Harvey Richards

Women for Peace covers the founding of the organization and many of the first peace demonstrations that it sponsored. With narration by Frances Herring, a founder of Women for Peace, the film covers 1961 and 1962 anti-nuclear demonstrations in California and Nevada, and many other activities undertaken by the group. In San Francisco, on August 6, 1962, Harvey Richards photographed the Women for Peace march to commemorate the anniversary of the U.S....

Wasted Woods shows destructive forestry practices used on the west coast during the 1950's and 1960's. Focusing on clear cutting and the immense machinery that cut and processed the giant redwoods, the film reveals the rapid deterioration of the forest ecology and the disappearance of towns and businesses, along with the forests, in large areas of the west coast. The west coast witnessed the last gasp of the giant mills as they denuded much of the...

Freedom Bound tells the story of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee's voter registration campaign in Mississippi in 1963. Amzie Moore, an NAACP leader in Cleveland, Mississippi, led Richards through the Mississippi delta voter registration campaign, setting up interviews with share croppers, student activists, students and others in the struggle for freedom and the right to vote. Freedom Bound contains unique footage of share croppers...

Decision in the Streets shows the tumultuous beginnings of the Bay Area civil rights and peace protest movement from 1960 to 1965. Street demonstrations in the Bay Area during the first half of the 1960's grew out of the peace movement and the support for the southern civil rights fight against legal racial segregation. Since there was no legal (only de facto) racial segregation in the Bay Area, the fight against racial discrimination focused on corporate...

Factory Farms tells the unique story of California agriculture, a highly capitalized, sophisticated industry with substandard wage rates that keep its workers in poverty and destitution. The film documents 1959 labor conditions for farm workers, including the bracero system of contract labor from Mexico, and reviews the history of union organizing in California agriculture. The film was produced for the United Packinghouse Workers Association. Working...

The Land Is Rich documents the United Farm Workers struggle to organize California farm workers in the early 1960's. It includes their march from Delano to Sacramento in the spring of 1966. The film contrasts the economic strength of California agribusiness with the migrant workers' poverty shown in bread lines, living conditions and the impact of extensive exposure to agricultural chemicals. Richards filmed the United Farm Workers march to Sacramento...

Timber Tigers resulted from a national tour of forest areas that Richards made in 1970-71. The film contains footage of seldom seen giant forest-cutting machinery that harvested and hauled trees of all sizes across the country. The film exposes the forestry industry's approach to logging: After us, the deluge and the desert. Deforestation results from corporate logging practices we know as clear cutting. Approaching the environment as an input to...

Everyman is the name of a boat built in Sausalito by Bay Area peace movement activists to sail into Pacific Ocean nuclear test zones to protest nuclear testing. The film covers the building of the boat and Everyman's first and only voyage on May 27, 1962 when it sailed out the Golden Gate only to be stopped twenty miles out by the U.S. Coast Guard who arrested the crew and impounded the boat. The film also shows the protests that followed the seizure...

Perch of the Devil is about the hard rock miners of Butte, Montana, and the strike of copper miners in 1959. The film reviews the history of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local Union No. 1 and the many violent struggles that have happened in the mining camps of the western Rockies. There are interviews with miners, and with victims of silicosis, a fatal lung disease among miners. The film also contains footage of mining operations in tunnels...

Hot Damn! contains footage of the 1965 Bay Area peace movement at a time when the Vietnam War was escalating rapidly. Segments include the Berkeley, California, troop train demonstrations; the Committee for Non Violent Action (CNVA) peace protest at the Oakland Army Base; the October 15-16, 1965 International Days of Protest peace marches from Berkeley to Oakland by the Vietnam Day Committee, ending in massive confrontation with local police at the...