Grassroots Rising, the most recent Visual Communications production, brings filmmaking to the community through an evocative  exploration of Asian Pacific Islander working families in Los Angeles.  The film weaves together powerful interviews and live action footage with moving labor murals and a lyrical narration by spoken word artist Alison de la Cruz while foregrounding the voices of low wage Asian immigrants at the forefront of worker-led movements to build a just community in Los Angeles. 
Grassroots Rising shares stories from a sprawling multilingual Los Angeles that is the sweatshop capital of the United States and that is the home for several of the largest Asian communities outside of their home countries.  It details the infamous 1995 case where Thai garment workers were forced into slave labor and sweatshop conditions in a residential neighborhood of El Monte.  Restaurant and supermarket workers in Koreatown share their experiences with vulnerability to exploitation and unsafe work conditions.  Pilipino home healthcare workers describe how circumstances lead them to jobs that pay $65 for a 24 hour day, while their own children are left in the care of others.  Yet the API working families in Grassroots Rising not only face immigrant challenges with resiliency, but also strive for justice through inter-ethnic alliances and community-based campaigns.  They are not passive victims, but instead are reshaping the city through their activism and involvement with innovative worker centers and organizations such as the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, the Garment Worker Center, the Pilipino Workers’ Center, the Thai Community Development Center, and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. 

Far from the model minority myth, these stories are a modern echo of the working class roots of the Asian Pacific Islander  community.  As Glenn Omatsu writes in Radical Teacher, “Asian American history is a working class history, ”a proud tradition that continues today and that promises  to transform the larger community.

This program was produced by
Visual Communications which is solely responsible for its content. 
c.  2005, VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS. All Rights Reserved