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In 1970 NYC, anti-Vietnam War student protesters confronted construction workers in violent clashes, creating a cultural rift that transformed American politics.
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00:00:00In the midst of the Vietnam War,
00:00:17Lower Manhattan becomes a battlefield.
00:00:22Word came down that there's going to be a demonstration.
00:00:26We got a major war going on.
00:00:28We got us soldiers being killed.
00:00:30And then you have demonstrators seem to be rooting for the other side.
00:00:34The reaction on the campuses was swift and predictable.
00:00:37The students and many of their teachers were against the president.
00:00:40I'm going to stop Top Street tomorrow.
00:00:42We're going to stop New York City on Monday.
00:00:44And we're going to bring the whole country down with us next week.
00:00:46And then Nixon's going to have the response.
00:00:49Whether the government is right or wrong with a war,
00:00:52you should support the troops.
00:00:54And you take that flag and throw it on the floor and step on it,
00:00:57you've just made it personal.
00:00:59A clash between anti-war protesters and New York City's working class
00:01:03begins to redraw political party lines.
00:01:06We are the second American revolution. We are winning.
00:01:11I approve what you're doing.
00:01:13Because it's going to cause a revolution, but not your kind, my kind.
00:01:18We watched that riot, and I thought what we were looking at was the beginning of a class struggle between, let's call them a university elite, and the working class.
00:01:33Richard Nixon will seize this moment and shift the Republican Party from blue bloods to blue collars,
00:01:39and ultimately write a culturally populous playbook that will guide Republican candidates for more than a half century after.
00:01:45Hard hat. Hard is the right word. This is a tough industry to work in.
00:01:57You're working on cooling towers on a building that's 50 stories high, and the wind's blowing, and it's wintertime, and it's sleeting, and you're working outside.
00:02:22Over on the World Trade Center, you could trip and fall out, believe me.
00:02:31They had no barriers. They had no safety lines for you.
00:02:36You held on for dear life, let me tell you.
00:02:41When I was a 19-year-old kid, my uncle and I get assigned to the 20th floor.
00:02:49So I proceed to walk out on about a 15-inch beam, which is pretty wide, and the far fall is on my left, which is 20 stories, and I froze.
00:03:04I'm standing there, my uncle's yelling at me,
00:03:07What's the matter, kid? What's the matter, kid? I said, I can't move.
00:03:10After a while, you learn how to walk still, and you do what you have to do.
00:03:19You know, when you work hard, and you finish up a day's work, it's nice to look up in the air and say,
00:03:26Wow, we did a great job here. I feel very proud of it, I'll be honest with you.
00:03:32We left our mark on New York City and the construction industry.
00:03:38It's the second skyscraper age in New York City.
00:03:43Thousands of workers are downtown, remaking New York City's skyline.
00:03:49But two Americas are emerging.
00:03:52Construction workers see from their steel perches above.
00:03:57An anti-war movement on the streets below.
00:04:00It is cheering for Ho Chi Minh. Cheering for those harming American boys overseas.
00:04:17Good evening, my fellow Americans.
00:04:19In cooperation with the Armed Forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week
00:04:25to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnam border.
00:04:30Head to war! Head to war!
00:04:33President Nixon announced that American and South Vietnamese troops had moved into Cambodia.
00:04:38That announcement touched off another round of demonstrations.
00:04:42Richard Nixon won the presidency, ultimately by promising to end the war in Vietnam with honor
00:04:48and to bring stability to the nation's tumult.
00:04:51Then, shockingly at the end of April, this Cambodia announcement makes it feel like the war is expanding.
00:04:57This explodes on campuses nationwide.
00:05:02When the Cambodian incursion happened, I was ready to be involved in a revolution, you know,
00:05:08because we can act on this, we can move forward with this, we can, this is when it can happen.
00:05:15To us, as a working stiff, let's put it all blue collar, you would just have people go to college to beat the draft.
00:05:25And they had money, and they let the working class people fight the wars.
00:05:32I knew early on that I was going to go into the service.
00:05:42I thought it was something that you're supposed to do.
00:05:45And I was 17 years old. I joined before I graduated high school.
00:05:49No war since the Civil War had asked more of those with less.
00:05:57The people doing the fighting and dying in the Vietnam War are overwhelmingly blue collar and impoverished rights or struggling blacks.
00:06:06This is not an invasion of Cambodia.
00:06:10But we will not be humiliated.
00:06:13We will not be defeated.
00:06:16My first year of college, a good friend of mine, he had his cousin who was a soldier over at his house.
00:06:25And this cousin of his was serving in Vietnam.
00:06:28I asked him, well, what about, you know, the people that were helping?
00:06:35He said, they hate us. They all hate us.
00:06:40It didn't make any sense. Why were we there trying to help people that hated us?
00:06:47The cause for American involvement in Vietnam really related to the so-called domino theory.
00:06:58If one country fell to the communist control, it would start a whole collapse of other contiguous countries.
00:07:12The reaction on the campuses was swift and predictable.
00:07:16The students and many of their teachers were against the president.
00:07:19If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant,
00:07:37the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.
00:07:46When I was in Vietnam, I flew medevacs to help people.
00:07:51I knew going in there that we were going to go into a hot zone.
00:07:54People were going to shoot us. We can't shoot back.
00:07:57I knew it, but there was somebody down there that needed help.
00:08:00You're going out into hostile areas. You were hunting them. And they were hunting you.
00:08:13As far as picking up dead Marines, they always get a little churn in you, you know?
00:08:18I started to carry the wounded and dead, and we carried a lot of guys.
00:08:22You know, one guy was there with a bag, putting pieces in a bag.
00:08:26I mean, and that was our baptism.
00:08:27During Vietnam, compared to the Park Avenue crowd, the odds were stacked against us, the working-class white kids in Brooklyn.
00:08:42As soon as I arrived at NYU, where the film school was pretty young, I became strongly anti-war.
00:09:03And my experience at NYU was a real radicalizing thing.
00:09:10It was this feeling that we have to fight this. We have to. This is awful.
00:09:17Nixon announced the incursion, and at NYU, somehow there was a gathering of lots of people, students.
00:09:26And it was a pretty radical group.
00:09:35We were all in a room, and we were, like, talking about, what could we do? What could we do?
00:09:41It's going to fold up in three days, but Bruce Tabor, Bruce Tabor Fields.
00:09:45Marty Scorsese, who was our teacher. He was an advisor. We respected him, and he was helpful.
00:09:51We called ourselves the Cinetrax Collective.
00:09:58The whole idea was, it was the information arm of the revolution on the East Coast.
00:10:08So we would produce these films and send them down to Florida or North Carolina or wherever,
00:10:12and we were going to distribute them.
00:10:16They go back to the middle class home. Yeah, that protects me.
00:10:19It's a completely middle class, not the middle class movement.
00:10:23Nothing to do with working people. You can't even make contact.
00:10:26You can't even make contact with the working class in this country.
00:10:29And you know damn well I'm right.
00:10:31The revolution is confined to the campus, and that's where it's going to be confined.
00:10:35I approve of what you're doing, because it's going to cause a revolution, but not your kind, my kind.
00:10:41Political pigs, your days are numbered. We are the Second American Revolution. We are winning.
00:10:46Mr. America, walk on by your schools that do not teach.
00:10:54Mr. America, walk on by the minds that won't be reached.
00:11:03None of your sisters pay!
00:11:06I think the way they're going about this protest business is all wrong.
00:11:10Going down here shouting obscene language down the street.
00:11:12Watching TV at night, that's all you heard was the war protests, the war protests, the war protests.
00:11:19And you didn't hear much about support of the troops.
00:11:24Mayday action called for demonstrators to obstruct entrances to the Selective Service Building.
00:11:30Money and draft cards were burned.
00:11:32No more wars! No more wars!
00:11:36This little card was probably the center of our universe.
00:11:39It was going to tell your future.
00:11:45We were pulling towards this big 1969 change with the draft.
00:11:50This draft lottery starts for the first time since World War II.
00:11:55And a lower number means they're more likely to go to war.
00:11:58The evening of the lottery, it was a scene for me because all of our friends gathered at a local bar.
00:12:09And they had it on TV and it was almost like you'd see a bingo game.
00:12:16September 14th.
00:12:18A number of my friends were called very early on.
00:12:22And then there was my friend, Georgie, and he was watching.
00:12:28And he drew number nine, which was very, very early in the lottery.
00:12:33And the bartender said, oh, he stumbled out of here about a half an hour ago.
00:12:39Georgie had managed to go out and work and save money to buy a Camaro.
00:12:45Which, for working class kids like us, was a big deal.
00:12:48So when we arrived at his car, he had spray painted the number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, all over his brand new Camaro.
00:13:01And his explanation was, well, I'm going to die anyway, so I don't need this damn car.
00:13:08The fire at the Army ROTC building was spotted minutes after several hundred students rallied on the commons, chanting anti-war slogans and tossing cherry bombs.
00:13:23Reportedly, about five militants tossed railroad flares through broken windows, immediately setting the structure on fire.
00:13:29Some firemen were pelted with stones.
00:13:31Efforts to extinguish the blades were hampered by exploding ammunition housed in the building.
00:13:35This morning, things were calm, as National Guardsmen began a clean up, and Governor Rhodes, who visited the campus this morning, called it the worst violence in the state of Ohio, and promised a crackdown on those involved.
00:13:48We got a major war going on, we got our soldiers being killed, and then you have demonstrators seem to be rooting for the other side.
00:13:55Hence, you got a boiling pot.
00:14:05Oh my God, this girl's shot, and he picks her up, and she has this bloody spot on her jacket, and there's blood coming out of her mouth.
00:14:14The town of Kent and the Kent State campus erupted in violent demonstrations against America's involvement in Cambodia and Vietnam.
00:14:23Demonstrations ended when four students died in a volley of National Guard gunfire.
00:14:30Among those dead is this Long Island boy, Jeffrey Miller.
00:14:35And he is the boy pictured in the most iconic photograph of Kent State, lying face down, bloody.
00:14:42This shakes America.
00:14:43The National Guard killed four kids.
00:14:49What's next?
00:14:50You know, is it going to be 20 kids, 30?
00:14:52Are they going to just start firing weapons at demonstrators?
00:14:57It was really upsetting.
00:15:04Kent State, that was a big sting.
00:15:08Oh, this could have happened to me.
00:15:10When you do have a situation of a crowd throwing rocks, there is always the chance that it will escalate into the kind of a tragedy that happened at Kent State.
00:15:26Across America, the arson, the bombings, the violence escalates as never before.
00:15:32It changed the conversation. Suddenly it became, they're killing us.
00:15:43I think we're a little angry though, because four of us just got shot.
00:15:47What four of you got shot?
00:15:49Two pages didn't get more.
00:15:52You like people getting shot?
00:15:54Why? What the hell?
00:15:55What the hell? In other words, you people can go to college, set fire to buildings.
00:16:00What are you, what are you striking for?
00:16:01So you don't have to study the rest of the year?
00:16:03No.
00:16:04You get pushed through?
00:16:05Have you couldn't come out of here and shovel in an alley?
00:16:08We're striking for peace.
00:16:09What peace?
00:16:10You never fought for anything.
00:16:12What the hell did you ever fight for?
00:16:14What did you ever fight for?
00:16:15For my country.
00:16:16What did you ever fight for?
00:16:17We're fighting for our country.
00:16:18You are like hell.
00:16:19Sandy Shawyer was 20, from Youngstown, Ohio.
00:16:23Not much interested in politics and mainly liked to cook.
00:16:27Apparently she was not involved in the rally and was just walking by.
00:16:31William Schrader of Lorain, Ohio, a member of the ROTC.
00:16:35Alison Krauss, 19, from Pittsburgh.
00:16:38Jeffrey Miller was 20, from Plainview, New York, said to have been studious, not rebellious, and active in sports.
00:16:49Here at City College of New York, a group of students pervaded the building housing CCNY's ROTC unit.
00:17:02There's tumult across the city.
00:17:05The protest movement just got so much bigger and pointed and excited.
00:17:12And then you have this mayor, John Lindsay, who had come out early against the Vietnam War.
00:17:17We can find little logical or moral justification for sending 18-year-olds to fight and perhaps die in the morass of South Vietnam.
00:17:30John Lindsay was the first major Republican figure in this country who came out against the war.
00:17:36Today, we seek a solemn, somber day of personal inquiry.
00:17:42Those who charge that this is unpatriotic do not know the history of their own nation.
00:17:50Word spread that John Lindsay had called the Draft Dodgers heroes.
00:17:56For blue-collar America, they feel like those villainizing the soldiers in Vietnam are treated as heroes.
00:18:03And the heroes are treated as villains.
00:18:09Lindsay was controversial for far more reasons than the war.
00:18:11To understand why, you've got to backtrack to the forces squeezing the working-class city by the mid-60s.
00:18:24To dream the impossible dream.
00:18:28The campaign really captured the imagination.
00:18:32We had these rallies that were incredible.
00:18:35Liza Minnelli.
00:18:38He's on the cover of the biggest magazines.
00:18:41He is treated as a national star.
00:18:44He was handsome. He was tall. He was glamorous. He sparkled.
00:18:50And we believed we could make the world a better place.
00:18:54We really, truly believed that.
00:18:56I said, this is where I want to be. I want to be with him.
00:18:59And I never left his side.
00:19:04Many of you asked me the question, well, Mr. Lindsay, if you get elected mayor,
00:19:07are you going to come back to see us?
00:19:10Well, I have, and I am, and I'll come back again and again and again and again.
00:19:14John Lindsay is also emblematic of the excitement of New York City,
00:19:19which was described as fun city.
00:19:22But almost as soon as he becomes mayor, that fun will turn into a biblical tide of obstacles.
00:19:31As a new mayor takes office, 6,000 subway cars lie idle,
00:19:34230 miles of track lead nowhere.
00:19:38Never before has this marvel of mass transportation ground to a stop,
00:19:43with the men on the picket lines.
00:19:45Lindsay believed that there was a kind of alliance
00:19:49between many of the labor unions and the Democratic Party
00:19:52that served their interests but didn't serve the greater population of the city of New York.
00:19:58All this promise that John Lindsay represents is grounded.
00:20:01And it does not help that Lindsay lacked personal ties with these unions.
00:20:06You shouldn't have a transit strike.
00:20:09How do you go to work?
00:20:11And if you don't go to work, you don't get paid.
00:20:13How do you support the family?
00:20:15Lindsay, in spite of all his pledges and rhetoric,
00:20:19in the end basically had to give in and concede to the transit workers.
00:20:23And the buses and subway cars are beginning to roll.
00:20:276,000 buses are back on the street.
00:20:30An agreement that will cost the city from 50 to 70 million dollars in the next two years.
00:20:35And weakness with one union will invite strength from the other unions.
00:20:40There's a sanitation strike.
00:20:44100,000 tons of garbage stinks New York City.
00:20:48You know, journalists used to say,
00:20:50if you stand next to garbage long enough, you begin to smell.
00:20:54And we had a lot of garbage out there.
00:20:56But the mayor, the mayor says that this is not collective bargaining,
00:21:00that what you're doing is blackmailing.
00:21:01He's blackmailing us, because he's the mayor.
00:21:05He wants to be the dictator.
00:21:07He gets up in the morning and says, I'm mayor Lombie.
00:21:09I do what I want to be.
00:21:11In the next several years, we're going to bring a teacher strike,
00:21:14a police slowdown, that was unheard of in the city.
00:21:17These were when the unions were really coming into their own.
00:21:21He obviously was a man of privilege.
00:21:24You could look at him.
00:21:26And when we grew up, you knew a guy of privilege.
00:21:29You knew it.
00:21:30I grew up in Woodside, Queens, and we really were a blue-collar community.
00:21:35It was an incredible area to grow up.
00:21:39I was born in the Bronx.
00:21:43It was all basically a hodgepodge of working people.
00:21:48It wasn't a wealthy neighborhood.
00:21:50There was no rich people there.
00:21:52The neighborhood I came from was Villara Avenue.
00:21:55It was three blocks long.
00:21:57It was all Italian.
00:21:58All Italian.
00:21:59Even if you weren't Italian, you were Italian does.
00:22:01And I didn't even know there was other things besides that.
00:22:06Bay Ridge was the quintessential working class neighborhood.
00:22:10Everyone I knew, their parents were either working on the docks or they were cops, firemen.
00:22:17My father was a strong union man, 100%.
00:22:22They would organize all over Brooklyn, Queens.
00:22:28My father told me, President Roosevelt changed everything.
00:22:32She pushed the workers' rights, she pushed workers' jobs, and this was the way.
00:22:38We have a guy that's going to change things.
00:22:41The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure.
00:22:52Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime.
00:23:03Once I built a tower, now it's done.
00:23:09Brother, can you spare a dime?
00:23:13The Great Depression will sink what gains a lot of these blue-collar ethnic groups had made.
00:23:19And FDR's New Deal will give them opportunity.
00:23:23Whether it's jobs programs or simply hearing his voice on the radio, there is a sense that someone cares about them.
00:23:31During the 1930s, during the Great Depression, there was a kind of revival and enhancement of this kind of imagery of the ordinary working person as the symbol of America.
00:23:51New York was a great blue-collar city at the end of World War II.
00:23:56It was the greatest manufacturing center in the United States by far.
00:23:59In the decades after World War II, New York started changing.
00:24:06And you began to see a decline in the blue-collar world.
00:24:11Manufacturing relocated.
00:24:14Many of the port jobs moved from New York to New Jersey.
00:24:18And at the same time, there was an emerging kind of headquarters city that was growing up.
00:24:23But for too many New Yorkers in too many places, this blue-collar New York City gradually comes to feel alienated from this patrician mayor.
00:24:37Because they are suffering the deindustrialization of America.
00:24:40They are suffering a crime wave before it hits much of America.
00:24:44Their New York City is declining.
00:24:47And the mayor appears to be aloof at best.
00:24:50Or at worst, to care about everyone but them.
00:24:52We're not forgetting the situations in the sanitation.
00:24:57We're not forgetting the situation that we cannot walk down a street in safety.
00:25:02There are a lot of things.
00:25:03And the voters of this city will vote him out completely.
00:25:06Barney Frank, who was a congressman, was an old friend of mine.
00:25:16And he said, John Lindsay is giving good intentions a bad name.
00:25:21People were calling him a limousine liberal.
00:25:25And that became the term for John Lindsay.
00:25:28The year after John Lindsay becomes mayor, the building of the World Trade Center starts.
00:25:39So you have these icons of American promise.
00:25:41This is the 60s.
00:25:42There is this aspirational America.
00:25:45But the American economy is changing.
00:25:48And the decline of New York City is an omen of the trauma that will hit blue-collar America nationwide in the years to come.
00:25:56It is a fact, I think, that civilization throughout history has risen or fallen according to the strength of the central city area.
00:26:08And the reason one has got to operate under the assumption that these great cities are not only governable but can be civilized,
00:26:16is that there is no alternative.
00:26:21My background was very much like the other people at City Hall.
00:26:24The mayor's assistants, sort of an upwardly mobile, college-educated group.
00:26:31But the people who were providing the services that kept the city alive, all the jobs that keep the wheels going,
00:26:41those were the jobs held by people in these white ethnic communities.
00:26:45And they had lived their lives so differently.
00:26:51The struggle that they went through that most middle-class people had no idea about, just to make ends meet.
00:26:57What gave comfort to their lives was family and often church-related community.
00:27:07God and country. Those are our values. Those are our values. I'm not going to apologize to anyone for those values. Those are our values.
00:27:15When there was church on Sundays, it was expected everybody went to Mass.
00:27:22There was the 6.30 Mass, the 8 o'clock Mass, the 11 o'clock Mass, the 12 o'clock Mass, and the final 1 o'clock Mass was for the late sleepers.
00:27:30And every Mass was full.
00:27:34I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 8th grade, and my mother every year would say the same thing to sister so-and-so, whoever it may be.
00:27:43If he gets out of line, just smack him around a little bit.
00:27:46And I say, Ma, you don't have to tell them that. They do it automatically.
00:27:55There was never any of these thoughts that you're going to be something beyond that sanitation worker.
00:28:01That's what we lived. The goal in our neighborhood was to get a city job.
00:28:05Or construction, you know. And my father, he was a laborer, so I went towards the construction end of it.
00:28:12The trades, all the trades, were always father and son.
00:28:15You want the best mechanics? Let your father teach you.
00:28:19So you feel, you know, pretty bad about it if you lose that.
00:28:23And that's what the government did, actually, when the government was pushing, integrating the union.
00:28:33The pressure was growing by the 1960s, and both on the local and the federal level,
00:28:38you begin to see initial steps to pressure the construction trades to open their ranks to people who were being kept out.
00:28:46And I know that New Yorkers know that the black man who came out of starvation in Mississippi and the Puerto Rican who left destitution in San Juan,
00:28:56that that man is the brother of our fathers and our grandfathers who fled oppression in Europe for opportunity here in New York City.
00:29:05There was reason for Lindsay and people like him to feel compassion and empathy for people in black and Puerto Rican communities.
00:29:15But that same empathy wasn't aroused by, you know, the plight of white working class people because of the thought that if you're white, you should be able to make it in America.
00:29:24So if you didn't, if you weren't upwardly mobile, it was your own fault.
00:29:31I don't believe the mayor of New York represents the working people of New York City, the people who have to work for a living, and therefore I will boo him and vote against him.
00:29:41I think there were a large number of working class whites that didn't understand what the hell was going on.
00:29:47All they knew that their life was changing, and it wasn't changing for good.
00:29:51They felt that, you know, their economic problems were increasing, but only black people's problems were being dealt with, and they were angry.
00:30:00When the integration came on, my personal feeling is, in the beginning, I was dead against it.
00:30:08I have to be honest, I was a young, foolish man, and the unknowns, because I felt as though this was our thing and we want to keep it.
00:30:21Because there was a lot of nepotism in the trades, and I was proven wrong, no question about it.
00:30:30Hey, some of these guys became real good friends with me, and all of a sudden you get enlightened.
00:30:37And I used to kid some of my black friends when they asked me, Billy, can you help me get my son into the local?
00:30:47And I'd say, nepotism's not too bad now, is it? Kid them.
00:30:52Kid them.
00:31:011968 will rock American life unlike any time since the Civil War.
00:31:06You're old enough to kill, but not for voting.
00:31:09The Tet Offensive happens, which makes Americans wonder if winning is ever possible in this war in Vietnam.
00:31:18Tell me over and over and over again, my friend.
00:31:24From the Tet Offensive to thereafter, the majority of Americans, including blue-collar America, will not approve of the Vietnam War.
00:31:33No, no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
00:31:39Then, Martin Luther King Jr. is killed.
00:31:46Harlem started rioting, and we were called in.
00:31:53I was assigned to a sergeant who said, we're taking a hold-back approach to this riot.
00:32:00Do you know what John Lindsay did tonight?
00:32:03John Lindsay went right up into Harlem and walked up and down 125th Street and talked to the people face to face.
00:32:10That's what every mayor in the city, in the whole nation, ought to be doing.
00:32:14I can't describe exactly how important it was that he was there that night.
00:32:20This city survived when other cities were burning.
00:32:24Cities burn across the country, but also something else burns.
00:32:27There's hope for a better America.
00:32:31What's left of that hope is invested in Bobby Kennedy.
00:32:35My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there. Thank you.
00:32:40But he, too, will be killed that year.
00:32:49So on top of this tragedy, the radicalism rises with the anti-war movement in 1968.
00:32:56Campuses are rolling across America, first at Columbia.
00:33:01Our program is going to be to come back on the campuses and hit them harder than they've ever been hit before.
00:33:06The Columbia University demonstrations in 1968 were one of the biggest and most dramatic till that point.
00:33:14And the immediate issues was the involvement of Columbia University in military research that necessarily involved the war in Vietnam, but also the relationship of the university to the nearby black community in Harlem.
00:33:28I was one of the people who was early on involved in the formation of the students' Afro-American society.
00:33:35We had a rally in front of Hamilton Hall, and the suggestion is then subsequently made, let's go into Hamilton Hall.
00:33:45Then the question becomes, what are we going to do?
00:33:52Protests ultimately led to the occupation of campus buildings.
00:33:58Well, this was a huge national attention.
00:34:05Mayor John Lindsay of New York City is known nationally for his feeling that civil disorders can best be met with restraint on the part of police.
00:34:12But Lindsay's got a problem.
00:34:15The leaders of Columbia want him to order in the police, but Lindsay wants the leadership of Columbia to ask for it.
00:34:23And after nearly a week of efforts at conciliation, I must ask the police to take the steps necessary to permit the university to resume its operations.
00:34:35After seething for days over these Columbia activists, the police are ordered into Columbia.
00:34:42The police are overwhelmingly ethnic white, Italian and Irish.
00:34:46And to those cops, it's shocking for the time to see kids of privilege, demean them.
00:34:52They call them pigs, insult their mothers.
00:34:55When I got there, the lieutenant said, OK, we're going to assign you to the chancellor's office.
00:35:00There's nobody to come through that door, nor through the window.
00:35:05You make sure of that.
00:35:07So I got on the phone, and I called my mother, and I said, Ma, your son has finally made it to Columbia.
00:35:15We have been informed that the police department will take all the necessary actions in connection with our complaints against you.
00:35:22You will be subject to proper disciplinary action by the university in any event.
00:35:27The police came and arrested everybody on campus who was involved in a demonstration, beat up numerous people.
00:35:38The kind of energy police committed to hurting these kids had much more to do than what was going on at Columbia.
00:35:47It had to do with the whole history of how poor white ethnic groups have felt disrespected and mistreated in American society.
00:35:58From early 1969 to spring 1970, there are more than 4,300 bombings across America because so many war radicals feel progress is too slow.
00:36:18They aim to bring the war home.
00:36:24Everything was radicalizing.
00:36:27You know, you had townhouses blowing up.
00:36:30The home of wealthy advertising and radio executive James Platt Wilkerson was torn by explosion and fire last Friday, badly damaging the two neighboring homes, one belonging to actor Dustin Hoffman.
00:36:42The weathermen were building a bomb and it went off.
00:36:46And it took half the building down with it.
00:36:49I responded there for crowd control and whatever they needed.
00:36:54Police say they found 60 sticks of dynamite, 30 blasting caps, also the literature of SDS and the radical left.
00:37:01You know, it's a revelation.
00:37:06They're building bombs.
00:37:08These were people who, more than I, were devoted to revolution.
00:37:16All these things that make you feel like the world that you respect is either in revolt or is being destroyed.
00:37:28Accumulating tragedies, America really seemed to be breaking apart by May 1970.
00:37:39Three days after Kent State, the funeral in the city for Jeffrey Miller, the Long Island boy killed at Kent State, takes place.
00:37:47Nearly 5,000 college and high school students crowded the streets while family and friends of the dead boy sat silently inside.
00:37:53It was a subdued and thoughtful crowd.
00:37:57I seen 10 soldiers, I hear them coming.
00:38:02We're finally on our own.
00:38:06Four dead in Ohio.
00:38:10Four dead in Ohio.
00:38:11As the family left for the cemetery in the suburbs, most of the young people headed for rallies in the city.
00:38:23I'm sitting with the mayor in the mayor's office and we're just talking about what we could do to recognize.
00:38:33Remember me and these four college kids who were killed by National Guard.
00:38:38The mayor's just great.
00:38:40So they issued an executive order that the flags on the municipal building and the city hall would be lowered to half mass.
00:38:49Who could object to that?
00:38:54American state!
00:38:57American state!
00:38:59Several hundred college and high school students declared a war of disruption on New York City today.
00:39:03The demonstrators gather on Wall Street.
00:39:05The masters of finance are seen as the masters of war.
00:39:08And a center of New York City protest is at Federal Hall, this square next to the New York Stock Exchange.
00:39:17I'm going to stop Wall Street tomorrow.
00:39:19We're going to stop New York City on Monday.
00:39:21And we're going to bring the whole country down with us next week.
00:39:24And then Nixon's going to have to respond.
00:39:25I don't know.
00:39:26Maybe he's going to come down with his fist.
00:39:27A lot of people probably think so.
00:39:29But let's find out now.
00:39:31We want to find out where it's at now.
00:39:33The Patriots.
00:39:34The Patriots.
00:39:35The Patriots.
00:39:37The Patriots is right.
00:39:40All right.
00:39:41Keep going.
00:39:42We've seen pictures of Che Guevara on 4x4 red posters.
00:39:47A large red banner with a white star in the middle being hoisted behind these demonstrators.
00:39:52Now, if anything, we thought we'd bring the American flag down into the demonstration because this is a country that we represent.
00:39:59As we went down with the American flag, I was jumped on and attacked by a couple of people with long hair.
00:40:05And the flag was ripped out of my hand, ripped off the pole right here, in many pieces.
00:40:10Stay back.
00:40:13Stay back.
00:40:15Don't you .
00:40:16Do you understand?
00:40:19No, man.
00:40:21Noットie!
00:40:23Just wait a second!
00:40:24Shut up!
00:40:26Shut up!
00:40:27Kick their f*** ass!
00:40:29Show them where you ass!
00:40:31Kick them a f*** ass!
00:40:35What do you want to do?
00:40:37On Orion?
00:40:38I served, and most of them were World War II and Korean vets.
00:40:49How would you feel?
00:40:54My father was a World War II veteran.
00:40:56My uncles were World War II veterans.
00:40:58For that family, we had a pretty good number of us went.
00:41:05My brother was in the Korean War.
00:41:08My stepdad was in World War II.
00:41:11You know, we grew up that you support the United States of America.
00:41:17I was five years old when I went into first grade.
00:41:20And when I went up there, they teach you the Pledge of Allegiance, you know,
00:41:23and the sister would tell us what to do, hold your hand to your heart and everything.
00:41:26And as she's saying that the men and women that died for this flag, it just hit me.
00:41:30And, you know, it just got to me when I started crying and everything.
00:41:35And that was it.
00:41:36That kind of cemented me with the flag.
00:41:38I can't see desecrating the flag.
00:41:40I just can't.
00:41:42When I first landed in Da Nang, you recognize that there are bodies in bags lined up, being sent home.
00:41:54When they would come home, there was never a welcoming for troops.
00:42:02The people here, a working class guy, took offense to that.
00:42:06We were told, don't wear your uniform when you're on leave.
00:42:13Just try to avoid any confrontation with anybody.
00:42:18What Vietnam veterans need is a good parade.
00:42:25They were heroes, really.
00:42:27They were, I mean, it wasn't like World War II where you were fighting and the people you were fighting for were like, you know, throwing roses and flowers at you.
00:42:38New York City, on May 8th, 1945, celebrates VE Day, the end of the war in Europe, victory over the Nazis.
00:42:51On Friday, May 8th, 1970, 25 years later, VE Day is scarcely remembered.
00:42:58My best recollection of May 8th was the usual routine.
00:43:15Coming out onto the street, but you could hear a lot of activity at seven.
00:43:19It was too much for seven o'clock in the morning.
00:43:22We were all aware that protests were going to happen.
00:43:26That morning, John Lindsay began his day playing tennis uptown.
00:43:33He is planning to attend an anti-war rally at Foley Square, which is within blocks of City Hall.
00:43:41Word came by word of mouth that there's going to be a demonstration down in Lower Manhattan.
00:43:51We were assigned to come in early to the precinct.
00:43:54And we were told we're going down to Wall Street.
00:44:00After we left our job sites, we got on the train with a lot of my fellow workers.
00:44:08And we saw other tradesmen getting on the train.
00:44:12There was hundreds and hundreds of construction workers at different locations.
00:44:16So everybody that you've seen was in line with that.
00:44:20They were energized by it.
00:44:25It was really crowded.
00:44:35The place was full.
00:44:37The entire square was full.
00:44:42We were in a crowd of protesters.
00:44:47And then beyond them was a crowd of Wall Street investment people or stockbrokers or accountants.
00:44:57It's okay for you to go, but I can't, right?
00:45:01It's not for America.
00:45:02I love America.
00:45:04You know what I do?
00:45:05You know what I do?
00:45:06I love America.
00:45:07I was assigned at the bottom of the steps on the federal building, but there was no violence going on.
00:45:15Nobody was attacking the police.
00:45:18We were sort of a perimeter to keep them where they were and to keep them in place.
00:45:23I knew that there was going to be a demonstration to protest this in downtown Manhattan.
00:45:44I sort of fancied myself as a documentary filmmaker,
00:45:50so I had brought my Super 8mm camera along and I was going to film some of it.
00:45:57They were displaying the Viet Cong flag, which, you know, I certainly personally did not agree with, but there was.
00:46:08And I heard in the distance, I heard chants of, USA, USA.
00:46:14And then these hardhat workers, they were marked.
00:46:21It was like a march.
00:46:22It was like a parade.
00:46:24They were marching on the street.
00:46:26As they approached closer, we saw two streets also having large groups of people walking towards us.
00:46:37Very large people wearing construction helmets.
00:46:41So I said, oh, this is interesting.
00:46:51So we turned the camera on them and I'm thinking, oh, this is, you know, this is good footage.
00:46:57Because they were like spoiling for a fight.
00:47:00And then one thing pushed, come to shove, words started back and forth.
00:47:10They were calling baby killers.
00:47:13And that's when it started getting a little rousy.
00:47:16You know what's coming.
00:47:23You know there's going to be a fight.
00:47:24You know what's on their mind.
00:47:27Now maybe it's not on their mind to beat people to death.
00:47:31But what's on their mind is coming in and taking some swipes at people.
00:47:35And they're going to have a fight that day.
00:47:39On May 8th, I was broke.
00:47:43But you can go and get a party of pay downtown.
00:47:48There was a disbursement center for the military guys on leave.
00:47:51When I got out of the train, I walked right in the middle of this thing.
00:47:56I didn't know anything about demonstrations.
00:47:58I didn't know anything about any of this stuff.
00:48:00All I wanted to do was go and try and get a few dollars so I could last the last week.
00:48:05You knew these kids were going to get hurt.
00:48:08So I wasn't sure if I wanted to help the kids getting hurt or if I was on the side of the construction workers
00:48:13until I saw them disparaging the flag.
00:48:15That drew the line with me.
00:48:17I'm a Marine, and you take that flag and throw it on the floor and step on it.
00:48:22You've just made it personal.
00:48:25They're stepping on the bodies of the men that I fought, that died in Vietnam next to me.
00:48:29At that moment, this one man in a suit, who looks like a man of the establishment, ascends to the statue.
00:48:41What he wanted to do was tear up the flag, spit on the flag, spit on them, really making them crazy.
00:48:48And I'm seeing two other guys.
00:48:51I'm shouting, watch out!
00:48:55Bam!
00:48:56Smashes him in the side of his head.
00:48:58And he goes down.
00:48:59He goes down.
00:49:00He falls down.
00:49:01Now let's kick him.
00:49:02Now let's, you know, I thought he was dead.
00:49:06And all of a sudden, boom, everybody's swimming.
00:49:15I can fight.
00:49:43I can fight.
00:49:45And if you get hit by a construction worker, you're going to know it compared to being a college student, put it out loud.
00:49:56I felt they had a beating coming.
00:49:59Keep going!
00:50:01Keep going!
00:50:01I was just standing there and, like, they were having that march of the construction workers.
00:50:26And, you know, I was just watching, like, I was, you know, giving them the V and they were giving me the finger.
00:50:33And, you know, I was just standing there and all of a sudden, wham.
00:50:38I felt something slam into my face.
00:50:40I was, like, I was on the ground.
00:50:43Like, all of a sudden, like, about four or five guys were, like, kicking me around.
00:50:47USA!
00:50:47USA!
00:50:48USA!
00:50:49USA!
00:50:49USA!
00:50:50USA!
00:50:50USA!
00:50:51USA!
00:50:51USA!
00:50:52USA!
00:50:52USA!
00:50:53USA!
00:50:54USA!
00:50:55USA!
00:50:56USA!
00:50:57USA!
00:50:58USA!
00:50:59USA!
00:51:00USA!
00:51:01USA!
00:51:02USA!
00:51:03USA!
00:51:04USA!
00:51:05USA!
00:51:06USA!
00:51:07USA!
00:51:08USA!
00:51:09USA!
00:51:10USA!
00:51:11USA!
00:51:12USA!
00:51:13USA!
00:51:14USA!
00:51:15USA!
00:51:16USA!
00:51:17USA!
00:51:18USA!
00:51:19USA!
00:51:20USA!
00:51:21USA!
00:51:22USA!
00:51:23hear me stop you stop we were filming construction workers and we were filming them on the sidewalk
00:51:36and we thought that it was going to be safe but it turned out not to be and then they put me down
00:51:41on the ground and uh kicked me and they kicked me at some point at the the base of my spine
00:51:48and from there was just you know
00:51:53it was it wasn't a conversation
00:51:59one takeaway is clear too many police did too little
00:52:06i never saw that there weren't that many arrests that day well what are you going to do when you
00:52:12handcuff a guy and everybody else is pushing you and oh you're gonna let him you can't but when you
00:52:18can you do
00:52:31the construction men left wall street and headed uptown
00:52:49the riots start spreading and there's this sudden new alliance we had people marching with the
00:52:59construction workers who were like office workers you had service workers
00:53:03i was in the middle of the pack the adrenaline was rushing it was part of a mob we were in something
00:53:12we're in the middle of the city hall we're in the middle of the city hall they may need a full
00:53:27horn at this time okay
00:53:28mayor lindsay is not at city hall as the riot escalates john lindsay was at an anti-war rally
00:53:37at foley square within blocks of city hall and instead of going into the storm he retreats uptown
00:53:44at gracie mansion in city hall the man in charge is the deputy name dick aurelio and he is the man who
00:53:51has to deal with this in john lindsay's absence
00:53:58that flag atop city hall which has been lowered and out of kent state
00:54:04with the heat of what was going on to lower the flag that was crazy it only provoked it more
00:54:10it was inside city hall the hard hats were really angry at that time everything that lindsay stood
00:54:18for and city hall stood for was anathema to them everybody was pissed off when you really get down
00:54:25to it all right you're enraged that's when the police more or less held everybody back
00:54:33and then someone said you might as well raise the flag because this is getting out of hand
00:54:38so eventually dick aurelio the deputy mayor decides to raise the flag to calm down the mob outside
00:54:47so someone goes on the roof of city hall and raises the flag
00:54:55then a young mayoral aide named sid davidoff is coming towards city hall
00:55:02huge crowd in the in the parking lot of city hall construction workers cheering
00:55:07it's kumbaya everybody's happy the cops are with them
00:55:16there's a guy in the roof of city hall and he's putting the flag back to full staff
00:55:23now i went nuts i ran across the street got into the back of city hall and get up there and we find
00:55:30it's the postman literally i threw him down the stairs there's a ladder there that i threw him down
00:55:36that hole hope he wasn't injured i went put the flag back to half mass i went to the edge of the roof
00:55:43and i gave the peace sign of course that peace sign in this moment is gasoline on a fire
00:55:49everybody at the scene was upset and then one thing led to another and then it started to be in a riot
00:55:55a whole different picture that was there five minutes ago before i did what i did
00:56:04they almost stormed city hall
00:56:09dick aurelio again does the hard decision and orders the flag again raised because they couldn't control it
00:56:17as the flag is raised again there's this college across the roadway called pace
00:56:32as they progressed in from my vantage point it was going from one class to the other to the other
00:56:37someone informed us that people should be aware and should be you know
00:56:41worried for their security we were in lab we had to finish what we were doing you're not going to walk
00:56:48away with you know reagents boiling i could hear noise all morning so i decided it was lunchtime i would
00:56:58go out and just check it out on the pace building was a bed sheet with an anti-war slogan
00:57:08and across from city hall at pace a group of students start chanting against the war
00:57:18and then at some point it just broke loose it just went crazy
00:57:26at city hall about 50 to 75 construction workers turn towards pace and charge across the roadway
00:57:33we started hearing students screaming and yelling in the hallways outside of the labs
00:57:43we decided to do the only thing we could figure out to do which was you know lock ourselves in the lab
00:57:51a bunch of construction workers attacked the students
00:57:54the students i saw one of the students knocked on the ground and was being hit and kicked and so i went
00:58:03over and said stop he's hurt and that's the last thing i remember i'd been knocked unconscious
00:58:13some point later for the seconds minutes two medics who were kneeled over me treating me
00:58:21they said we've got to get you out of here they helped me up and at that point i felt incredible fear
00:58:30that sense that i could die
00:58:37and you know you hear that you know the heavy clang of uh either a hammer or those big wire cutters that
00:58:43most of those guys carried it was pretty terrifying stuff
00:58:47that pace we were working class kids you confused because it's almost like getting beaten up by your
00:58:56big brother
00:59:03i could have been killed and the police did nothing
00:59:08the police didn't jump in because they were probably on the side of the construction workers
00:59:14the night after the hard-half riots
00:59:44it's game seven of the knicks lakers and as a sports illustrator writer later put it if there
00:59:50was harmony left in new york city it was invested in the knicks
01:00:03president i wonder if you would give us your view of the state of the american society and where it's
01:00:09heading that very night people are getting together to go to washington the very fact that the president of the united states
01:00:21asked the district commissioners to waive their rule for 30 days notice for a demonstration when
01:00:26you have that kind of safety valve you're not going to have revolution which comes from repression
01:00:30i don't think it was ever apprehensive that the the country was going to go under but we were pretty
01:00:36close to revolution we were very very close
01:00:40on this very night sleepless and tormented richard nixon gets this idea of going to lincoln memorial
01:00:50sending the secret service into a panic he had gone out like dawnish to the lincoln memorial and there it is
01:01:00nixon talks to his protesters he was seriously approaching these people and saying i i want to know you know
01:01:12i you know but on the other hand that's what i wanted to do myself
01:01:17it was a typical richard nixon move to surprise the heck out of the world by going out and meeting the
01:01:25demonstrators probably 99 of whom would like to beat him up
01:01:36president nixon heard today the voice of the campus and a massive appeal for peace now
01:01:41thousands strong and mostly young protesters against the indochina war rallied in washington ellipse
01:01:47with insight and sound of the white house there was tens of thousands probably a hundred thousand
01:01:55people who had gathered to protest the entire white house was surrounded with buses
01:02:09there was energy all the stuff that was like strong and powerful and real
01:02:25how far did you really get we went back to the hotel we had the conversation that
01:02:29you've seen in street scenes scorsese was there what's the strike all about and where the hell are
01:02:36we going and how long is it going to last what do you think about it well look it don't look like
01:02:40it's going to hold together much longer you think it's going to fold up in three days right
01:02:45do you honestly think that by cornering 40 year old people that you're really going to get them to walk
01:02:51out of the insurance office do you think you're going to get them to walk out by saying hey you
01:02:55dumb construction worker you goon the same way mr nixon and his crew his advisors can't relate to us
01:03:02and what we feel the same way we're missing something here and feeling what these people
01:03:07who don't agree with us are like what we're doing is we're making the construction workers our enemy
01:03:13instead of directing the enemy you know who the real enemy is we're making the construction workers our
01:03:18enemy
01:03:25i just felt so completely like that energy that was there when we went in to washington that souffle
01:03:37had fallen it was a familiar feeling of powerlessness
01:03:49after the riot local cbs sent out people to say who can we talk to who was there one illegal act does
01:03:59not condone another illegal act but when for every action is a reaction we were the reaction
01:04:07i'm telling you buildings are burned and that is bad people are stopped and that is bad because
01:04:13well then why why do these things why do you stop me why shouldn't i stop you why should i burn my
01:04:18building wait it's my building i paid for it we're fed up with the attitude that they can do whatever
01:04:25they want to please and we bust your heads and we're actually chastising you in our own way we're
01:04:31showing you that you can't do these things
01:04:47the construction workers marched from wall street to new york city hall there were bloody fights all
01:04:51along the way and at city hall plaza we watched that riot and i thought what we were looking at
01:05:01was the beginning of a class struggle between let's call them a university elite
01:05:09and the working class day in and day out for the next few weeks thousands of construction workers
01:05:21demonstrate daily you come off a job you're going on lunch they call you nothing but a low life
01:05:28so-and-so this provokes it this starts it
01:05:34now i never got a chance to go to college these guys have a chance and they they're about striking
01:05:3990 percent of the time
01:05:40i was virtually alone and one day a very exciting thing happened the hardhats marched in new york city
01:05:58a man by the name of chuck colson joined the white house staff
01:06:03i guess a couple of weeks after the uh so-called hardhat riot i wrote a memo to chuck and i started
01:06:12out by saying words to the effective great job organizing that activity up there with the
01:06:18construction workers but i was only kidding him and then i went on to say this this may be an
01:06:25opportunity because these these are really our people and these are the president's people
01:06:40peter brennan became city and state president of the building church and he was a strong supporter
01:06:47of you know the labor movements and the veterans within it
01:06:55very quickly peter brennan stepped in and effectively endorsed the idea that you know
01:07:06construction workers and blue collar workers should mobilize against these anti-war protesters
01:07:11just like they had a rally with thousands of people we had a rally with 150 000 people
01:07:29every trade was down there it was the biggest demonstration i want to see
01:07:34they were for the most part bricklayers and iron workers printers and plumbers longshoremen and
01:07:41steamfitters many of them veterans what are beautiful things happening here flags all around
01:07:48and new york city coming to an area to say thank you to the men and women in the vietnam era nobody
01:07:57ever said thank you to them we take what they call a rag and look at it this symbol this flag
01:08:05if you read the history of our country is more than just a piece of cloth men died for it
01:08:11the men have made our country that day it was a very important part of my uh my life very important
01:08:25part of my life and i always think of pete brennan who was a democrat putting that together at least two
01:08:32points were made today that supporters of u.s foreign policy could organize a mass demonstration
01:08:38and that the term silent majority is rapidly being lost in the din of the counter-protest
01:08:44at the bottom of this country everybody gets together and stands behind the president
01:08:49this is what the republican party really ought to be we should no longer just be kind of the elite
01:08:55group of business oriented political people that was a great feeling it's like
01:09:03the common worker is respecting you you made the headlines that day
01:09:14several leaders of the construction workers union talked to the president today
01:09:19and said they would continue their street demonstrations in support of him and the war
01:09:25i think the president really enjoyed that and i think it was one of his best days
01:09:29they presented the president a hard hat which has become a symbol of both violent and peaceful acts
01:09:36by construction men in new york mr nixon told the 22 union leaders that peaceful support to him was
01:09:42very meaningful the other people in the white house might have opposed this have been shocked by this
01:09:48but i know the people like chuck colson and myself thought this was really neat and
01:09:54uh maybe that was the beginning of a change in the republican party richard nixon will seize the breach
01:10:02and shift the republican party from blue bloods to blue collars i know from the experience over the past
01:10:09three years that when the chips are down organized labor is for america and that's why i'm here before this convention today
01:10:16when i was a kid it was pretty commonly known the democratic party supported labor supported the
01:10:26working man whether he was union or not supported social programs and little by little over the
01:10:33years in my opinion they drifted away from that there was a meeting of people like haldeman and buchanan
01:10:41and and chuck colson and the president talking about kind of a blue collar strategy some of the
01:10:48quotes from nixon were things like the construction workers are the people with guts and nixon said we
01:10:56don't have anybody on this staff whose working class background would indicate that he can at least
01:11:02talk to them well it's never going to be a republican said i don't care
01:11:06two or three days later an article appeared about a former garbage man who got a doctor's degree from
01:11:14georgetown they wrote me a letter and said nixon wants you to work in this white house and we want
01:11:22you to be the working class liaison with the country when i first met richard nixon i said look i i voted
01:11:32against you twice okay they said well you didn't know me i don't want people to change parties i want
01:11:39them to support me because of the policies that i'm pursuing
01:11:46as the 1972 election gets underway richard nixon doesn't know who he's going to face the great
01:11:52political conventions of 1972 were both held in miami beach this year the 1972 democratic delegates
01:11:59were diverse by race they were diverse by sex they were not diverse by class and on the new left
01:12:05there is a shift also going on from social class to social identity you know the working man saw the
01:12:13democrat party as an elite party and giving up to the average worker
01:12:21an afl-cio leader looks around the convention a political leader and says we're not going to be
01:12:27taken over by these harvard and berkeley camelots but of course they can't stop them i accept your
01:12:33nomination with a full and grateful heart in 1972 when george the govern was nominated
01:12:43the nixon machine was was getting pretty well oiled by then i again proudly accept your nomination for
01:12:50president of the united states and then you know the phrase was peace with honor
01:13:05then the war continued and american lives were
01:13:10we're lost
01:13:18not to mention all the people who lost their limbs still i guess it still upsets me
01:13:34i'm going to have to think about this war that nixon has continued another four years
01:13:42probably continue another four if he gets elected the question you see is not ending a war the question
01:13:51is ending a war in a way that you discourage those who will start another war and therefore have a
01:13:57generation of peace for americans and that is what we are doing he felt he did did the right thing all
01:14:04right supporting the troops supporting the construction trades all over the united states
01:14:12republicans can be friends to labor that republicans can do the right thing for labor and although most
01:14:18of the people here including myself have been registered democrats all our life we find that we
01:14:24support the candidate as a man and what he will do for labor rather than the party labels i believe in
01:14:30the american dream because we've seen it come true in our own lives richard nixon would ultimately
01:14:37write a culturally populist playbook that would guide republican candidates for more than a half century after
01:14:46i ended up voting for nixon it's just a sense at the time that things were turning
01:14:54the right thing to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do to do
01:15:01richard nixon would win a landslide equal to fdr and he would do that with fdr's working man
01:15:10i've never known a national election when i would be able to go to bed earlier than tonight
01:15:15nixon was committed to building a new majority by appointing democrats to high-ranking positions
01:15:27president nixon has asked me to announce today his intention to nominate peter brennan
01:15:31for the cabinet position of secretary of labor people in the white house ring them up peter brennan
01:15:38because of his these damn mendoza he carried a gun i mean yeah this is what the president wants
01:15:47we have different men in the cabinet we had a lot of snobs on the cabinet
01:15:52well i don't intend to get uptight i'm as damn good as anybody on this cabinet or any cabinet
01:15:58pete brennan never sells out on anything he fights for what he believes all the way down the line
01:16:03brennan's appointment is part of president nixon's strategy to make union members who voted republican
01:16:14in the last election a permanent part of a new republican majority but brennan's views on many
01:16:20labor issues conflict with those of the administration and will make cooperation difficult
01:16:26we're here as americans we're here even though we disagree with many things that may be said by
01:16:34others we're the fellows who build this country we're the fellows who build the hospitals when they
01:16:39need them when they're sick we build the bridges and tunnels for them to get around in we build the
01:16:44schools that they want to burn down and we also build all of the other things in this country
01:16:49you know at the time of the high heart riots construction was one of the most heavily unionized
01:16:59industries in the entire united states and also in new york city it was a bastion of labor unionism
01:17:05what no one realized at the time was that was on the edge of a cliff
01:17:19the world trade center rises as new york city is sinking as soon as you're born
01:17:28they make you feel small and at the core of that decline is blue-collar new york by giving you no
01:17:35time instead of it all the 70s were kind of bad you know for construction till the pain is so big you
01:17:43feel nothing at all we had 1300 members and only 650 were working a working class hero is something
01:17:52to be you didn't even do construction i mean i did other things to support my family a working
01:17:59class hero is something to be construction workers would never earn again what they earned in 1973
01:18:05they hurt you at home and they hit you at school and the average working man would 45 years later
01:18:12also not be earning more they hate you if you're clever and they despise the food wages did not rise
01:18:19with the explosion of corporate wealth so crazy you can't follow their rules corporate america's been
01:18:27trying to destroy us uh you know since really the beginning of things a working class hero is
01:18:32something to be only elites have all the money and they don't want to share it with nobody a working
01:18:38class hero is something to be it's not gonna be good for the working class today if you want to be a
01:18:46hero well just follow me after this job is over maybe uh 15 years from now i'll i'll bring my children
01:18:56back here my three sons and i'll show them what we built here
01:19:03the united states conceived of a new kind of world economy
01:19:08and the world trade center ended up being the manifestation of the command and finance center
01:19:15of a new american century you know this is going to be the world's tallest building
01:19:22the world trade center which in its name becomes an icon of free trade
01:19:26is built by the very class of people that will in time be decimated by globalization and free trade
01:19:37these men built an america that will leave them behind
01:19:46but see this is what nixon saw they were performing a function that was essential to
01:19:53the survival of a society they wrapped themselves in that flag because that flag was the whole history
01:19:59of their country wrapped up it's a different culture and the culture is you defend the things you love
01:20:17Verf tro 없습니다 the culture of the world ihr acha creepet the story from our country
01:20:39american experience hardhat riot is available with pbs passport and on amazon prime video
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