Recently, Rose hosted the movie Bread and Roses which was about this pair of sisters who work as janitors in horrible conditions under an awful boss. The boss, Perez, fires people on a whim and is extremely corrupt, feeding off of the vulnerable nature of these undocumented people. It’s terrible that they couldn’t speak up against his atrocities as they are helpless which is why they do not respond to Sam. It’s upsetting Rosa’s weakness, her ailing husband, is the reason she is pitted against her sister. Its just terrible that she has to maximize her benefits by harming her co-workers and her sister. I think the scene that strikes me the most was right at the beginning when Maya is “won” and almost raped by the one of the men who smuggled her in. Actually, that might not be true. I think when Rosa admits to Maya what she has been doing to help Maya and their family may be the most moving scene. You can see the defeat and tiredness in Rosa’s eyes and now that she has her own family to care for, it makes sense why she is reluctant to help her sister. The sacrifice that Rosa made for her family is absolutely demeaning and I can see why she’s just tired of all of her sacrifices. It is a noble deed that she was willing to demean herself to help her family and, to a point, I see that it is her turn to be selfish. Regardless, it was very sad that Maya was deported and the janitors were able to gain the right to unionize. It was the bittersweet sending.

Although the story was very moving and made me start thinking of unionization and the wages that janitors made at the time, I was also wondering why bread and roses. I know that Sam Shapiro explains that the term originated in 1912 by striking textile workers in Lowell. Actually, just as I typed that, I recalled that bread is for food and sustenance while roses is for beauty? I think I’m starting to forget. Maybe roses was a metaphor for the working conditions which would make sense as the janitors were working in terrible conditions.