Dolores - A Film Review

Dolores – A Film Review

by Duane Campbell

There is an important new film out – Dolores, the story of Dolores Huerta and her fight for justice. She is the woman holding the Huelga sign on the DSA landing page. If you want to be inspired by her struggle for social justice, go see the film.

Although at times ignored by the media, and at other times castigated as a red and an “outside agitator,” Huerta tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Cesar Chavez, becoming one of the most important feminists of the twentieth century. If you don’t know her story, you should ask yourself why.  She continues the fight on many fronts to this day, at age 87. With unprecedented access to Dolores, the film reveals important parts of the struggle for dignity and justice for farmworkers, as well as the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s  life to social change. 

Dolores, produced by PBS and Independent Lens, serves labor history well by accurately describing the often overlooked role of Filipinos who initiated a strike in Delano in 1965, which the nascent NFWA (National Farm Workers Association) joined to create the great Grape Strike that changed labor history in the Southwest.

Review: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

How Testing and Choice Undermine Education. 2010 by Diane Ravitch.
Review by Duane Campbell.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System; 

Historian  Ravitch, formerly a prominent conservative critic of efforts toward multicultural school reform has now reversed many of her earlier positions and in particular criticizes the over use and abuse of testing and the development of for profit charter schools.  Ravitch is currently a research Professor of Education at New York University, formerly a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, and an Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush.   It is interesting a welcome to have a  prominent scholar reverse her earlier positions.  She seems to have changed her positions because she continued to look at the data, and the test based reforms which she earlier promoted are not working out.  And, she examines the specifics of testing limitations. There is no evidence in the book  that she has reversed her earlier advocacy opposing  pluralism and multicultural education.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System   provides an important description of the media savvy campaign of the pro charter groups- such as Democrats for Education Reform, and the groups Ravitch calls the “Billionaires Boy’s Clubs” .  This is one of the best chapters in the  well written book.  She describes how the Broad Foundation, the Gates and others have taken a leadership in criticizing schools.  Their advocates clearly have the ear of Secretary of Education Duncan and Barack Obama.   A central purpose of their work is to weaken teachers unions.  A part of their effort is organized in the Democrats for Education Reform.

One of the points not developed by Ravitch is the ploy these groups use is  that you are either for the charter based reforms and privatization, or you are for continuing public schools as they are – a deceptive premise  at best.  There are thousands of dedicated school reformers who have worked for decades to improve schools.  And, we have improved some.  We should continue to improve and reform schools.