Sometimes activism inspires art.
In the case of 65 students in Tam High’s Social and Environmental Justice Action program, that art is subsequently sparking activism.
During the 2021 Mill Valley Film Festival, CFI Education invited the students to screen Juno Films’ Song for Cesar and participate in a post- screening conversation with the filmmakers, Abel Sanchez and Andres Alegria, on the patio at the Sweetwater Music Hall. As a follow-up to the screening and discussion, the students were inspired to walk the same route Chavez and the protesters walked in 1970. The students’ goal is to celebrate his life and work, along with the present-day work of the UFW.
On Wednesday, March 30, the students are set to celebrate the late labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez by walking the route of the 1970 march he led down San Rafael’s Miracle Mile in support of the local Marin Independent Journal typographers union. The students will walk from the San Anselmo Hub to Albert Park.
The initial march provided “a perfect event to try out my 200-mm lens and get a glimpse of Chavez, the famous United Farm Workers Union organizer best known for the grape boycott of the 1960s,” writes Dewey Livingston, whose photos and text provide an account of the original march via the Marin County history & culture at the Marin County Free Library. “What resulted was a good grade in photography class, and a cub photojournalist’s record of a historic moment in Marin.”
UPDATE 3.31.22: A photo from the march in front of the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center:
