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A Film of Fightback: Lessons for Today's Economic Crisis This classic documentary recaptures the 1968 struggle for economic justice among Memphis' sanitation workers, who earned so little they qualified for welfare. In the film, retired workers recall their fear as they challenged the white power structure when they went on strike for higher wages and union recognition. The Black community mobilized behind the strikers, organizing mass demonstrations and an Easter boycott of downtown businesses. In March of 1968, Martin Luther King traveled to Memphis as part of his "Poor People\'s Campaign" to expand the civil rights agenda to include economic justice. King planned to march again on April 8, 1968, but was assassinated four days earlier. A nonviolent march was held nonetheless, leading to the city council granting most of the strikers' demands. At the River I Stand was described in the Dallas Observer as "one of the most clearheaded, evenhanded documentaries about the civil rights movement you'll ever see, and a piece of gripping storytelling as well."
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