American Experience, Hard Hat Riot
PBS Western Reserve (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):
Tuesday, Sept. 30, at 9 PM
Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 2 AM
Fusion (WNEO 45.2 / WEAO 49.2):
Monday, Oct. 6, at 8 PM
On May 8, 1970, “the Hard Hat Riot” erupted in lower Manhattan. At midday, construction workers, including those building the World Trade Center, violently clashed with students demonstrating against the Vietnam War. It was soon clear that something larger was happening — the workmen, who came to be known as “hardhats,” were at the cutting edge of a new kind of class war. With the war in Vietnam raging on, it was the sons of the working class who were doing most of the fighting. Workmen saw the protesting students as privileged “draft dodgers” disparaging the country and those who fought for it. On the other side, many student activists saw the workers as pawns, unwilling to see the changes that America needed.
HARD HAT RIOT tells the story of a struggling metropolis, a flailing president, a divided people, and a bloody juncture when the nation violently diverged ― culminating in a new political and cultural landscape that radically redefined American politics and foreshadowed the future. The film is based in part on the critically acclaimed book The Hardhat Riot by David Paul Kuhn.
In the early 1970s, New York City was on edge. Mayor John Lindsay’s “Fun City” had been brought to its knees by urban upheaval, from crippling transit and sanitation strikes to soaring crime. It was still a working-class city but was already suffering the effects of deindustrialization. The city’s “Second Skyscraper Age” offered a reprieve — the southern face of Manhattan was being remade, including the building of the World Trade Center. The city was also a center of the counterculture and anti-war student protesters, who rallied in Lower Manhattan at the heart of Wall Street, scarcely aware of the workers watching from the half-built skyscrapers above.
HARD HAT RIOT focuses on a fateful week in May 1970, which began with President Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia. Days of campus tumult and strikes followed, including the killing of four students at Ohio’s Kent State University by National Guardsmen. On May 7, thousands of mourners gathered in New York for the funeral of Jeffrey Miller, one of the Kent State Four who was from Long Island. Afterward, throngs of students headed down to Wall Street, leading to a small clash with workers. Few realized far worse would soon come.
By noon on May 8, hundreds of construction workers descended from their towers and surrounded a student demonstration on Wall Street. Student activists had the loudspeaker and, initially, the numbers. The hardhats unfurled a massive American flag and many Wall Street workers cheered. Then, a student activist waved a Vietcong flag. Suddenly, the construction workers surged forward, leading to a violent confrontation that revealed an emerging class fault line that became “a microcosm of the divides and the polarization that will come to define American life,” said Kuhn.
HARD HAT RIOT is told through candid interviews with many of the workers and protestors who were there, as well as footage of the riot that has not been seen by the public until now. In addition, the film includes largely overlooked footage from that week filmed by and featuring an idealistic group of New York University film students and professors, including director Martin Scorsese, actor Harvey Keitel, and screenwriter Jay Cocks.