Storming Caesars Palace

FAIN: TR-277941-21

Women Make Movies, Inc. (New York, NY 10001-5059)
Hazel Gurland-Pooler (Project Director: August 2020 to present)

A feature-length documentary about the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in Las Vegas in the 1970s.

Storming Caesars Palace is a documentary which presents low-income mothers in the National Welfare Rights Organization as political strategists and grassroots leaders who pushed for economic justice, women’s rights, and Black women’s empowerment, founding one of the first and most successful women-led community corporations in the nation — 50 years ago.

Associated Products

Storming Caesars Palace (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Storming Caesars Palace
Writer: Hazel Gurland-Pooler and Sunita Prasad
Director: Hazel Gurland-Poooler
Producer: Hazel Gurland-Pooler
Abstract: Shine Award, BlackStar Film Festival, 2022 What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — until now. When Ruby Duncan faces the stigma and harassment of a fraud- obsessed and broken system she ignites “Mother Power,” mobilizing a welfare rights group to march down the Strip demanding dignity, justice, democratic participation, and an adequate income in 1971. Based on the book “Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty” by Annelise Orleck, the film challenges the pernicious lie of the “Welfare Queen,” and highlights the visionary leadership of low-income grassroots organizers whose courage, tenacity and dreams could not be quashed, against all odds. Storming Caesars Palace uplifts the story of a band of ordinary mothers who launched one of the most extraordinary—yet forgotten—feminist, anti-poverty movements in U.S. history, providing a blueprint today for an equitable future. With Mary Wesley and Alversa Beals, Ruby pushes the Las Vegas chapter of the National Welfare Rights Organization to fight for an adequate income, dignity, and justice alongside low-income mothers across the country. With the support of George Wiley and Frances Fox Piven, the NWRO campaigns for Universal Basic Income which, with feminist Gloria Steinem at their side, becomes part of the Democratic platform in 1972. When Las Vegas mothers are slashed from the welfare rolls, they launch “Operation Nevada.” 1,500 people including Ralph Abernathy and Jane Fonda march down the Strip and shut down Caesars Palace. Ruby goes on to found Operation Life, one of the first women-led community corporations in the nation, and is appointed to President Carter’s Council on Economic Opportunity. Storming Caesars Palace celebrates the Black women who set the stage for today’s economic justice movements, revealing that it’s the disenfranchised who fight for America’s principle of opportunity for all.
Year: 2022
Access Model: PBS broadcast March 2023
Format: Film
Format: DVD
Format: Digital File

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