Want to Organize the Working Class? Learn Spanish.
Millions of workers in the United States are Spanish speakers. Socialists who can’t talk to them can’t organize them.
The US labor movement has a language problem. Millions of workers are Spanish speakers, and many organizers can’t communicate with them. That has to change. (Scott Dalton / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another, there’s a scene I still think about at least once a week.
About halfway through the movie, the main character, Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), is on the lam and seeks refuge with his daughter’s karate teacher, Sergio “Sensei” St Carlos (Benicio del Toro). Unfortunately for Calhoun, Sensei is using his apartment building as a kind of underground railroad for undocumented immigrants, and he has arrived right in the middle of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.
A fascinating combination of tension and hilarity ensues as the two men attempt to escape. Calhoun, calling his revolutionary comrades for backup, cannot remember the series of passwords necessary to identify himself. Frustrated, he begins to berate the phone operator for not giving him the rendezvous point, to which the uppity operator chirps, “Okay, this doesn’t feel safe. You’re violating my space right now.”
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