The New Yorker:

After a screening of “Drop Dead City,” a new documentary on N.Y.C.’s 1975 fiscal crisis, a crew of old union stalwarts—sanitation workers, Bernie Sanders’s art teacher—reminisced about saving the city from bankruptcy.

By Zach Helfand

The year 1975: “ford to city: drop dead.” Also 1975: city does not drop dead. Everyone alive during New York’s fiscal crisis remembers the Daily News headline. Few people remember the saviors, who included the governor Hugh Carey, the investment banker Felix Rohatyn, and a bunch of union leaders whose uprisings kept the government from gutting essential services. Teachers risked their pensions to buy up the city’s distressed bonds, thereby avoiding a bankruptcy by minutes. The other day, a few union stalwarts, octogenarians and nonagenarians, gathered at the Downtown Community Television Center, a theatre in an old firehouse. They were attending a private screening of “Drop Dead City,” a documentary that recounts the city’s near-collapse. Three of them—John Soldini and Millie Glaberman (teachers) and Anthony Lofaso (sanitation)—starred in the film, which was co-directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn, Felix’s son. The movie came on. When the head of the sanitation workers’ union appeared, Lofaso clapped. When the charismatic teachers’-union head, Albert Shanker, authorized a strike, Soldini and Glaberman cheered and giggled. Afterward, Yost announced that there would be drinks nearby. Soldini shouted, “Who’s buying?”

The group ambled to a speakeasy—orange lights, a wall of old speakers. Rohatyn made a toast: “To New York City, our beloved town. Past, present, and future. Thank you all for everything you’ve already given to our beautiful city.” The onscreen stars were jubilant. They shared labor war stories and grumbled about Elon Musk.

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