Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

I fell in love with this terrific man on the first page of his most widely read masterpiece, 'A People's History of the United States'. If you haven't read it, pick up a copy today. It's truly something else, the history book I'd been looking for since I got bored and suspicious of being taught endlessly in class about politicians, warmongers, clinking glasses as they wrecked the world. The reason was that I was wondering about the absence from the established history of, as Zinn put it, "the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies." He wrote that examining, and indeed celebrating those millions and their actions – so often ignored by the well-paid mainstream – as his intention in his mesmerizing, marvelously written tome about the potential of individuals to refuse, resist, unite and improve the world in defiance of power. His writings and his life of fearless activism, inspiring to the end, was and remains a gift to us all.

Check out this fitting tribute on Democracy Now!: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute

Or if you haven't time to watch it, read this extract, Howard Zinn on war and obedience:

"Look for a peace movement to join. Really, look for some peace organization to join. It will look small at first, and pitiful and helpless, but that’s how movements start. That’s how the movement against the Vietnam War started. It started with handfuls of people who thought they were helpless, thought they were powerless. But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power. When workers go on strike, huge corporations lose their power. When consumers boycott, huge business establishments have to give in. When soldiers refuse to fight, as so many soldiers did in Vietnam, so many deserters, so many fraggings, acts of violence by enlisted men against officers in Vietnam, B-52 pilots refusing to fly bombing missions anymore, war can’t go on. When enough soldiers refuse, the government has to decide we can’t continue. So, yes, people have the power. If they begin to organize, if they protest, if they create a strong enough movement, they can change things."

Howard Zinn with actor Viggo Mortensen, who read Bartolome de Las Casas' horrifying account of Columbus' conquest of America from 'Voices of A People's History of the United States', for the documentary The People Speak.