Reviews

My son hates social studies. No matter how much I drill him on the subject, he could care less about James Madison, the Bill of Rights, the abolitionist movement, or even more-contemporary figures like Arthur Ashe. This is more than unfortunate; it's a problem.

That's because he's a fourth grader attending public school in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And at the end of the school year, he and every other fourth grader in Virginia is going to be tested on the subject, with an emphasis on the history of the Old Dominion.

The problem isn't the subject matter; it's the way that it's presented. There's little or no attempt to engage his imagination. Facts alone don't begin to tell the story of why these figures are important and why we should know who they are, much less admire them. I also know that this disconnect between history and the imagination is far from universal. His cousins, who are the same age, don't have this problem. They live in Mexico City, a place where art and history seem inseparable. Because they can see and even touch the history of the place they call home, they are more apt to want to read about it.

It's also true for me. I remember when I first saw a reproduction of Diego Rivera's (no relation) painting of Emiliano Zapata, the leader of peasant and indigenous forces during the Mexican Revolution. Rivera's painting, which conveys both Zapata's peasant origins and his nobility, made me want to learn more about the revolutionary leader and the times that produced him. It grabbed my imagination and the rest of me soon followed, so much so that a reproduction of the work hangs in my home.

‘Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world," Margaret Mead once said. "In fact, it is the only thing that ever has." Watching the documentary A Day's Work, A Day's Pay will convince you that Mead had it exactly right.

The hour-long film, shot from 1997 to 2000, traces the personal and political evolution of three welfare recipients living in New York City who move from welfare to work through a program called the Work Experience Program (WEP). An opening scene contains Mayor Rudy Giuliani's claim that the program would provide welfare recipients with dignity and full-time employment. After watching A Day's Work, it's obvious that WEP was more about getting people off welfare rolls than out of poverty and into good jobs.

Jose Nicolau, who thought he was best suited for custodial work, was assigned by the WEP program to be a janitor. One moving scene shows Jose washing out trash bins. "Like an artist puts his signature on a drawing," he says, "I want to put my signature on the way I work." Jackie Marte, a 23-year-old mother of two, says, "All we want is decent jobs. We want to live like everyone else. We want to get paid for the work that we do."

Juan Galan is a former WEP worker who turned organizer when he was hired by ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). After experiencing extreme working conditions in the program and the harassment of people on the streets toward WEP workers, he decided he was "not going to take it any more." Galan began to organize WEP workers around a bill introduced in the New York City Council that would secure a grievance procedure, better pay, and job training for WEP participants.