4:16; U.S.
Director: United Mine Workers of America
Synopsis: Newsreel about the UMW’s fights with the Roosevelt administration during World War II.
Category Archives: Labor History
Woodrow Wilson Speaking at Labor Convention (1918?)
6m; U.S.
Synopsis: National Archives footage of Wilson at Labor Convention in Buffalo; footage of Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor.
Michael Harrington and Today’s Other America, Corporate Power and Inequality (1999)
84m; U.S.
Director: Bill Donovan
Synopsis:
This video is based on the writings and speeches of Michael Harrington, who was the pre-eminent spokesman for socialism in the United States. More than thirty interviews with people as diverse as William F. Buckley, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Gloria Steinem, discuss the important issues raised by Harrington and the Democratic Socialist Party. Ordinary people struggling to earn a living or dependent on food stamps and other social services provide viewers with a glimpse into their every day lives and the choices they must make. Cities shown include Youngstown, Ohio, where 60,000 jobs in the steel and coal industry were lost and never replaced, and San Diego, where farm workers live in shacks without running water or a sewage system. Also discussed is the domination and control of many areas of life in the United States by large corporations and the failure of the public school system and health care. This brief history of socialism in America and the changes in the past few decades in American life presented raise many questions. – http://emro.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=819
1913 Massacre
U.S.
Director: Ken Ross & Louis V. Galdieri
Synopsis: 1913 Massacre follows singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie to the town of Calumet, a once-thriving mining town on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula still haunted by the tragic events that inspired Woody Guthrie’s ballad, ’1913 Massacre.’
On December 24, 1913, the striking copper miners of Calumet were gathered with their wives and children for a holiday party at the Italian Hall. After the festivities had begun, someone — to this day, no one knows who — yelled Fire!
Despite efforts to keep the Hall under control, panic took hold of the crowd. The miners, their wives and children made a mad rush for the stairs. In the ensuing chaos, seventy-four people were crushed and suffocated to death on the stairway. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire.
In the version of events that found its way into Woody Guthrie’s song, the “copper-boss thug-men” had plotted to yell Fire! and were holding the door of Italian Hall shut, so that the miners and their families could not escape.
The town itself is still divided over exactly what happened. And no one can explain why they tore down the Italian Hall in 1984.
1913 Massacre captures the last living witnesses of the 1913 tragedy and reconstructs Calumet’s past from individual memories, family legends and songs, tracing the legacy of the tragedy to the present day, when the town –out of work, out of money, out of luck — still struggles to come to terms with this painful episode from its past.
Contact: http://1913massacre.com/about/
Trailer
Southern Patriot (2010)
77m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis & Mimi Pickering
Distributed by California Newsreel and Appalshop
Synopsis: “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (1924-2006)” is a first person feature documentary completed May 1, 2012. Braden rejected her segregationist, privileged past to become one of the civil rights movement’s staunchest white allies. In 1954 she was charged with sedition by McCarthy-style politicians who played on fears of communism to preserve southern segregation. In 1963 she became one of only five white southerners whose contributions to the movement were commended by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A relentless labor and political organizer, she fought for transformation and liberation throughout her life. – http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/15/18715481.php
The CC Boys: A West Virginia Legacy (2006)
30m; U.S.
Director: Robert C. Whetsell and Gerald Milnes
Synopsis: History of the Civilian Conservation Corps in West Virginia.
Contact: Augusta Heritage http://www.augustaheritage.com/store.html
Harvest of Loneliness (Cosecha Triste)
54m; U.S., 2010
Director: Gilbert Gonzalez/Vivian Price
http://harvestofloneliness.com/
Synopsis: History of bracero program and its value of totally controlled workers to Big Agriculture
Contact: Vivian Price: 562-438-9493 vprice@csudh.edu
The Journey: The Greek American Dream (2007)
87m; Greece
Director: Maria Ilou
Synopsis: “A meticulously researched story of how the 400,000 Greek immigrants who flooded through Ellis Island from the 1890s to the 1920s played a key role in making America great without losing sight of who they were and from whence they came.”
Contact: Proteus T: 30 693 240 0632 proteusnonprofit@earthlink.net http://www.thejourneygreekamericandream.org
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