Finally Got The News

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, American radicals active in Detroit visited Italy, touring student-occupied universities and leftists’ halls, rather than Italy’s famed churches and museums. DRUM’s John Watson toured Italy to introduce his self-produced Finally Got the News, a 16mm film about the struggles in Detroit and their connection to racial capitalism in the USA. Even though many ideas about self-activity had originated in Detroit, it was Italians who had at this point elaborated a more sophisticated understanding of the political meaning of workers’ self-organization. American radicals however impressed Italians, and many thought that the insurgent John Watson “looked like the son of Malcolm X”.[1] However, contemporary accounts suggest that the Italian workers had more difficulty in understanding the role of racism in dividing the American working class.

Finally Got the News from Icarus Films on Vimeo.