July 2015
7/5/2015 Concert: David Rovics, Joe Hill Commemoration Concert, opening LaborFest 2015 at ILWU Local 34 Hall in San Francisco. On July 5, 1934, two longshore strike supporters were gunned down by police, igniting the 1934 San Francisco general strike. LaborFest is an annual working class cultural, music and film festival. www.laborfest.net
7/15/2015: Film: “The Ballad of Joe Hill”(1971, Sweden) by Bo Widerberg. San Francisco. FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival. Wednesday, July 15, 7:00 p.m. Free. ILWU Local 34 Hall, 801 2nd St. next to AT&T Ball Park. Parking available at the union hall parking lot. The entrance is at the corner of King St. and 2nd, right next to the ball park.
This dramatic film tells Joe Hill’s story as an immigrant coming to the United States. This rarely seen Academy Award-nominated film is about an ingenious immigrant labor organizer who is framed on a murder charge in a highly sensationalized trial with little evidence. Despite worldwide appeals, Hill is martyred by a Utah firing squad after one of the most controversial capital punishment trials of the 20th Century. Today, on the hundredth anniversary of his death, the state of Utah has reinstituted the firing squad. Despite the bullets that ended his life, his legacy, humor, principles and solidarity with workers of the world live on.