“You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read…You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride.” Cesar Chavez

It jumped right out at me as I opened the front page of today’s Sac Bee – E is for Empowerment. As he did in life, on what would have been his 80th birthday, the legacy of Cesar Chavez inspires those still facing barriers of racism and discrimination to stand up – or sit down – or walk a line – for justice.

Since accepting Kevin H and Bonnie K‘s invitation to contribute to a collaborative digital storytelling project – The ABC Project – I’ve been pondering how to represent the letters “E” and “P” via multimedia. What better way to commemorate (the unofficial) Cesar Chavez Day than by reviewing his life and important contributions to civil rights.

I’m starting by reviewing a set of lessons I developed in 2002 (just before I left the classroom to head over to our district office): Crossing the Line, The Circuit, Esperanza Rising, and Lupita Manana. With luck, I won’t find too many broken links. Somewhere I also have some interviews a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students conducted with several students at Sac State, who themselves grew up in migrant labor camps, along with their wonderful professor Maria Mejorada. With luck, I can find those tapes. My idea is to create a movie using student voices to narrate images from fields of California, where young and old still toil to bring fresh produce to our tables.

“Si, se puede” = Empowerment
Technorati Tags: CesarChavez, social_justice, digital_storytelling