Hugo Chavez & Charlie Chaplin - A Nice One-Two Punch for Workers

[nosmokes]

what a fitting tribute to a great movie 70 years after it was made!
--###--


original

Workers learn about exploitation from Chaplin film
By Chris Kraul
Los Angeles Times
Published: Sunday, July 9, 2006

LOS TEQUES, Venezuela - In his classic 1936 film, ''Modern Times,'' Charlie Chaplin has to work so fast tightening bolts in a steel factory that he finally goes crazy. In one memorable scene that has become a metaphor for labor exploitation, the Little Tramp is run through the factory's enormous gears.

For President Hugo Chavez's socialist government, the film is more than just entertainment: It has become a teaching tool. Since January, in a bid to expose the evils of what he calls ''savage capitalism,'' the Labor Ministry has shown the Chaplin film to thousands of workers.

Once the showings at factories or meeting halls end, Labor Ministry officials then use Chaplin's plight to spell out worker rights under new occupational safety laws passed last year and just now being applied. They are part of Chavez's sweeping reform agenda that he calls ''Socialism for the 21st Century.''

Chaplin made the Depression-era movie to make a point, that, ''Once inside the factory, workers had no meaningful rights,'' said Los Angeles-based film historian and Chaplin authority Richard Schickel. ''It was very relevant in the moment it was released, a time of social unrest and the emerging U.S. labor movement.''

Seventy years later, Chaplin's fable is all too relevant in Venezuela, said several factory workers who saw the film recently.
~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here