Book ReviewsNew History of Detroit LRBW Challenges Us To Think Ahead
Published on Rally! Voice of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America A new history of the Detroit League of Revolutionary Black Workers challenges revolutionaries to assess the 1960s and ’70s and determine what is different today and how to respond. In September 2025, the University of Georgia Press published “Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers” by Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman. Scott was a leader of the LRBW fired from the Chrysler Detroit Forge plant after helping lead a wildcat strike against unsafe conditions in 1973. Katz-Fishman is a scholar-activist and professor of sociology at Howard University who has worked closely with former members of the LRBW since she attended Wayne State University in Detroit in the 1970s. The publishers say “Motown” offers “a fresh perspective on class, race and revolution in the United States.” The book is both a collective oral history and a deeply researched examination of the rise and decline of the Detroit auto industry and its consequences. Scott and Katz-Fishman have assembled interviews with 40 people who took part in an LRBW oral history project begun in 2016. Many were LRBW activists. Others helped the LRBW members in some way – lawyers, student activists, and revolutionaries from outside Detroit who worked with former LRBW members in other revolutionary formations after the LRBW’s end.... Read more |
ConversationsCONVERSATION WITH RADICAL BOOKS AND ACTIVISTSConversation with 94.1 KPFAOn this episode, we speak with Walda Katz Fishman, longtime peace activist and writer whose work centers on anti-war organizing, Palestinian solidarity, and movements for global justice, and Jerome Scott, veteran Black liberation organizer and writer, and a founding member of the Black Power movement organization the League of Revolutionary Black Workers — about their upcoming event promoting their book Motown and the Making of Modern Revolutionaries.
They will be hosting events promoting the book on January 19th at 5 pm — Oakstop, 1721 Broadway, Oakland and on January 21st, 7 pm at Medicine for Nightmares — 3036 24th St. San Francisco LISTEN HERE: kpfa.org/area941/episode/motown-and-the-making-of-modern-revolutionaries-w-walda-katz-fishman-and-jerome-scott/ -- Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: [email protected] Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ |