Chris Knipp
10-03-2025, 11:12 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20viet.jpg
MARC LEVIN: HARD HAT RIOT (2025)
How a riot over Vietnam war opposition in New York May 8, 1970 redefined class and culture wars
In New York in May 1970 the way the anti-Vietnam war movement aroused class conflict showed vividly when "hard hat" construction workers, many employed on the building of the World Trade Center, turned out en masse starting down at Wall Street to show they did not agree with the student anti-war demonstrators. The left's use of vulgarity and defamation of the American flag had long been offending working class people whose traditions told them support for US war efforts was the American way. It all came to a head in what was called a massive "hard hat riot" May 8. This Marc Levin's PBS-aired film is a time capsule of this day, which was a moment when it looked like revolution or civil war drawn along both social and political lines might be afoot in this country.
A NYTimes historical piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html) from 2020 describes how "Pummeling anyone in their way, the workers kicked and beat demonstrators, battering them with their hard hats." It goes on: "News cameras shakily recorded the workers as they stormed the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street. One of the workers, upon reaching the top, delivered a vicious right hook to a demonstrator, dropping him to his knees, just below the statue of George Washington" (see photo above).
This is the subject of Mac Levin's new documentary film. The doc provides surprisingly vivid footage of this event. There is nothing original about the style: it's all talking heads and historic footage . But at a moment when the country seems split down the middle on political lines, this is an eighty-minute educational film with context some will find relevant and enlightening. Levin provides us with a snapshot of both the national moment and the turbulent state of a New York City being run by a charismatic and glamorous but polarizing Mayor John Lindsay. We are reminded that Lindsay had a white patrician air and declared himself firmly on the side of the anti-war movement, thus by implication opposed to or out of touch with the working class hard hat construction worker class that saw college students as an unpatriotic elite. On that day in May 1970 Lindsay was participating in an anti-war demonstration at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan when the bigger conflict broke out further downtown. The New York mayor's response to the massive disorder was unfortunate: he retreated to Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence, leaving the assistant mayor (whom we hear from) to deal with the problem.
Perhaps the most interesting riot footage shot by then NYU students of film material for Mmartin Scorsese's 1970 film Street Scenes, shot by then-NYU students including Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, and Jay Cocks. Talking heads gathered to recall and comment include former students, workers, political aides, and historians, who sometimes offer detailed and specific recollections of May 8 events.
All this picture is in the wake of the dramatic events of 1968, when the assassinations of Martin Luther King and then Democratic presidential forerunner Robert Kennedy created a sense of general disorder in the country and opposition to the Vietnam war was fermenting. After the NYC hard hat riot President Nixon seized the opportunity to work on a "blue collar strategy" to shift white working-class voters to a "New Majority." but he appears as a peacemaker in the context of the current US President Trump, who seems bent on fomenting disorder and fear at every opportunity at present. However, the mood as more openly conflictual in 1970 because of the widespread anti-war demonstrations.
Earlier in the week Mayor John Lindsay had declared that the country might be "on the verge of a spiritual - and perhaps even physical - breakdown." Lindsay’s remark came two days after Ohio National Guardsmen killed four peacefully demonstrating Kent State University students - briefly covered here, six days after President Richard M. Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia and five years after the deployment of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, where some 50,000 Americans had already been killed, with no end in sight. At home (not stressed here), there were racial uprisings in cities like Newark and Detroit, students occupied universities, starting with Columbia in New York. Not mentioned here, women protested the Miss America pageant, and gay people fought a key battle with police at the Stonewall Inn. It was a time of turmoil whose pivot point was Nixon's stepping up of US involvement in Vietnam. That enabled Nixon to harness blue collar support for a landslide victory in 1972, when meanwhile the working class was getting pushed out of an increasingly elite-class New York city. This film neatly outlines all these political and social developments.
The documentary is based on David Paul Kuhn’s book, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. Kuhn also serves as co-producer.
Hard Hat Riot. 80 mins., airs on PBS (check local listings), and will stream on PBS.org, and PBS Documentaries on Prime Video September 30, 2025.
MARC LEVIN: HARD HAT RIOT (2025)
How a riot over Vietnam war opposition in New York May 8, 1970 redefined class and culture wars
In New York in May 1970 the way the anti-Vietnam war movement aroused class conflict showed vividly when "hard hat" construction workers, many employed on the building of the World Trade Center, turned out en masse starting down at Wall Street to show they did not agree with the student anti-war demonstrators. The left's use of vulgarity and defamation of the American flag had long been offending working class people whose traditions told them support for US war efforts was the American way. It all came to a head in what was called a massive "hard hat riot" May 8. This Marc Levin's PBS-aired film is a time capsule of this day, which was a moment when it looked like revolution or civil war drawn along both social and political lines might be afoot in this country.
A NYTimes historical piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html) from 2020 describes how "Pummeling anyone in their way, the workers kicked and beat demonstrators, battering them with their hard hats." It goes on: "News cameras shakily recorded the workers as they stormed the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street. One of the workers, upon reaching the top, delivered a vicious right hook to a demonstrator, dropping him to his knees, just below the statue of George Washington" (see photo above).
This is the subject of Mac Levin's new documentary film. The doc provides surprisingly vivid footage of this event. There is nothing original about the style: it's all talking heads and historic footage . But at a moment when the country seems split down the middle on political lines, this is an eighty-minute educational film with context some will find relevant and enlightening. Levin provides us with a snapshot of both the national moment and the turbulent state of a New York City being run by a charismatic and glamorous but polarizing Mayor John Lindsay. We are reminded that Lindsay had a white patrician air and declared himself firmly on the side of the anti-war movement, thus by implication opposed to or out of touch with the working class hard hat construction worker class that saw college students as an unpatriotic elite. On that day in May 1970 Lindsay was participating in an anti-war demonstration at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan when the bigger conflict broke out further downtown. The New York mayor's response to the massive disorder was unfortunate: he retreated to Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence, leaving the assistant mayor (whom we hear from) to deal with the problem.
Perhaps the most interesting riot footage shot by then NYU students of film material for Mmartin Scorsese's 1970 film Street Scenes, shot by then-NYU students including Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, and Jay Cocks. Talking heads gathered to recall and comment include former students, workers, political aides, and historians, who sometimes offer detailed and specific recollections of May 8 events.
All this picture is in the wake of the dramatic events of 1968, when the assassinations of Martin Luther King and then Democratic presidential forerunner Robert Kennedy created a sense of general disorder in the country and opposition to the Vietnam war was fermenting. After the NYC hard hat riot President Nixon seized the opportunity to work on a "blue collar strategy" to shift white working-class voters to a "New Majority." but he appears as a peacemaker in the context of the current US President Trump, who seems bent on fomenting disorder and fear at every opportunity at present. However, the mood as more openly conflictual in 1970 because of the widespread anti-war demonstrations.
Earlier in the week Mayor John Lindsay had declared that the country might be "on the verge of a spiritual - and perhaps even physical - breakdown." Lindsay’s remark came two days after Ohio National Guardsmen killed four peacefully demonstrating Kent State University students - briefly covered here, six days after President Richard M. Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia and five years after the deployment of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, where some 50,000 Americans had already been killed, with no end in sight. At home (not stressed here), there were racial uprisings in cities like Newark and Detroit, students occupied universities, starting with Columbia in New York. Not mentioned here, women protested the Miss America pageant, and gay people fought a key battle with police at the Stonewall Inn. It was a time of turmoil whose pivot point was Nixon's stepping up of US involvement in Vietnam. That enabled Nixon to harness blue collar support for a landslide victory in 1972, when meanwhile the working class was getting pushed out of an increasingly elite-class New York city. This film neatly outlines all these political and social developments.
The documentary is based on David Paul Kuhn’s book, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. Kuhn also serves as co-producer.
Hard Hat Riot. 80 mins., airs on PBS (check local listings), and will stream on PBS.org, and PBS Documentaries on Prime Video September 30, 2025.