Film : Bisbee ’17 (119 min.)

Directed by Robert Greene (2018)

The hidden history of the American working class is exposed in this new film Bisbee ’17 by Robert Green. This film is centered around the attack on immigrant copper miners, who in July 12, 1917, were rounded up and illegally deported out of the town by placing them in cattle cars. The train eventually ended up in New Mexico where the miners were later incarcerated by the US military. The Mexican and European workers had been organized by the IWW in the midst of the 1st world war when the price of copper was skyrocketing. The mine companies also used a group called the ‘loyalty leaguers’ to charge that the miners had actually been infiltrated by the Germans who the US was at war with. The film interviews members of families in the town and even residents whose families later returned to the town.

Today as immigrant bashing is the new “normal” and the organized terrorism against Mexican workers and their families and children is now government policy, this film resonates that racism, ethnic cleansing and immigrant bashing goes back over a hundred years ago.