American Dream

Stars: Ray Rogers, Jim Guyette, Lewie Anderson. In 1984, Hormel, the meat company, made some 29 million dollars in profit. In 1984, Hormel also cut its Austin, Minnesota meatpackers' salary from $10.69 to $8.25 per hour (and lopped off 30% of their benefits). Turning to their local union, P-9, the workers decided to fight the company. This is their story, and it's one that filmmaker Barbara Kopple is no stranger to. She won an Oscar for her 1977 film Harlan County USA., about Kentucky coal miners on strike. She won a second Oscar for American Dream. An honest day's pay for an honest day's work: it's an old and familiar theme that resonates deeply in the hearts and minds of the American people, and as we watch American Dream it's very easy to feel that the fight of the Austin workers is, in a larger sense, our fight too. Determined to give it their best shot, the P-9 management hires a professional campaigner, Ray Rogers. Cut loose by the national union, local P-9 under Rogers' direction, goes on strike. As the months pile up with no favorable end in sight, frustration and deprivation begin to wear on the workers, and some of them cross the picket line... A powerful and deeply moving story, American Dream is, truly, as the box cover proclaims, "the film that corporate America doesn't want you to see." Which is why we all should. Audience: Everyone.