(NAME-MCE) Viva la Causa! new documentary film and teaching kit

[Anselmo Villanueva]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=318&splcnewsletter=newsgen-071508
*

Viva la Causa!* in Production
New Teaching Tolerance Film Set for September Release



Sponsor our new documentary *Viva la
Causa!*<https://secure.splcenter.org/donate/online/payment_lacausa.jsp>Sponsors
donating $100 or more will be listed in the credits of the
classroom documentary and receive an advance copy of the DVD.

[image: Cesar Chavez]In September, SPLC's Teaching Tolerance program will
unveil a new documentary film and teaching kit, *Viva la Causa!*, that
focuses on one of the seminal events in the march for human rights — the
grape strike and boycott led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the
1960s. *Viva la Causa!* will show how thousands of people from across the
nation joined in a battle for justice for the most exploited people in our
country — the workers who put food on our tables.

Like all of our Teaching Tolerance products, the film and kit will be
distributed free to classrooms across the nation and will inspire millions
of children for years to come.

The film could not be timelier.

Today, as in the 1960s, employers routinely exploit migrant laborers and
immigrants of color, underpaying them and leaving them to toil in often
unsafe and unsanitary work environments. The nation's debate over
immigration has been polluted by racism, distortions and propaganda. The
ranks of hate groups are swelling with an anti-immigrant tide, and hate
crimes against Latinos are increasing.

"*Viva la Causa!* will help counter this burgeoning anti-Latino sentiment by
sharing one of the nation's great movements for social justice with millions
of schoolchildren across the U.S., reminding them that they, too, can choose
respect over bigotry," said SPLC President Richard Cohen.

The new documentary film will chronicle how Chavez, Huerta and their
colleagues, inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., created a mass movement
to improve the lives of some of the most exploited people in the country —
farmworkers who labored for meager wages under appalling conditions in the
fields of California. Chavez and Huerta guided a non-violent strike for fair
wages that became a movement for social justice.

In an effort to bring attention to the movement and show his dedication to
nonviolence, Chavez starved himself for 25 days in 1968. Thousands of
farmworkers came to see him every day. Robert Kennedy, the junior senator
from New York, arrived to celebrate the end of the fast with Chavez and show
his support for workers' rights. Huerta shared the stage with Kennedy the
night he won California's presidential primary. Later that night, he was
shot and killed in a California hotel.

Kennedy's support sent a message to the nation. People from all walks of
life encountered — and some became — organizers at grocery stores, asking
shoppers to join in a national boycott of California grapes so that those
who harvested them might not live in dire poverty, subject to raw
exploitation.

Families, rich and poor, joined in *la causa* and heeded its call. En masse,
they stopped buying California grapes. And on a hot summer day in 1970,
farmworkers won a hard-fought, historic victory. On July 29, 1970,
California's growers recognized the workers' union and increased wages to
$1.80 an hour.

The film, offered in English and Spanish, will feature interviews with
Chavez's family and Dolores Huerta, as well as farmworker families, students
and others who served as "foot soldiers," breathing life into the movement.
It will remind today's students that they are inheritors of *la causa*, and
that they, too, possess the power to change the world.

The new film is the sixth produced by the SPLC's Teaching Tolerance project.
Four of our past documentaries have been nominated for Academy Awards(R). Two
have won Oscars(R), another won an Emmy(R). We plan to distribute 50,000 copies
of the new film within two years of its release.