There are remarkable men and women in the world who have done something extraordinary in their lives that will be remembered for a long time. And then there are some pretty extraordinary people like Marty Goodman who did a lot of things, not just once, but over a long, active life.
Marty was many things: revolutionary socialist, militant trade unionist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-Zionist activist, to name a few. He was involved in movement activities almost daily, often going two, three, even four or five times a day: Rallies, marches, picket lines, public forums. You name it. Marty Goodman was there, often with a bag of socialist newspapers or his newsletter Socialist Action. He was there, engaging with the people.
His interests were broad and varied, from the newspaper Haiti Freedom to the UNAC (United Anti-War Coalition), the Julian Assange Defense Group, the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Yeah! He was also an avid journalist and a writer of books, including his 2020 book, The hell that is Haiti : 200 years of racism and imperialist intervention, a radical work of history and a work of radical history and vision.
Marty wrote in this text: “ The history of the struggle against racist deportation of Haitians, US criminality and UN occupations, and the overexploitation of Haitian labor is long-standing. Suffice it to say, it must be seen in the context of 200 years of American imperialism and its evil twin, racism. Make no mistake. This outrage bears the unmistakable teeth marks of two equally voracious villains – the Democratic and Republican parties, the twin representatives of the capitalist system itself. Three-quarters of the Haitian population lives on two American dollars, or less, a day.
Wow! Real Fighting Words? Those Marty Goodman Words!
Last year, in December 2023, Marty wrote a powerful review of a book by Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi titled The Hundred Years’ War Against Palestine.
Marty’s review contained the following lines: “I grew up in a working-class Jewish home in South Florida in the 1950s and 1960s. Like other Jews I knew, I was terrified of what seemed like a sea of Jew-hating Arabs threatening a poor, peaceful Israel. But reading the iconic left-wing journalist IF Pierre on Israel, he helped me wake up from my deep sleep. By digging deeper into Israel’s bloody record, which was hard to come by at the time, I discovered that the Zionist propaganda I had grown up on was nonsense.
The laconic prose of Marty Goodman, radical journalist and revolutionary socialist.
Marty Goodman lived 74 winters in America.
With Love without fear,
It was Mumia Abu-Jamal!
This text was recorded on the prison radio.
Socialist Action June 13, 2024