Filmmaker Rachel Lears (an alumna of our Culture & Media Program) will screen clips from her new film next week in NYC:
Thursday, November 6, 2014
7-9 pm
Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Wine reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public. A photo ID is required to enter NYU buildings. 20 Cooper is a wheelchair accessible venue.
This event will be livestreamed. To view the live video feed starting at 7pm (EST), click here.
ABOUT THE FILM: At a popular bakery café, residents of New York’s Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back. Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve.
ABOUT THE EVENT: Mahoma López and Vergilio Arán of the Laundry Workers Center, the main subjects of the film and organizers of the Hot and Crusty campaign, will join filmmakers Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick in a simultaneously translated discussion. They will relate the strategies it took to overcome a two-month lockout, back door legal battles, and a picket line that divided a neighborhood and the soul it took to ensure they will never be exploited again.
The Hand that Feeds is directed and produced by Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick.
The Critical Tactics Lab (CTL) is the Hemispheric Institute’s permanent forum for discussion and research on the practices and methods of contemporary and historical political action. Drawing on the work of Yes Lab and the Creative Activism Series and the Institute’s ongoing work with political artists and activists from the Americas, the CTL’s mission is to promote and strengthen critical reflection about the tactics and strategies of political movements as well as the multiple processes and modes of analysis through which these are arrived at. Through lectures, workshops, courses, and other modes of assembly—and with an emphasis on laughter and embodied practice—the CTL seek to provide a space in which the expansive affinities of critical practice and action can be made visible and strengthened.