Bloody Thursday (film)

Bloody Thursday

Thursday, June 21st, in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer]

Bloody Thursday tells the story of how West Coast dockworkers overcame huge obstacles to form a union.

Set in the midst of the Great Depression, the film shows how longshoremen were fighting for their rights at the same time that most of their families weren't sure where their next meal would come from. The odds were stacked against the longshoremen.

Mainstream newspaper publishers, fearful of unionization efforts at their own papers, launched brutal attacks against the dockworkers and drove public sympathy against them. In addition, politicians and the police openly used their resources to side with the shipping companies against the striking dockworkers.

 On July 5, 1934 police killed two longshoremen at a massive dockworker strike in San Francisco, a tragedy known as Bloody Thursday. The tragic events of Bloody Thursday turned public opinion against the shipping companies and lead the citizens of San Francisco and other west coast port towns to go on a general strike in support of the dockworkers that lead to the formation of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, now known worldwide as the ILWU.

Bloody Thursday tells the human stories of the dockworkers who stood up against these odds and changed the course of American labor history.

"This strike is the best thing that ever happened to San Francisco. It's costing us money, certainly. We have lost millions on the waterfront in the last few months. But it's a good investment, a marvelous investment. It's solving the labor problem for years to come. Mark my words. When this nonsense is out of the way and the men have been driven back to their jobs, we won't have to worry about them anymore. They'll have learned their lesson." ~William H. Crocker, a prominent San Francisco banker

"An Injury to One is an Injury to All" Rallying cry of the Wobblies [IWW], and the name of a sculptureat the corner of Mission & Steuart Streets, San Francisco, where much of the violence against the dockworkers took place.

"We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy." ~Ramsey Clark , former U.S. Attorney General

"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." ~Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Platform of the Progressive Party