I went to see the movie Cesar Chavez today.  I wanted to see it on its opening weekend because those are the numbers that count for the movie moguls, and I want to encourage more movies like this.  It matters. Go see it. They were showing it in both English and Spanish (with no English subtitles) at different times.  I went to see it in Spanish.  I preferred the time.  My Spanish is negligible, but I knew I would still be able to appreciate it.  Is there anything we love more than a story of triumph over adversity? Rising up, and through our collective efforts, righting a wrong?  To the extent I thought about it at all, I suspected I was there with only Hispanics.  My suspicions were confirmed when  they all started singing the obviously meaningful song at the end.  🙂

In case you don’t know, Chavez was the leader of the move to organize (primarily Hispanic) farmworkers in California in the 1970s so that they would be able to get decent wages and treatment. They were shamefully treated and Chavez was a courageous and tireless fighter for better wages and conditions.  As you can imagine, since it was considered to be against the economic interest of the farm owners, he had a long and dangerous fight on his hands.  Dolores Huerta was also working beside him to create the Farmworkers of America.  Their movement was responsible for the California grape boycott that swept across the world. It truly brought attention to the issue of the treatment of farmworkers who brought food to our tables and made us think about what happens in the process of how goods come to us and what we get as consumer goods, including who is exploited in the process and how. It also resulted in the United Farm Workers union.  Chavez’s birthday is a holiday in ten states and in 2008, as a Senator, Obama called for it to be a national holiday. Chavez’s movement’s “Si, se puede!” slogan was the inspiration for Obama’s presidential campaign slogan, “Yes we can!” As president, on 3/27/2014, Obama traveled to California to open the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument.

I love it that movies like this are finally being made.  It’s about time.  They are so important.  All of us need to know and appreciate the struggles that got us to where we are as a country. They are so inspiring. And they make us more deeply appreciate how privilege we are to live in a country where we can engage in such actions and they can bring about real change.

There is so very much we don’t know.  History is generally written by the victors and, of course, like any of us would do, they tell their story their way.  Believe me, if the Native Americans wrote the story of their history of what is now the U.S., it would not have been the same as what passed for their history for far too long.

Ultimately, all anyone in marginalized groups wants is to feel like they matter; that you see their humanity; that you recognize and treat them as a member of the human family; and that this is more important than what divides us.

As I spoke about in an earlier post, I think we are reaching a stage where enough people are willing to turn around and look back at where we came from and appreciate it through the lens of where we are now in better valuing others not like ourselves. Movies are a great vehicle since many people do not want to (or cannot afford to) take the time to seek out the information but will watch a film.  A well-done movie is a great, easy, entertaining way to give the masses some idea of what happened. It’s better than nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum and will proceed to fill it with any garbage around. Giving well done movies is better than this.  “Lee Daniels, The Butler,” “12 Years a Slave,” and “The Dallas Buyer’s Club,” are recent examples.

Such movies also help, in ways both small and large, to break down barriers between us.  They make us see those who are like the actors on the screen, in a more realistic way; as people rather than as groups; as human beings who struggled to live for the same values we hold dear.

I am sure that the Hispanics in the theater with me noted my presence and the fact that I did not look like them, and appreciated that I cared enough to come.  A simple genuine smile at them as I passed by them singing along with the song at the end was, I’m sure, also noted, felt, and appreciated. I felt and appreciated what the song and struggle must have meant to them for them to stand up and sing it at the end.  My being there helps form their idea of how they feel about the world and country they inhabit.  A simple smile can work wonders.  Opening yourself up to the idea of this makes you see even more you can do to help make things better in your everyday life.

It is in engaging in small, simple things like this, and more, that we begin to break down the barriers that separate us.  It is no huge, grand gesture.  But simply by being present at the movie, it showed that even though I was not the same national origin as they are, I was interested, I respected them, I cared, and I actually saw them as members of the human family just like I am.

By no stretch of the imagination do I mean to say that what I did was a great thing or that things like this solve everything.

But it beats doing nothing.

It also puts the responsibility on us to help make the world a better place by doing what we can.  Sitting around wanting diversity and saying we should have it, won’t make it happen.  Even if we have it in numbers, it can still feel to the marginalized like mere tolerance rather than an embracing and true acceptance of others different from ourselves as being a valued part of humanity.

Love is universal.

You can’t pass laws to make that happen.  We’re going to have to do it on our own.  It will take each of us doing whatever it is we can when the occasion presents itself, to make it happen.

It is my most fervent wish that we are willing to.  We can do this.

Si! Se puede!