Renewing Black Radicalism and Labor Militancy with Finally Got the News (1970): An Introduction

Renewing Black Radicalism and Labor Militancy with Finally Got the News (1970): An Introduction1 Cole Nelson (bio) "Cast away illusions and prepare for struggle!"2 Somewhere between historical document and radical pedagogy, Finally Got the News (dir. Stewart Bird, Peter Gessner, and René Lichtman, 1970) has inspired audiences on the Left for generations, persistently raising the importance and interrelation of working-class politics and Black liberation to social transformation. Few films within the canon of radical documentary share the stature and lasting impact of Finally Got the News (FGtN). Set in the industrial furnace of Detroit at the peak of a worldwide rebellion, FGtN purveyed and expressed the militant spirit animating the long 1960s of labor militancy and Black radicalism. The Detroit Rebellion, a five-day citywide revolt in July 1967 that saw open confrontation with police and the mass arrest of over seven thousand residents, foregrounded the excessive force of the state to violently suppress Black and working-class mobilizations and proved to many of the founders of the soon-to-be established League of Revolutionary Black Workers the necessity for sustained organizing efforts. Following the Rebellion, several major wildcat strikes occurred in Detroit's auto plants with the participation of Black workers that demonstrated the revolutionary potential of Black workers to strike at the heart of industry. Such strikes evoked the self-organized working-class challenge to bureaucratic management and capitalist planning that threatened the livelihoods of an entire class of laborers, positing an alternative vision of production organized and led from the shopfloor. On the heels of a wildcat strike held on July 7, 1968, at the Dodge Main plant, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was formed. DRUM agitated among Black workers at End Page 12 Dodge Main and advocated both for autonomy from the United Automobile Workers, which proved incapable of and uninterested in addressing the grievances of Black members, and for the end of class hierarchy. Central to the emancipatory vision of DRUM was the conviction that Black workers, when organized, could constitute a vital threat to the smooth functioning of capitalist production and that, upon mobilizing their collective power, could enable an equitable system of production. Following DRUM, several variants of the Revolutionary Union Movement (RUM) model appeared at other workplaces around Detroit; the League of Revolutionary Black Workers took shape in June 1969 as an umbrella organization designed to coordinate across these various, Black-led workplace struggles. Over the course of a few short years (1969–73), the League made significant advances in shopfloor organizing, provided legal defense for workers and Black community organizations, engaged in and contested union elections, and built networks of community-based mutual aid, all while agitating for socialist revolution among Black workers. Where labor struggles undermined the importance of race in shaping the character of exploitation faced by Black workers, the League fought against the racist practices of both union and company alike and advocated for the well-being of its constituents. Where struggles for Black liberation called for intra-racial unity, undermining the determining force of class hierarchy in securing racial oppression, the League insisted upon a dynamic proletarian perspective and strategy that comprised anti-racist and anti-capitalist tactics mobilized against these two paradigms of racialization and labor exploitation in service of a global proletarian revolution. Consider that Finally Got the News chronicles the strength of the League's campaign building a revolutionary Black organization at the peak of its power. However, the purpose of FGtN was not simply to document the activities of the League but, importantly, to intervene in radical organizing across the country and around the world by making a case against racism and labor exploitation. FGtN places at the center of anti-capitalist organizing the perspectives and interests of Black workers in the Motor City. It insists upon viewing these twin attributes of capitalism—racialization and labor exploitation—as deriving from the same pernicious force: capitalism's insistent drive for surplus value. For over fifty years, audiences have grappled with the powerful lessons delivered by the documentary, lessons that emanate from its novel and sophisticated analysis of racial capitalism. Film scholars and social commentators have for decades mined the film...