Friday, September 3, 7p.m. - Labor Day Weekend Showing of BREAD & ROSES.
Peace Center of Delaware County First-Friday Free Film Series, 1001 Old Sproul Road, in Springfield, PA.  Large screen; Air Conditioned

BREAD & ROSES
2000: Directed by Ken Loach.  Written by Paul Laverty.
Running time: 106 minutes.  Rated R (For strong language and brief nudity).
English and Spanish with English and Spanish subtitles.

Inspired by a True Story...

Bread & Roses is the award-winning dramatic film by social realist filmmaker Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley). The plot deals with the struggle of poorly paid janitorial workers in Los Angeles and their fight for better working conditions and the right to unionize. It is based on the Justice for Janitors campaign of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican woman makes a harrowing cross-border journey into Los Angeles to join her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio), who works as a janitor in some of the city's largest corporate offices. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers' union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro (Adrian Brody) to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Maya and other workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Workers and management collide.

Surrounded by the machinations of big business, the fight by these migrant workers threatens their livelihood, family, and risks their expulsion from the country.

Timely in its depiction of undocumented migrant workers seeking justice, the film's name, "Bread and Roses" derives from the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Though the phrase comes from a 1910 poem by James Oppenheim, it is commonly associated with the Lawrence strike, which united dozens of immigrant communities, led to a large extent by women, under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The film showings at the Peace Center of Delaware County are co-sponsored by the Brandywine Peace Community. Doors open for light refreshments at 6:30p.m.  The Peace Center is located at the Springfield Friends Meetinghouse, just off the corner of Old Marple and S. Sproul Roads, behind the Mr. Car Wash. 

For directions and more information, visit www.delcopeacecenter.org or call 610-544-1818.