(Mark Mori, US 2025, 79 min., DCP)
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Mark Mori (for his 1989 documentary Building Bombs), turns his lens to the challenges facing labor organizers in an increasingly corporatized world. Starting in Buffalo in 2021, Starbucks baristas reported insufficient wages, disappearing benefits, and deteriorating working conditions. This ignited a firestorm of unionization that spread across the country, with nearly 500 union stores, composed of more than 10,000 union workers. But after three years, the urgency of the situation is clear, as Starbucks Workers United still does not have a collective bargaining agreement. Mori and his production team work on the ground, showcasing the bravery of the baristas — now unlikely union leaders — as they fight for representation against corporate union-busting and a backlash that includes lawfare, store closures, firings, corporate surveillance, and even arrests. It’s the new, current American working-class story, whose ending is still to be seen.
DCP from the filmmakers.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Film Screenings | Everybody to Kenmure Street (DCP)
Labor Film Series On the streets of Glasgow one early May morning in 2021, a Home Office van quietly pulls up to a residential building, with officials sent to arrest two individuals for alleged immigration violations. Word of the raid goes out almost immediately, and students, neighbors, members of the local mosque and others rush to the area in response.