Bread and Roses

At work, Ramon and the other Chicano miners are forced to take on the most dangerous jobs while working alone, while white miners were allowed to work in pairs, doing some of the less life-threatening jobs. The Chicanos become indebted to the company through high prices, as the only stores in the town are those owned by the company. Ramon and Esperanza, along with the other community members fight against verbal abuse and discriminatory practices in the working and living conditions they encounter on a daily basis.

This structure depicts the economic exploitation of one Hispanic by another. At first Enrique and Rosa do not see, as illegal immigrants, it is nearly impossible to be free. Enrique and Rosa might be safer living in America than in Guatemala, but as an illegal immigrant they will never reap the benefits American citizens have.

Employer tried to coerce the employees to keep them from attending union meetings with negative comments that they should stay away from the union representative if they knew what was good for them. This was demonstrated several times in the film especially when employees were going to and from work and Ruben was at the gate passing out pamphlets. Another example depicted employees that had obviously been thing about going to the meeting, but only spoke about it to their closest friends and then in whispers while management was not around. This is another example of a potential ULP section 8a-1 violation.

In Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz’s book, Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network, she allows us to enter the everyday lives of ten undocumented Mexican workers all living in the Chicago area. Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz refers to Chuy, Alejandro, Leonardo, Luis, Manuel, Omar, Rene, Roberto, Lalo, and Albert the ten undocumented Mexicans as the “Lions”. This book shares the Lions many stories from, their daily struggle of living as an undocumented immigrant in America, to some of them telling their stories about crossing the border and the effects of living in a different country than their family, and many other struggles and experiences they have encountered. Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz’s book delves into

Juanita says, 'I feel my isolation alone in a big house full of people" (Romero, p. 22). The social norms and values surrounding the domestic service was a possible cause of Juanita's loneliness. These problems that Romero mentions are not confined to just Juanita. It applies to all the invisible workers working in the domestic service. At last Romero highlights that the class of domestic workers comprises mostly of women. Romero talks about her own experience working as a domestic worker, how she learned these domestic services through her mom. On weekend Romero would go clean houses along with her mother. Invisible workers are not found among all socioeconomic aspects. They are concentrated among the lower social

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, shares his life-long journey as an undocumented immigrant in his text, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” As the title suggests, Vargas attempts to convey to his audience, who likely never has and never will experience anything similar to what he has, what it is like to live as an immigrant in the United States of America. Skillfully, Vargas details the perfect number of personal stories to reach the emotional side of his audience, which is anyone who is not an immigrant. Through the use of his personal accounts Vargas is able to effectively communicate that immigrants are humans too while simultaneously proving his credibility, as he has experience and a vast amount of knowledge

The resident workers’ fear and hatred of blacks and Italians and vice versa distracts them from their hatred of the company, and prevents them from bonding together as workers against the Company. The Company uses racism to their advantage by promoting it, and further prevents unionization of the workers by showing the union as something new, foreign, and untrustworthy. Unions are forbidden in the workers’ contracts, so the workers must meet secretly to discuss the possibility of one. Because they lack security in their jobs, the workers fear for their lives and creature “comforts.” The company promotes this fear by monopolizing housing, forcing workers to live in substandard housing and making sure that the workers know that if they should lose this housing, they have nowhere else to go, no place else to live. The company completely controls their physical lives, an indication of slavery. Keeping the workers in ignorance of their futures forces them to live in constant fear, allowing the company to easily gain and maintain control.

Imagine a world where the social and economic conditions for the farm workers and immigrants get worst year by year, where the discrimination among these people growth and never decline. What would happen to farm workers if Dolores Huerta shouldn’t have made any action to change their situation? This same question should be in the mind of many Americans who don’t appreciate all the effort and work that Huerta put in to change our nation. Persistent, powerful, brave, strong, simply a heroin are the best words to describe Dolores Huerta, who is one of the most important women who contributed to the creation of an equal and fair society in the United States because, she founded the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) and also she helped create the National United Farm Workers Association (UFWA) with Cesar Chavez, she helped organize a nationwide boycott of abusive grape growers, and she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

In the short story by Helena Maria Viramontes, “The Cariboo Café’, describes several of the key issues many immigrants face daily when living in the United States. The short story is broken down to three different narrative sections. Each section illustrates different problems that are being faced by the Chicano/a community. The story describes the lives of Chicano/a immigrants, a Central American refugee, and the owner of the café. Each part is given by different perspectives of the characters, which later all three narrations are place together to reveal the ending of the story. Throughout the three narrations multiple themes and topics can be connected to current issues about immigration. Viramontes is able to describe the scenarios and

In her book, Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz describes the lives of ten busboys, she referrs to as the Lions, living and working in the Chicago area. Gomberg-Muñoz provides an insight into the lives of these undocumented Mexican workers. They share their stories of crossing the border, the affects of their absence on family back in Mexico, and the daily struggles of living in a country without the benefits of citizenship. The Lions, as well as other undocumented Mexicans, have to face Americans stereotypes every day. Probably the biggest stereotype the Lions contend with is the belief that all Mexicans are hard workers.

Alongside her father, Dolores at 11 years old, sold pots and pans door to door and watched him as he was constantly slaving for long periods of time in the heat continually harvesting beats, a little at a time to earn a couple dollars, and those dollars which were most likely going to be spent on her. As he faced the dreadful working conditions, he became a labor activist and accomplished getting on the board of the CIO local at the Terrero Camp of the American Medals Company as the secretary-treasurer. Yet Dolores’s father was only on the committee for a brief amount of time due to how blunt and outspoken he was (Novas 160). He wanted to get his point across and explained his point in very rash tones, but even with his rash tones, Dolores Huerta admired her father in attempting to help the union and labor workers, which were the reasons Dolores Huerta pursued activist roles in the community. When teaching for a brief amount of time at an elementary school, she suffered seeing her students come to class with the face of hunger and in need of shoes, she believed that rather than trying to teach peoples hungry kids, a greater impact could result from organizing a union filled with the participation of farm workers, to petition in order to enforce better rights in regarding the way they were being mistreated.(Doak 34). Through experiencing and visually seeing what occurs due to families not having the advantage or

The book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States illustrates the fieldwork of the author Seth M. Holmes by explaining the myriad aspects of migrant workers’ lives in the U.S.—from the politics to the social environments to the physical body. By not only studying, but living, the lives of these migrant workers, Holmes brings the reader a view unseen by the vast majority and provides the opportunity for greater understanding through the intense details of his work. The voices of vastly different characters—real people—are captured and expounded on without judgment but with deep consideration for all factors that contribute to each person’s life, opinions, and knowledge. Ultimately, a picture of intersectionality is painted in the colors of migrants, mothers, fathers, children, doctors, soldiers, executives, the poor, the rich, and more.

“The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country 's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin 's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective” (Angelou 218). Maya believes that blacks are being robbed of their lives and freedom to explore, grow, and succeed. This statement shows that ones with the very little they have will utilize it completely and have that to their advantage, and then they will succeed. Racism and prejudice are large factors that shapes Maya’s autobiography and eventually motivate her to ignore all of the negative influences and build her confidence. There are also many violent events towards blacks that show Maya the severity of prejudice in her society. One day when Maya was at the store a fight was on the radio where a black man and white man were battling in a boxing ring. When the black fighter Louis was getting beaten Maya thought, “It was our people falling. It was another

A life in the city of Seguin, Texas was not as easy as Cleofilas, the protagonist of the story thought it would be. The author, Cisneros describes the life women went through as a Latino wife through Cleofilas. Luckily, Cisneros is a Mexican-American herself and had provided the opportunity to see what life is like from two window of the different cultures. Also, it allowed her to write the story from a woman’s point of view, painting a vision of the types of problems many women went through as a Latino housewife. This allows readers to analyze the characters and events using a feminist critical view. In the short story “Women Hollering Creek” Sandra Cineros portrays the theme of expectation versus reality not only through cleofilas’s thoughts but also through her marriage and television in order to display how the hardship of women in a patriarchal society can destroy a woman’s life.

The union is another thing discussed in the movie. Moore starts out telling the story of his Uncle Laverne in the Great Flint Sit Down Strike. Laverne and thousands of other workers took over the Flint factories and refused to move for 44 days. The National Guard needed to be called and the whole world was aware of the situation. Then on the Union of Automotive Workers (UAW) was born. This is an industrial union because its membership is open to all workers in the automotive industry; disregarding what specific job they work at. This was a huge step in the rights of the autoworkers. A man at the Flint parade mentions unions as well. He says that the problem with the unions now is that they are getting weaker. "Too many people in unions friends