Premieres Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream with KPBS+
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.
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"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.
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ABOUT THE MAJOR PARTICIPANTS:
- BILLY ABBATE (pronounced abbot) was a steamfitter in NYC’s local 638 who participated in the clashes of may 1970.
- MICHAEL BALZANO was a garbage collector before earning a PHD at Georgetown University. He was selected by President Richard Nixon as a liaison to blue-collar, working-class communities.
- MICHAEL BELKNAP worked for the downtown law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. On may 8, he took his lunch break to see what was causing the commotion and was beaten by a group of hardhats.
- HARRY BOLLES was a student at NYU film school in 1970. he and his fellow students were filming a group of construction workers when some of them confronted them, and Bolles was beaten.
- STEPHEN BULL was an aide to president Richard Nixon.
- SID DAVIDOFF was an aide to New York City Mayor John Lindsay.
- RONNIE ELDRIDGE was an aide to New York City Mayor John Lindsay.
- JOSHUA B. FREEMAN is Professor of History (emeritus), Queens College and the Graduate Center, Cuny, and author of "Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War I."
- DAVID FRIEDMAN was a student who was beaten at the riot.
- DAVID PAUL KUHN is the author of "The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution."
- GARY LABARBERA is a New York labor leader and the President of the NYC Building and Construction Trades Council.
- JAMES LAPHAM was a 27-year-old electrician when he led a midtown workers’ rally during the outpouring of blue-collar activism in May 1970.
- RAY MELVILLE was a lather who served in the Vietnam War.
- DENNIS MILTON was an ironworker at a building site near City Hall.
- DAN ROSSI was a sheet metal worker and Marine who served in Vietnam.
- WILLIAM W. SALES JR. was a student activist at Columbia University in 1968 and one of the Black students who occupied Hamilton Hall.
- NANCY SEIFER was a liaison to working class communities for Mayor Lindsay.
- David Sederholt was a freshman at Pace University when the riot broke out.
- JIM VERMEULEN was a police officer on an NYPD Special Events Squad, which was trained in crowd control. He was in the middle of the action when the construction workers attacked the students.
Filmmaker Quote: “What makes this film unique is how, by allowing both the students and the construction workers to explain their feelings and motivations, 55 years later and without judgment, we come to understand both sides,” said AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Executive Producer Cameo George. “And, as this incredibly powerful film shows, this was not just an early flashpoint in the culture wars that are so familiar to us now, but actually a tipping point in American politics, when the formerly solidly democratic working class began to be wooed and won over by the Republican party.”
CREDITS: Produced and written by Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, produced by Mikaela Beardsley and Cary Woods, co-produced by David Paul Kuhn, and executive produced by Cameo George.
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