Arturo Hilario
El Observador
Social agitation is a term that is used to describe the act of activism, which itself is useful as a part of community organizing, a process that brings forth issues in a community and creates likeminded networks to help put pressure on the status quo in order to enact change.
In the Bay Area there is a rich history of social activism and community organizing movements, from the Civil Rights unrest of the 1960s in Berkeley and San Francisco to the grape boycotts led by Civil Rights icon Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union.
American Agitators, a new documentary by Bay Area filmmaker Ray Telles, explores the life of one of the seldom mentioned but key pioneers in community organizing, Fred Ross, Sr. The film will have its world premiere at Cinequest Film Festival on Sunday March 16, with Telles, the filmmaking crew and other guests in attendance.
Telles is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and professor at UC Berkeley who has worked in the television and documentary industry for more than 40 years. From his start in LA with Univision (then called Spanish International Network) to his work with PBS and then independent films, Telles has told many stories and has captured the lives of many people in his distinguished career.
Yet throughout that time, he has spent 30 years attempting to tell the story of one man, Fred Ross, Sr., not just because of the respect he has for the organizing tactician, but because of a promise he made to his dear friend and son of Ross Sr.
Fred Ross, Jr., who was also an organizer, first sought Telles’ help to film a memorial when his father passed away in 1992. From there they developed a project to document the life of Ross Sr.
“So, basically, in 1992, we shot his memorial here in San Francisco at the Delancy Street Center. Lots of people from all over the state showed up. Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi, all the politicos showed up. All these people who he had worked with over the years. We had this footage from 1992, and Fred Jr., who was also an organizer, stayed after me for years and said, ‘Hey, let’s do this film about my dad. Let’s do it.’”
As time passed, Telles kept in mind the project he and his friend Ross Jr. both wanted the world to see, a story of a man and his important work in activism and the role he had in creating generations of community organizers in the Bay Area and beyond.
Born in 1910 in San Francisco, Ross Sr. was raised in the Echo Park region of Los Angeles and after earning a teaching credential from USC went on to do social work.
Working with farm working migrants and refugees of the Dust Bowl, he saw firsthand the lack of protections for certain members of society and this built his foundational view on injustices. From this point forward, the mythos of Fred Ross, Sr. began.
Beginnings
Telles was born in Los Angeles to Mexican parents, he considers himself a Chicano. “I’m originally from Los Angeles and Mexican-American, Chicano. From my parents, my mother’s from Chihuahua, and my dad’s from El Paso. And so I grew up in LA, and made it up to the Bay Area about 50 years ago.”
His journey from TV productions to film included one of his most important documentaries, which dealt with the organizing efforts of a guy from Yuma, Arizona. “I have a long history with this topic. I made a film in 1997 called The Fight in the Fields, which was on Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers. That was a national film on PBS. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of reporting stories about agriculture, about labor, and a lot of the issues that Fred Ross covered, and we’ve covered in this film.”
From there, the long path in creating American Agitators was one of patience, pain and timing. The actual production began in 2021 but was immediately met with tragedy.
“It’s been in the works for a long time. But we just finally decided to make the film. The sad story is that I was friends with Fred Jr., and he loved his father and a passion for getting his father recognition. We decided to move ahead with the film and just a couple of months into making the film, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We kept on plugging away on it, and then he died that fall.”
“But the real life of this film, it is in the communities and labor unions and folks who can use it to organize and to teach organizing. So it’s a long-term project.”
– Ray Telles
The fact that Telles lost his creative partner and friend during the production made it all that much more important to finish the project and send it out into the world, both as a fulfillment of a promise and as a way to honor the work of Fred Sr. and Fred Jr., and the never ending battle of social justice.
“In a way, this is a film that’s dedicated to his father, but also to Fred Jr. And all the people that they trained to be organizers, really were strong supporters of this film and continue to be strong supporters. But the real life of this film, it is in the communities and labor unions and folks who can use it to organize and to teach organizing. So it’s a long-term project.”
As Was Then, so Is Now
As a documentary, American Agitators tells a history, but more importantly its relevance to the political climate of today could empower audiences to want to build their own networks in their communities.
Now that it is the eve of the world premiere at Cinequest Film Festival in downtown San Jose, miles from where Fred Sr. and Cesar Chavez roamed and worked, Telles feels gratification and hope that it serves as inspiration.
“For one thing, I have covered some of these stories over the years in different ways. Now, to be able to put together the many different elements that are in this film was very gratifying. It’s also a film that we feel is very, very timely because it’s about organizing and it’s about the power of the individual to take action to make change and the power of the vote. We really hadn’t envisioned what was going to happen with the elections, and now this film is more relevant than we ever thought.”
It’s evident that in the present day we have not yet fixed the social issues of our world, and current pushback to regressive policy and governments could be seen as a parallel history to what was happening in the era of Fred Ross, Sr.
“We feel it’s an important film because it really tells the story of this country in a way, from a perspective of people having pushed back against some really difficult situations in the past. For example, the detention of the Japanese attorneys in the 1940s and the work that Fred did with them, basically the exploitation and suppression of Mexican-Americans. In California, we had segregated schools, and Fred organized around desegregating the schools. It’s one of the cases in California that was very, very key in the Brown v. Board of Education.”
Telles hopes that by showing that people uniting to push back on tough situations is universal and how people decades ago used these same tools that are still in use now, it may bridge the gap of time and allow new generations to take that knowledge and use it to better their own communities.
“Here we are, I think, in a time in the history of this country that I think this film may hopefully inspire people who want to push back and do things. I think the timing for this film is a good one. It’s American history told through the eyes of a few people who have actually participated in some of these major events. It’s a biography of Fred Sr. to a certain extent, but the whole last third is about the people who are doing things, making change using the principles of organizing that Fred developed.”
Ross Sr. developed the tactics for organizing and created a pocket sized book called Axioms for Organizers that workers could keep on them and learn how to engage people in organizing, and create real change.
“Fred went out and recruited Dolores Huerta one to one, and the same thing with Cesar. And then they learned those methods: get to meet somebody, talk to them in person, have these house meetings, and keep on going with people. You have to make that contact, and then you have to follow up. I think for people who are interested in making change or doing something about to improving their community, these lessons are important because it’s not a matter of just getting out there and protesting, you got to follow up and organize your community, your people, and there’s ways of doing it. I think that’s one of the big messages in this film.”
Local Legacy and Movie Premieres
Another aspect of the documentary that ties it to the region is that Fred Ross, Sr. and his organization CSO (Community Service Organization), along with Cesar Chavez and his United Farmworkers, had a lot of ties to the Bay Area and specifically San Jose. The importance of American Agitators premiering at Cinequest and the numbers of local supporters and organizers coming to premiere is not lost on Telles.
“For us, it’s really, really key because in San Jose is where Fred Ross met Cesar. In the barrios, they were living in this barrio called “Sal Si Puedes” (get out if you can). That’s their first encounter. Fred went to see Cesar and some of his buddies. The story was at first they were going to blow him off, and then they started listening to him and said, ‘Wow, there’s something going on here.’”
Among other distinguished guests like the crew of the documentary is someone featured in the film who worked directly with the duo from Sal Si Puedes, Herman Gallegos. “He’s a terrific, terrific organizer and supporter. Basically, he met Fred there in San Jose… and was trained by Fred. Herman is now in his 90s and is sharp as a tack. This guy’s an amazing speaker. So, he’s going to be there. And then Margo Feinberg and John Heffernan, who are executive producers, our composer, Mark Adler and me. We’re there to take questions and we’ll do the Q&A, and then we’re going to hang out a bit, too. So you’re welcome to join us.”
Telles reiterates that San Jose and Cinequest are key locations because of the history of the community organizing movement. “Some of the most important encounters that Fred had in his organizing days was right there in San Jose. We’re thrilled that we’re at Cinequest. It’s a really important location. There’s a lot of people that Fred trained and a lot of supporters who are in the San Jose area who are coming to the film. I think people are hiring buses to come. And so we’re thrilled that we’re in the California Theater because I think we’re going to have a good turnout.”
Who Was the Real Fred?
The legend of Fred Ross, Sr. is of a man who was tall, lanky and disciplined. Cesar Chavez considered him his best friend, and Dolores Huerta called him a ‘spiritual mentor’. They were all very close.
But for Telles, who is creating this story from historical archive research and the anecdotes from his great friend Ross, Jr. and others, the question arises of whether there must have been some new revelations for him about who Fred Ross, Sr. was beyond this icon of activism.
“[He] really inspired thousands of people, and I was really surprised that people felt so strongly about him. He wasn’t an easy guy to get along with necessarily. But he was a guy who was very disciplined, and he didn’t want to be out in front of the camera. He wanted to be in the background and not have any attention on him. He was all about the work. We had to search high and low for footage and images of him.”
Telles was able to find some film with the intriguing figure from the early 1980s, but beyond that there were only still photos. “That’s the only real video footage we have from him. Others are photographs. So he’s a guy that I came to realize, was always in the background working in the shadows and training people. People came to really, really admire him. Sometimes I think he was a bit intimidating because he was so disciplined. But people admired him and were devoted.”
Despite his demeanor, so much support for telling this story exists in the Bay Area and the organizing communities that Telles did not have to exert as much effort to fund this independent venture as he has had with other projects.
“This is the only film that I’ve ever made where I didn’t have to raise the money because we had a team that raised the money and raised nearly a million dollars in a matter of a few months. So there was a tremendous support for him all over, particularly in Northern California, in the San Jose area. There’s lots of people that knew him, supported him, and admired the work. And his work continues. They’re using the organizing methods, continue labor unions, community organizations all over the country still are using his methods.”
A specific example of the continuation of his work is evident in a trip that Telles took to Atlanta in 2023 to film the Fight for $15 organization, a group which advocates to raise the federal minimum wage.
“They’re fighting for the minimum wage of $15. And basically, they are using the exact tactics that Fred Ross used in his trainings. The people who are training, know that. But the people who are actually being trained learn that they’re Fred Ross tactics. They’re being used all over.”
Now that the film is ready for audiences to discover Fred Ross, Sr. and the work he did to revolutionize community organizing, what does Telles take away from the experience of working on American Agitators after 30 years of toiling away at it?
“Well, I think that it’s a film that I mentioned that Fred Jr. and I talked about making for 30 years, and it’s a fulfillment of a promise to my friend. But also, I think it was a film that’s timely. If we made it 5 or 10 years ago, I don’t think it would have the same impact as it has now. It’s bringing together a lot of the work that I’ve done in the last number of years where I know these stories, I know a lot of the people, a lot of the protagonists.”
“In a way, I say it’s fate that we made this film, and hopefully, it’ll have some impact, particularly now where I think people want to do something to improve the situation that we’re living in. Hopefully, this film will inspire people and motivate people to and empower people to say, ‘There’s something I can do.’”
