Bisbee '17

Bisbee, Arizona, queen of the western copper camps, 1917. The protagonists in a bitter strike: the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, the toughest union in the history of the West; & Harry Wheeler, the last of the two-gun sheriffs. In this class-war western, they face each other down in the streets of Bisbee, pitting a general strike against the largest posse ever assembled. Based on a true story, Bisbee '17 vividly re-creates a West of miners & copper magnates, bindlestiffs & scissorbills, army officers, private detectives & determined revolutionaries. Against this backdrop runs the story of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, strike organizer from the East, caught between the worlds of her ex-husband—the Bisbee strike leader—& her new lover, an Italian anarchist from New York. As the tumultuous weeks of the strike unfold, she struggles to sort out what she really feels about both of them & about the West itself.