9/29, Friday. Mary invited me to see Dolores. The theatre was packed. Well made with historical footage and personal interviews. Music and dance weaves the scenes, because Dolores loved dance before she got involved in labor union work. Her energy and belief is contagious. Very inspirational. Si, se puedes (yes, we can)! She doesn't dwell on failure, only look ahead, and work hard for the next task. At one point, she commented money spent on spa would be a terrible waste of time. It's also amazing that all her 11 children whom were brought up by various family and community members are various times because she was always too busy, spoke highly of her and took care of her in turns when she was recovering after the NYPD beating, even though they all said it was tough growing up.The director Peter Bratt did Q&A afterwards, which is equally informative. I had never heard of Dolores Huerta before, that shows my ignorance, as well as the male dominance of labor leadership and in general the little awareness of social activist. After Cezar Chavez died, United Farm Workers elected a male leader instead of the cofounder Dolores. Even on their website, UFW credited the founding of the organization to Cezar Chavez alone. The director commented on how hard it was to find documents on Dolores in UFW's archive, despite of her ~50 year work there. It was a couple lines here and a paragraph there, while volumes upon volumes were dedicated to other union leaders. He also mentioned briefly on other works Dolores was and is involved in, a vast scope, unable to be captured by one movie. He also carried the same energy palpable in the movie, the belief of yourself. Another surprise tonight is that, when Dolores was beaten by NYC police and hospitalized, she was introduced to a lawyer who won her the highest compensation NYPD ever paid. The lawyer was in the audience.
