Pilot for limited series

 Based on true events

When the lives and ambitions of union leader John Lawson and the heir to America’s richest fortune, John D Rockefeller Jr converge at a speck on the map called Ludlow, Colorado – a day-long massacre of coalmining families leaves blood on the plains – and triggers an armed revolt across several states that needs Presidential intervention to stop a civil war.

SYNOPSIS:

STRIKE! The Rockefeller Wars

6 x 1 hour episodes

SERIES LOGLINE: The lives of charismatic union leader John Lawson and the heir to America’s richest fortune, John D Rockefeller Jr, converge at a speck on the map called Ludlow – where a massacre of innocents triggers a violent armed revolt by coalminers across several states and brings America to the brink of civil war.

CONCEPT: In Colorado, in the first decade of the 20th Century, a coal miner dies every day. From foul dust clogging their lungs. Roof cave-ins. Gas explosions deep underground.

This was a gig economy. If you see and hear echoes of that right now, over immigration perhaps, or racism or jobs, that’s because their conflict is eternal. Change what they wear then, and you have today’s headlines.

Mine owners hired coal miners by the thousand from wooden plough economies to create fuel for the steel-making furnaces that built industrial America. Convinced the babel of immigrant tongues made unionization impossible

The story begins with a strike at Rockefeller-owned coal mines. Eight thousand miners are evicted the next day and harassed for months in a tent colony they set up at Ludlow, an isolated rail stop where the prairies of southern Colorado meet the Rockies.

Then, over one day, militia massacred innocent families. Response: a violent state-wide revolt. Fifty dead. Two towns in ashes. Only the U. S. President could stop it.

TONE:

Our way in is through the stories of union leader John Lawson and John Rockefeller Jr, polar opposites destined to meet in a conflict that defines their lives and the lives of millions.

For coal miners on strike, life is shivering in a canvas tent in brittle cold, surrounded by four feet of snow at Christmas and the harsh winter wind coming off the Rockies.

For John Rockefeller Jr, life is a gilded lion in a 40-room mansion overlooking the Hudson River—heir to the world’s richest fortune, America's closest thing to a royal family.

This is not a political polemic. We see both sides; intense individual portraits, private lives, and intimate insights into heroism, bravery, cruelty, murder, community, love and compassion. Aware that no one wins without acknowledging humanity in the other.

CHARACTERS: John Lawson, At 42 and six-foot-three, Lawson is a big man with the shoulders of the boxer he’d once been. Starting work in a coal mine aged eight for fifty cents a day. As a union organizer, his house was dynamited, and he was shot in a barbershop. Somehow he’s become an articulate, determined leader who meets Rockefeller Jr. face to face twice: in futile negotiations and at gunpoint. During this story, Lawson will negotiate before Congress, lead a strike, organize an armed revolt, get jailed for life by a corrupt jury and freed by the Supreme Court.

Jo Becker vibrant and suddenly widowed when her husband is killed in a mine accident. With a will of steel, she assumes a leadership role with Lawson. Armed with a degree in mine management, knowledge she uses when least expected.

Louis Tikas, Greek-born translator, travelled to America in search of the citizenship dream. His story arc includes his attempt to talk a married trade union nurse into an affair. It ends with his murder carrying a white flag of negotiation. His funeral is dramatic and massive.

Pearl Jolly, a Red Cross nurse. During the massacre, a bullet removes the heel of her shoe. A close friend of Louis Tikas, brushing off suggestions it puts her marriage at risk. Her evidence at a U.S. Congressional Inquiry is calm, detailed and startling.

John D Rockefeller Jr. Complex, often tense, the dutiful, obedient son who grew up without school friends in surprising austerity. His quest is for redemption, to change the image of his family as hated thieves and despots without ever repudiating the father he reveres.

It doesn’t stop him from endorsing the brutal methods of his coal mine operators.

Forced to give evidence twice to Congress, grilled in the witness box for two full days, and sufficiently arrogant to refuse President Woodrow Wilson's order to mediate.

A Sunday school teacher of sorts, Rockefeller creates the first full-scale public relations campaign in U.S. history – to soften his image. It works.

John Rockefeller Sr. is not quite the role model for JR in Dallas; his conversations reveal his character: buccaneer, robber baron, and a titan who once tried to monopolize the world’s oil supply. The world’s first billionaire is regarded by many as monstrous, evil and cruel and sleeps with a loaded pistol by his bed.

LaMont Bowers. Fastidious in how he dresses, Bowers is the Chief Executive of Colorado Fuel and Iron, the coal company. He is old school, an implacable enemy of miners and unions. Admired for his toxic managerial skills, and despite efforts to maintain a dignified front, his personal life is in disarray.

Karl ‘Monte’ Linderfelt, the true villain of this story. A foul-mouthed, psychotic and racist veteran of military campaigns in Mexico and the Philippines. Drives the ‘Death Special’ armored car. Develops an obsession with Louis Tikas and eventually murders him.

Linderfelt triggers the massacre. Despite the evidence, a handpicked jury finds him innocent.

PILOT:

Beginning with a mine explosion that kills Lawson’s best friend, we follow the fearful and determined preparations for the defining industrial dispute of the century. Lawson overcomes his first major challenge with a brutal response when Rockefeller-owned trains refused to transport tents for the thousands of families headed for the prairies. The revelation of the ‘Death Special’ armoured car given to the mysterious and murderous Karl Linderfelt by LaMont Bowers, under instruction from Rockefeller Sr, to do whatever it takes to get control.

Then the exodus, Biblical-like in streaming rain, of impoverished miners in wagons from the company towns - with standoffs and conflict.

SERIES:

We’ll build the sense of impending doom in the miners' tent colony. The threats, beatings, everyday life, the running down of a huge women’s march by armed soldiers wielding swords, the arrests and speeches of Mother Jones, politics and incendiary Congressional hearings all the way to episode 4.

The day-long massacre occurs. Including an insane looting rampage by Linderfelt’s men through the smouldering ruins. And the funerals.

Episode 5 and 6 reveals the ten-day war that follows. How the miners are donated arms by the thousand from groups ranging from East Coast Italians to California activists. Nearly 50 people die as miners attack mines with explosives, shooting and killing - until President Wilson ordered in neutral federal troops. The Rockefellers take refuge inside fortress Kykuit, under siege from the courts, the White House, and reporters. In New York, radicals are killed, making a bomb to destroy their home.

We round it off with John Lawson, jailed on false charges of murder and freed by the Supreme Court. And with John Rockefeller Jr creating what effectively became the PR industry in the USA, going to a mine, eating beans, saying that is what he was brought up on, and for the cameras dancing the waltz with miners' wives. Series closing credits can show that since then, the Rockefeller family has donated close to $1 Billion to charities worldwide.