About Luis Feliz Leon
Welcome to Lower Frequencies! The title of the newsletter comes from the concluding chapter of Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? ”
The experience of most workers in the workplace and society is one of alienation. Smarter people than I have written more about what Ellison’s line means, but the question he poses has stuck with me since I first read the book decades ago, because it gets at the dilemma of worker agency, resistance, and voice. How do we pull “subterranean power lines that run from economics through politics, society, and culture” and bring them up to the light of analysis? So while I don’t pretend to speak for anyone, I attempt to amplify the voices of workers in their struggles in the lower frequencies, on the line at the factory, at the union hall, on the streets.