Word: ufw
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...established ethnic group supressing newcomers, of those in power against those without power. The lines of class and race are drawn sharp out in the Coachella Valley, the phenomenally fertile section of California where the temperature gets as high as 125 degrees in the summer work season. The UFW is now fighting the growers and the Teamsters Union for the contracts the Teamsters stole in 1973. Since 1965 the UFW has been battling for contracts that will guarantee their members decent wages, safe working conditions, health and retirement benefits, and--perhaps most importantly--their own, democratic union. Since 1973, though...
FORTUNATELY, almost miraculously, a documentary filmmaker named Glen Pearey followed the 1973 UFW grape strike in the valleys of California and has produced a moving, intelligent hour-long film called Fighting for Our Lives. Pearey, working usually with only one assistant to handle the sound, followed the UFW for five months--April to September, 1973--through the valleys, along the highways, and into the fields, showing the workers expelled from the fields, whispering about fighting back and finally organizing to get back the contracts. The organizing is crucial: not only is it the source for much of the film...
...taken big risks: working in color, he has made a film that is polished without being slick; concentrating on faces he has handled an intensely emotionaly issue without getting sentimental or manipulative. When you see a grower, John Giumarra, ride out to the picket line to confront the UFW on a golf cart with dollars signs painted on the sides and front, you suddenly remember that he put those dollar signs there--not a director. Fighting for Our Lives is filled with moments like that. No one had to hire extras to play sheriffs in Kern and Tulare counties; they...
Finally the momentum of violence and the logic of events results in the death of Nagi Daiffulah, an Arab worker and UFW member who was clubbed to death by a Kern county deputy. One day later, Juan De La Cruz, a 60-year-old striker who had been with the union from its beginning, was shot through the heart by a strikebreaker. Pearey follows Juan's wake and funeral, showing the casket draped in a black flag with the red UFW eagle carried down miles of dusty roads past the fields he struggled for. Mourners stretch far down the road...
...Provision Co. is the only package liquor store in the Harvard Square area which continues to stock Gallo wines, despite a nation-wide boycott by UFW supporters...