It’s not that often that you get a movie about a labor organizer on the big screen in America - no less a film about a ‘tall anglo’ that mentored Delores Huerta. American Agitators is a new documentary by Raymond Telles that explores the generational ripple effect of organizer Fred Ross Sr.
In roughly 90 mins the film spans nearly 90 years of Fred Ross Sr and his son Fred Ross Jr’s incredible influence on organizing. Telles does an incredible job using a vast amount of archival photos and video mixing in modern interviews with the likes of Huerta, organizer Eliseo Medina and many others. The doc is a truly fascinating dive into labor organizing history that any reader of progressive journalism should love.
I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know who Ross was before watching American Agitators but I quickly discovered that he was a bit of a Forrest Gump of 20th Century American history. Many organizers all the way up to the Fight for 15 movement have carried his “Axioms for Organizers,” that gave inspiration to those fighting for workers rights.
Below is my interview with director Raymond Telles, you can watch the interview or read the lightly edited transcript.
[Edited lightly for clarity]
Zach: For those who might not be familiar - who was Fred Ross?
Raymond: So Fred Ross was a kind of a pioneer in this country organizer who basically learned along the way how to organize people, communities to make changes in their lives.
He started out in the 1930s with the folks who were leaving Texas and Arizona, the folks from the Dust Bowl, the refugees [that] were primarily Okies, Arkies that ended up in Southern California. He went to work in those camps to help them out. That’s where he got started. He started learning how to organize and basically organizing the same camp where John Steinbeck based The Grapes of Wrath.
Zach: He just really just knew how to talk, and more importantly how to listen.
Raymond: Yeah. Well the thing about Fred is he was a good listener. That’s the thing. He listened. Also he believed in the 1 to 1 contact. And he started that in the labor camps, he would talk to people. He was hired by the Federal government to run the camp. But basically he was on the side of the folks, like, “how can I help you?” And he was always the guy in the back of the room. He never - and his son, Fred Jr was the same - they didn’t never want to be out there in front. They were listening, kind of scoping it out and figuring out the angles. How can we help these people out? What do they need? And then he took that whole idea of listening into the house meetings.
[When you’re] thinking about going up against the boss. You didn’t do it publicly. You did it in your home with maybe 2 or 3 other people that they trusted. Fred understood that, [and] he learned how to develop that method.
Zach: It really felt like Fred was everywhere in history, kind of a Forrest Gump or Zelig type.
Raymond: I think the analogy of the Forest Gump and Zelig is a really good one, like, oh, wow, we get to tell these stories. And so, we told the story of him organizing with the Okies and the Arkies, the Japanese internment, the Mexican Americans and the citrus belt, on and on and on. So he really covered a good part of the 20th century with his experiences. It provided us with a structure of telling the story, telling his story, told us basically the story of 20th century American history. Although it’s focus[ed] on California in the West Coast, it was a story of the US in the 20th century. It gave us a way of telling not only his story, but the bigger story of the US.
Zach: Multiple people in the film mention that he was ‘the tall anglo’ guy or something along those lines - which could make it a story about the “white guy organizes people” but you very aptly walk that line.
Raymond: The thing is, the first question that came up among number of people [was], “why are you going to do the story about this white guy?” Yeah, that’s not the point. The point is that here we had someone who was interested in people, interested in listening. And when you organize, when you’re going to help people out, you got to find allies. You got to find friends.
I think it’s important now, is that if you want to organize, you want to make changes, bring on as many allies, and get out of your comfort zone. Those are the lessons I think Fred taught through his own example.
There was a story in [the film] about organizing in East L.A. and they said,” who is this tall white guy with boots from Texas?” And he won over people immediately because he was sincere. They realized, this guy’s got something we can use.
Zach: It’s something you have to do sometimes in the activism world - take a read on someone by their boots or shirt - but what was it that was so special about him that he could quickly knock down those barriers of him being the white guy with Texas boots?
Raymond: The thing is, I don’t think he made it about him. He made it very clear, like, “it’s not about me.” And I think that was his philosophy. He had strategies that people picked up on right away. And he also was really, really good at listening and asking questions like, “what is it you want? What is it about? How can we develop a strategy?” And strategy is where it’s at. That’s the kind of he had a plan.
The thing about Fred is not only did he have a strategy, but man, he worked and he hammered the organizers... “What did you do? How many signatures did you collect? How are you going to follow up? And he drove people crazy with that.
But that’s what it takes, that is the craft of organizing. And people realized this is serious stuff.
Zach: It was interesting watching the film and wondering how would Fred work with the activism today that is so internet - not in person - based. Zoom calls, and e-invites… and then you drop into more recent days with the the Fight for 15 and Unite Here organizing and one of the organizers is citing Fred’s little book.
Raymond: We were trying to figure out, how do we bring the story into, into a contemporary era? I worked with Fred Jr [Fred Ross’ son who was also an organizer like his father] about strategizing and basically we got this film going and then Fred Jr came down with pancreatic cancer. And so there was a certain urgency there.
So we looked at campaigns that we felt had legs. He knew what was out there. That’s why we followed Fight for 15, Unite Here, where two of the prime examples of organizing organizers who had links or people who are doing important stuff, and they and they would keep on going.
Zach: So if there’s one thing that you’d want people to kind of take away from, Fred Ross’ story and your film, what would it be like?
Raymond: Well, I basically I say, if you want to make social change, you can do it. Anybody can do it, whether you’re a citizen or not, there are ways of organizing but you have to follow up. You have to be persistent. You have to meet one on one. And you can do it. You just follow through, keep on going and bring in people. Talk to them one on one. You can’t do it over the phone or the or over the internet. You really, really got to do it one on one so that the personal connection is important.
The film is currently screening in NYC, LA and SF and will expand to more theaters soon. If you’d like to bring American Agitators to your town contact the producers here: https://www.americanagitators.com/screenings#request-screening
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