“Waging Change” Screening & Panel Discussion

Waging Change shines a spotlight on the challenges faced by restaurant workers trying to feed themselves and their families off tips. Featuring Saru Jayaraman, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the film reveals an American workers struggle hidden in plain sight-the effort to end the tipped minimum wage of $2.13 for servers and bartenders and the #MeToo movement’s effort to end sexual harassment. Directed by Peabody award winner Abby Ginzberg, Waging Change helps all consumers see the role they have to play in ending this two-tiered wage system.

Join ERA for a special Q&A about the documentary film with Director, Abby Ginzberg and Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage, who will be present for a post screening discussion moderated by Noreen Farrell, Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates. We will focus on ways in which consumers can help current restaurant workers who have lost jobs due to the pandemic.

To view the documentary, buy a ticket at the link, and watch before the Q&A at 4:00 pm PST Sunday 7/19.

Watch the trailer.

Speakers

Noreen Farrell, Executive Director, Equal Rights Advocates
Noreen Farrell is a nationally recognized leader on gender justice and the architect of several high impact collaborative campaigns to improve the lives of women and families. Honored as one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California by the Daily Journal and a Top Women Leader in Law and Top Legal Innovator by The Recorder, Farrell has led landmark litigation and policy reform efforts to improve the lives of women and girls at work and school as the Executive Director at Equal Rights Advocates. She chairs the Stronger California Women’s Agenda Campaign and the Equal Pay Today! Campaign and is regularly featured as a thought leader in the media. Farrell has represented thousands of women and girls combating unfair treatment at work and school, including before the U.S Supreme Court, and regularly testifies before legislative bodies. 

Saru Jayaraman, President, One Fair Wage
Saru Jayaraman is the President of One Fair Wage, Co-Founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, was 1010 Wins’ “Newsmaker of the Year” and New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, and a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015. Saru authored Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), a national bestseller, and has appeared on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Melissa Harris Perry and UP with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the Today Show, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Her most recent book is Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016). She attended the Golden Globes in January 2018 with Amy Poehler as part of the Times Up action to address sexual harassment. In 2019, she was named the San Francisco Chronicle Visionary of the Year.

Abby Ginzberg, Documentary Filmmaker
Abby Ginzberg, a Peabody award-winning director, has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 30 years. Her film  And Then They Came for Us (2017, featuring George Takei), about the connection between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II and the current Muslim travel ban, won a Silver Gavel Award and has played at film festivals across the country and in Japan. Over the course of the past year, she has presented the film to college audiences, community groups and in theaters. Ginzberg co-produced and co-directed Agents of Change (2016; with Frank Dawson, featuring Danny Glover), which premiered at the Pan African Film Festival where it won the Jury and the Audience Awards for Best Feature Documentary and a Paul Robeson Award from the Newark Black Film Festival. It was supported by California Humanities and broadcast on America Reframed in 2018 and 2019. Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa (Executive Produced by Alfre Woodard, featuring Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa) won a 2015 Peabody award and has screened at film festivals around the world, winning four audience awards. It was broadcast on public television in July, 2016. She was the Consulting Producer on The Barber of Birmingham, which premiered at Sundance in 2011 and was nominated for an Oscar in the Short Doc category in 2012. The film was directed by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin.

Ginzberg has also produced and directed two award-winning films about little known judges from California. Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson’s American Journey (2005) profiled the life and career of one of the first African American judges on the federal bench in San Francisco. Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice documented the story of a son of farmworkers who went on to become the first Latino to be appointed to the California Supreme Court. Ginzberg’s film Waging Change (featuring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) about the challenges faced by restaurant servers forced to live off tips, premiered at DOC NYC in November, 2019. Ginzberg is currently completing Stay Woke: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me (featuring Danny Glover, Alice Walker, Van Jones, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rep. John Lewis), a documentary about Rep. Barbara Lee, who cast the lone NO vote in Congress against the blanket authorization of military force following 9/11 and who has spent the last 21 years in Congress as a consistent voice for peace and justice.