Brenda Brkusic, Jack Baric and Chris Burke Accepting the 2009 Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for "Bloody Thursday."
Bloody Thursday is a one hour PBS documentary that tells the story of how West Coast dockworkers overcame huge obstacles to form their union, the ILWU. Set in the midst of the Great Depression, the film shows how longshoremen were fighting for their rights at the same time that most of their families weren’t sure where their next meal would come from. The odds were stacked against the longshoremen. Mainstream newspaper publishers, fearful of unionization efforts at their own papers, launched brutal attacks against the dockworkers and drove public sympathy against them. In addition, politicians and the police openly used their resources to side with the shipping companies against the striking dockworkers. Bloody Thursday tells the human stories of the dockworkers who stood up against these odds and changed the course of American labor history.