Filmmaker Sheds Light on "Valiant," Greek-Born Hero of the Ludlow Massacre

[Omaha Steve]

X post in Socialist-Progressive

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26859-interview-with-lambrini-thoma

Friday, 17 October 2014 10:40
By Vassiliki Siouti, Truthout | Interview / News Analysis



Victims of Ludlow Massacre - April 20, 1914. (Photo: srose15)

In their film, Palikari - Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, director Nikos Ventouras and producer Lamprini Thoma chart the story of the great 1913-1914 coal miners' strike and Louis Tikas's murder, as it survives in oral and family traditions, as well as in official history.

They interview historians and artists, some of them direct descendants of those striking miners. Labor movement emblem Mother Jones and industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. also make cameo appearances in this production of memory, struggle and deliverance. Tikas' story can but reverberate in our time, in view of what is happening with the rights of workers and immigrants around the world.

At a time when Greece has neither heroes nor a labor movement, two passionate Greeks, journalist, radio producer, script writer and filmmaker Lambrini Thoma and director Nick Ventouras, crossed the Atlantic in an attempt to trace the life and the untimely but heroic death of Louis Tikas, a legendary figure of the American labor movement in the early 20th century.

His story is largely unknown to the general public in Greece today, or to that of the United States. Louis Tikas was an immigrant who left Greece in 1906 in search of a better life in the United States, but ended up becoming a leader of the striking coal mine workers of Colorado in 1913 and eventually one of the true heroes of the American labor movement, indeed a legend, when he was brutally and cowardly killed in the Ludlow massacre, by having his skull cracked opened while he was being held prisoner.

FULL story at link.

The Ludlow Memorial from my journal: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024849539