Celia
Hart’s Last Message to Revolutionaries in the U.S.
by George Saunders
The world may little realize the immeasurable loss it has suffered with
the death of Celia Hart in a freak auto accident in
It was said of Malcolm X after his death that too few of us during his
lifetime appreciated fully who he was.
It’s like the line in the song, “We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s
gone.”
To me Celia Hart was a Rosa Luxemburg of the 21st century,
with the difference that Rosa Luxemburg had three full decades of revolutionary
work, whereas fate granted Celia Hart less than five years since her first
revolutionary article (reprinted below after the Cuban Five material) appeared
on the Internet in the fall of 2003.
But Celia accomplished an enormous amount in the past brief half-decade.
Shortly before her abrupt disappearance from our ranks, Celia sent a
message to her co-thinkers of Socialist Action/USA. It included a “Declaration
by the Editorial Board of Revista de
America” calling for freedom for the Cuban Five, who have been political
prisoners in the United States for ten years now.
Revista de America is a new magazine that Celia recently helped to found, based on
collaboration with revolutionaries in
Celia asked that this declaration on the Cuban Five be published in the
We of Labor Standard, in collaboration with Socialist Action, are now
posting our translation of this declaration on the Cuban Five sent by Celia. It
will also appear in the October issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
In addition, we are reproducing an article by Celia on the Cuban Five,
which she sent us two years ago, in August 2006, and which we posted on our web
site at that time.
Labor Standard plans to establish a new page on our web site entitled “In
Memory of Celia Hart,” where numerous articles by and about her will appear.
We should mention that Labor Standard and Socialist Action have been collaborating since late 2004–early 2005 in the translation, editing, and preparation for publication of a book of Celia’s articles and interviews, which we hope will soon be completed.