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NEWS & LETTERS, AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2003

Felix Martin speaks to today's struggles

Soledad, Cal.--I enjoyed THE REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF FELIX MARTIN so much I read it in one single day. This book is really good at shedding light on racism in this country, as well as the many struggles Felix Martin participated in as a blue collar worker.

The article “Nixon smokescreen” made me think how history repeats itself, as now I see a Bush smokescreen, especially concerning “weapons of mass destruction." Martin was comparing U.S. workers to Russian workers and foresaw the government coming down on strikers to the point of “making Russia look like a bunch of play kids.” I was amazed that Felix Martin’s simple style of writing packed such a punch to the capitalist beast.  

So did his revealing to students at a college campus that they would someday be the “mental labor” while the workers were physical labor. But Martin spoke of the need to bridge the gap between the two. I feel, as Marx wrote, that both mental and physical labor are labor. To unite the two benefits both groups of workers. Their division is for the benefit of capitalism.

Martin referred to anti-busing racism as a tool of capitalist society aiming to divide workers on the shop floor. These capitalist tools have not been disposed of--they merely change appearance or are delivered to us in a smokescreen, as Felix Martin would say.

--Soledad prisoner

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