Laborfest: Film: Ludlow, CO Coal War

Ludlow and Greek Americans in the Colorado Coal War(71 min.) (2016) (Brazil)
Producer: Frosso Tsouka, Director: Leonidas Vardaros

The racist war on immigrants in the US has a long history and this film tells the story of Greek Americans and other immigrants who came to work in the mines of Colorado. This film shows the conditions that these miners and their children worked under and how immigrant workers were terrorized and exploited.

This story is not only about their conditions but also how they fought back despite major obstacles, including organizing themselves to form a union and stand up to the goliath capitalist John D. Rockefeller.

The Colorado Ludlow massacre of 1914, which killed 26 at a workers camp, was a coordinated effort by Rockefeller and the politicians he controlled to use the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards to murder and destroy their fight for a union. This massacre of mine workers and their families was called by labor historian Howard Zinn “the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history.” It is a hidden part of our history today as workers fight for human and labor rights.

Film maker Frosso Tsouka and San Francisco State professor Zeese Papanikolas will take questions after the film. Professor Papanikolas is author of Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. This book helped encourage filmmakers from the U.S. and Greece to focus on this important American story.
See also: http://www.laborfest.net/2017/2017schedule.htm
http://www.laborfest.net/2017/2017Films.htm
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0889531/?ref_=tt_ov_dr#writer Leonidas Vardaros
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm8271162/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 Frosso Tsouka
http://zeesepapanikolas.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Tikas