Join OHNY for a screening of Drop Dead City, a documentary about a critical moment in New York’s history, that still resonates today.

On September 8, join Open House New York for a screening of Drop Dead City, a documentary about a critical moment in New York’s history that prompts questions of civic governance and shared commitment to a better society that strongly resonate fifty years later.

New York City, 1975: the city is on the brink of bankruptcy. A nationwide recession, combined with white flight and a declining tax base, abruptly reveals the city’s enormous budget deficit and years of financial mismanagement. Without funds to pay city workers, Mayor Abraham Beame imposes unprecedented service cuts leading to strikes, protests, and disorder and his appeal for federal aid is notoriously rebuffed, immortalized in the Daily News headline, Ford to City: Drop Dead.

Drop Dead City, a documentary film by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn, explores how this crisis came to be and the eleventh-hour deal, brokered by a coalition of business, labor, and civic leaders, that rescued the city’s finances, but with lasting costs to independent governance, public services, and civic ideals of what New York should offer its residents.

Event Schedule
Doors Open: 6:00pm
Event Begins: 6:30pm

Ticket Information
Click here to purchase tickets or for more information.