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Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn passed away yesterday at age 87. He was a progressive historian who wrote many books but is best known for “A People’s History of the United States,” which tells the story of how the indigenous people were treated by the early European explorers and the Americans, including the exploitations and wars right up to the modern era. If you read that book, you cannot help but think we are doing a great injustice to our own humanity by celebrating “Columbus Day.” Columbus was a murderous slave trader with no redeeming characteristics, whose drive for gold obscured any capacity to see the beauty of the people and the newly discovered land he found himself in (but he never saw North America). For most progressives, this book serves as a kind of rite of passage and, for those of you yearning for more progressive literature, there is no better starting place than Howard Zinn’s book. But he also wrote many other books.

Howard  directly experienced war as a bombardier in a WW II bomber in the European theater. His conscience was ignited when his group was asked to bomb a French city that was rumored to still have Germans in it after most had already retreated from France. This experience forced him to confront a moral dilemma of whether one could justify indiscriminate bombing of a civilian area, particularly when the enemy in that region was probably ready to surrender. What was the purpose of that bombing? Eventually, through the GI bill,  Zinn obtained his Ph.D. in history and began his life as a college professor. His teaching of this alternative view of history, namely the history of what happened to the indigenous people as a result of European expansionism into the new world, has you wondering what kind of people were these early explorers? And what were the moral principles used by the Americans who committed genocide against the American Indians? But, he also explores the moral ground of Vietnam and the panoply of militarism we find ourselves in today.  Zinn’s book was recently adapted for a History Channel TV presentation “The People Speak,” with readings taken from his book that testify to the power of individuals when they are confronted with an oppressive government. His message is strong: Americans need to take back their government, stop the wars and killing and address the world as a friend, without searching under the rocks for enemies. Hopefully more young Americans will be exposed to Howard Zinn’s work and begin to question the false, politically motivated version of history that all of us received in our public school education. Actor Matt Damon grew up next to Howard Zinn in Boston and read his book on “The Peoples History”  as he was writing it. Damon was one of the producers who adapted parts of Zinn’s book for the History television program.

Howard Zinn was an activists activist. In 1967 he published Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. When Daniel Ellsberg was fleeing with the Pentagon Papers and needed a place to hide out, he went to Howard Zinn who took him in and shielded him until the papers could get published and put into the congressional record. Both men should have been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for that one.

Zinn’s entire life as a professor was dedicated to speaking out against war and supporting civil rights and doing so by applying a moral metric to the dilemma. He always framed the issues that way. When Bush decided to invade Iraq, Zinn was opposed and said,

• “If Bush starts a war, he will be responsible for the lives lost, the children crippled, the terrorizing of millions of ordinary people, the American GIs not returning to their families. And all of us will be responsible for bringing that to a halt.

• Men who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.”

Howard Zinn wrote extensively for The Progressive. Several eulogies of Howard Zinn are posted  there by Elizabeth DiNovella and Matthew Rothschild. But, perhaps the best tribute is Amy Goodman’s interviews on Democracy Now with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker and Anthony Arnove.

If you are frustrated by the lack of progress on liberal issues, Howard Zinn had a special message for you:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn is one of the great irreplaceable giants in our progressive movement. But thankfully, his words will live on and hopefully his book will become the alternative Bible for addressing the moral dilemma of how we as a nation treat people. With his help, Americans might finally begin to learn their own history.  Howard Zinn’s website is here, where additional information on his life and books can be obtained. There are two Netflix documentaries on/by Howard Zinn in 2006 and 2004.

RFM