Bread and Roses

Lutheran, The, Jun 2001 by Brussat, Frederic, Brussat, Mary Ann

Bread and Roses gives names and faces to the "invisible" people who enter the buildings of our cities every night to clean offices. These service workers, many of them Latinos and African Americans, are on the bottom of the economic ladder.

Ken Loach is a British director whose recent films-My Name Is Joe, Carl's Song and Land and Freedom-have made political statements. His latest is a riveting drama based on a real-life "Justice for Janitors" campaign in Los Angeles in 1990. It revolves around the political empowerment of Maya, a recent immigrant from Mexico. She and her co-workers stage a campaign to unionize their cleaning company. They know they can do better than a $5.75-an-hour wage with no health insurance, sick days or holiday pay. The demonstrations are orchestrated by Sam Shapiro, a union organizer who knows the right tactics to get the attention of the companies whose offices they clean. As we left the theater, we were reminded of a piece of advice given by Dom Helder Camera, a Latin American theologian: "We must carry a reverence for justice as a mother carries a reverence for her unborn child" (Lion's Gate Films, R-language).