, sent by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, the AFL-CIO union founded in Stockton. He already had decades of labor experience with the Alaskan salmon cannery union. He organized a failed strike of asparagus workers in Stockton in 1948 and a successful strike in 1949. He had more experience than everyone, Dolores Huerta and Cesar included.

Doug: The original spark in Delano was when Filipinos workers began sitting in at the camps. It wasn’t a strike with picket lines, but a sit-in and refusing to go to work. Larry began going around to the camps seeing if he could use the sit-ins to negotiate better wages.

David: The film did show the sit-in in the camps, which surprised me. Not many people know that happened, and it’s a very important part of history. The movie starts with a little section where Cesar is the head of the Community Service Organization (CSO), but doesn’t show him organizing protests about the bracero program, in which growers were able to bring workers from Mexico under very abusive conditions, sending them back at the end of the season. Should the movie have said more about it?

Doug: Workers first went on strike in Coachella in the spring of 1965 because the bracero program was being phased out. With braceros, it was almost inevitable that strikes would lose. When the government said growers had to offer $1.40 an hour if they wanted to hire braceros AWOC demanded the same wage. That was the spark that set off the strike. Actually if it had been up to Cesar, there wouldn’t have been a strike in Delano because he didn’t feel our union was ready. There was no money in the bank, and he wanted to do more organizing. He used to say “we’re not a union, and we’re not gonna start strikes.”

David: The movie stops when the industry-wide grape contract gets signed. Did the contract and the union change life for farmworkers and was it a permanent change?

Doug: When I worked under that first contract our wages and benefits were over double the minimum wage of American workers. We had a health plan that was the envy of many other unions. We could sit down with the growers and negotiate over grievances. We wouldn’t always win, but we could negotiate our working conditions.

The movie did show that workers can join together in spite of appalling conditions and improve their wages and working conditions. That did come through. It is a possible to change history with concerted action, by getting together.
Rosalinda: Today farmworkers can organize because of the example of the farmworkers in the 60s and 70s in California. The movie shows clearly what it looks like to organize and come together. This is one of the legacies of César Chávez, this coming together of different workers with different religions and different political views.

Doug: But I think the movie did show the viciousness of the growers and their local power structure; district attorneys and the cops and thugs on the side of the growers. The whole local structure was against the union and the farmworkers.
Rosalinda: And it’s still like that.

Eliseo: Clearly the union was able to begin lifting workers out of poverty. They had paid holidays, vacations and health insurance. Unfortunately, at the time when we were poised to completely change these workers’ lives we lost focus. As a result, workers today are back where they were before the union. Most are working at minimum wage again. Employers are back to just trying to get the work done in the cheapest way possible, regardless of the impact on workers.

David: At one point the growers say they are going to bring in “illegals” – they use that word, not “undocumented” – by the truckload. Do you think this experience shaped how Cesar saw the question of immigration?

Eliseo: The growers knew very well that divide and conquer was an important strategy, so they were not above using workers to break the strike, whether they were documented or undocumented. And they certainly felt that having a captive work force would make it easier for them. What the union wanted was to make sure that no one was used to break the strike, regardless of their status. The union and the strike was a movement of documented and undocumented people. Some of the strongest and most active people were undocumented. In many cases when workers began to organize, growers would call in the Border Patrol to scare people and arrest and deport them.

DUE TO LACK OF SPACE, THIS ARTICLE WAS CUT. TO SEE THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW, PLEASE VISIT: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16701/what_cesar_chavez_missed

Latin Dance Fusion with Tika Morgan at Dance Mission Theater

[Author]Compiled by El Reportero’s staff
[/Author]
Tika’s Latin Dance Fusion brings together the music and basic steps of many Brazilian Dances, Salsa Suelta, Reggaetón and more into an accessible, high energy class. Experience the depth, beauty and power of these culturally rich movements founded in the African Diaspora. Class begins with body alignment, isolation’s, and stretching. You will learn choreography as you move by working in half time and through repetition. This class doesn’t stop and is a workout for the body and soul! You will sweat! Open level – Shoes optional.
On Tuesdays 6:30 – 7:45 p.m., May 6 to June 10. Only 6 classes! All Levels
$13/class or $60 for all six (class passes accepted).

Jazz Department at CCSF presents special guest artist, on trumpet from New York: Eddie Allen
City College Of San Francisco Music Department and Concert and Lecture Series present “The Spring Jazz Concert,” featuring the Advanced Jazz Band and The Jazz/Rock Improvisational Workshop. Directed by David Hardiman, Jr., Master of Ceremonies, David Hardiman Sr.
On Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at City College of San Francisco’s Diego Rivera Theater, Ocean Campus, at 50 Phelan Avenue San Francisco, Free!! Open to the public.

Exciting time at the Mexican Museum
Celebrate National Museum Day at The Mexican Museum during its free Family Sunday from noon to 3:30 p.m. After viewing La Cocina: The Culinary Treasures of Rosa Covarrubias, children and adults will paint pottery and plant their own Mexican herbs to take home. This event will take place on Sunday, May 18.
The Mexican Museum is open Wednesday – Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., located at Fort Mason Center, Building D, Marina Boulevard and Buchanan Street, in San Francisco. FREE Admission. The Museum offers a wide variety of programs, including Family Sundays, exhibitions, special events, lectures and public programming throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit: http://www.mexicanmuseum.org or call (415) 202-9700.
The Museum is currently preparing for the completion of its permanent home, which will be built in downtown San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Garden Arts District and is expected to open in 2018.

Benefit dance for El Tecolote
Sway to the hot Latin rhythms of the 10-piece Cesar’s Latin All-Stars in a benefit dance-concert for El Tecolote newspaper on Saturday, May 17, from 9:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the new Cesar’s Latin Palace located at 820-26th Street near Third St., in San Francisco. The evening includes a food sale and raffle. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is $10. Must be 21 years or older. There is plenty of security and free parking. For more information, call Mabel Jiménez at (415) 648-1045.

Visceral – Carlos Mojica and Kamalky Laureano at Paul Mahder Gallery
The Paul Mahder Gallery is pleased to present Visceral, new photorealistic paintings and drawings by two important new artists from the Dominican Republic, now living in Mexico City, Carlos Gomez Mojica and Kamalky Laureano. This exhibit marks the West Coast Premiere and only the second time their work has been seen in the United States.
Visceral, a photorealistic paintings and drawings by artists Carlos Gómez Mojica
and Kamalky Laureano. Opening Public Reception Saturday, May 17, 2014, 6-8 p.m., at 3378 Sacramento Street @ Walnut, San Francisco, California. Admission is free. For more info paul@paulmahdergallery.com or call (415) 474-7707.

Antonio Banderas on Hispanic artists and their roles in Hollywood

[Author]by the El Reportero’s news services[/Author]

 

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas said here that he is proud to be a part of the generation of Hispanic artists who managed to open the doors of Hollywood and consolidate themselves in the movie mecca.

Banderas, who was in Bogota to present his new ladies’ fragrance, “Her Golden Secret,” recalled at a press conference his early years in movies and gave details about his most recent film project, The 33, about the Chilean miners who were trapped in a collapsed mine for 70 days in 2010.

The 53-year-old actor said that one of the first things he was told when he arrived in the United States was that if he stayed in Hollywood “I was going to be a villain all my life” in terms of the roles that came his way, since “blacks and Hispanics” are (or were) the bad guys in film.

The interesting thing, Banderas added, was that when he starred in the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, the bad guy was blond and “had blue eyes.”

Hispanics who have made a career in movies or in any other professional sphere in the United States “have struggled a lot, have come from countries in conflict, where many difficulties have occurred” with the aim of having their children go to college, Banderas said.

The children of those pioneers “currently are in positions of power (and that) had to be reflected in Hollywood,” he added.

 

Eva Longoria at Tribeca Film

Festival with Her “Food Chains” Documentary

Actress Eva Longoria showed her more committed side at the Tribeca Film Festival as producer of “Food Chains,” a documentary about the abuse farm workers suffer and which, according to her, now means the achievements of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta have been dismantled.

Twenty years after the death of farm workers’ leader Cesar Chavez, who in the 1970s led the fight for Latino laborers’ rights and formed the United Farm Workers union, Longoria asked the New York festival audience what it is that’s making us go backwards.

The film documents the six-day hunger strike that members of the UFW went through at the doors of the powerful Publix supermarket chain to demand a 1-cent pay raise for farm workers for every pound of tomatoes they pick.

The film also reviews the dark history in the fields from the days of plantation workers when the United States was founded to the massive abuse of farm workers by vast supermarket chains to get the lowest, most competitive prices.

The actress, known by most TV viewers for playing Gaby in “Desperate Housewives,” said the treatment of field hands in Florida and California is not, contrary to what people think, a subject related to immigration. It’s something much deeper, she said, it has to do with human rights.

“Food Chains” reveals chilling data about the food industry, in which supermarkets alone generate worldwide revenues of some $4 billion a year – but pay field hands an average of $12,000 a year to gather, in the case of tomato harvesters, about 2 tons of food per day.

 

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