Category Archives: Howard Zinn

IN REMEMBRANCE: “Happy Birthday! Howard Zinn: Terrorism, What Americans Don’t Want to Hear” ☮

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Howard Zinn would have turned 94 today if his seemingly boundless energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.

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It’s worth remembering that A People’s History of the United States first came out in 1980 as a tide of reaction was seeking to bury the social movements that inspired Howard’s book and which he saw as the hope for the future.

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Howard challenged these ideas in a terrific speech he gave in 1970: “If you don’t think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition—that things are really topsy-turvy.”

Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world right side up — to put people before profit, the environment before the interests of mining companies.

¡Howard Zinn presente!

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PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM: “Arkansas Wants to Ban Howard Zinn Books from Public Schools” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮

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Republican Arkansas state Sen. Kim Hendren introduced a bill to the state legislature that will ban the works of historian Howard Zinn from any schools that receive public funds.

AMERICAN HISTORY: “Support Indigenous Rights by Abolishing [Catholic] Columbus Day” / The Big Picture RT / Thom Hartmann ☮

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Deborah Menkart, Teaching For Change/Zinn Education Project & Daniel Ruiz, Capital City Public Charter School, joins Thom. On Monday – millions of Americans will stay home from work and school to celebrate how Christopher Columbus committed genocide against the Taino people and launched the Transatlantic slave trade. Unfortunately – many Americans won’t know that it’s a celebration of genocide – because many Americans still don’t realize what actually happened when Columbus quote “discovered” America. Fortunately there are efforts moving forward across the country to celebrate “Indigenous People’s Day” instead of Columbus Day – with Phoenix, Arizona being the most recent city to recognize Indigenous People’s Day.

CONSERVATIVE CENSORSHIP: “Former Governor, Now Purdue President, Wanted Howard Zinn Banned in Schools”

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A Peoples History of the United States by Howard ZinnAccording to a series of documents obtained by an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act request, Daniels tried to use his position as governor to punish his enemies, including a professor at a local university. At the center of the story, however, is Daniels’ special hatred for historian Howard Zinn.

Zinn, in case you’re not familiar, was the author of A People’s History of the United States, a book he described to the New YorkTimes as a “history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated.” It was, and still is, a controversial book, both as a work of history and as a work embodying a particular kind of radical approach to confronting injustice. But it’s a bestseller, hugely influential, and still used often in the classroom. Zinn died in 2010, while Daniels was in office. According to the Associated Press, here’s how Daniels marked his passing in an email: 

“This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away…The obits and commentaries mentioned his book, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ is the ‘textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.’ It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?”

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IN REMEMBRANCE: Anthony Arnove / “Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People’s Historian”

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Howard Zinn would have turned 90 this Friday if his seemingly boundless energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.

[…]

It’s worth remembering that A People’s History of the United States first came out in 1980 as a tide of reaction was seeking to bury the social movements that inspired Howard’s book and which he saw as the hope for the future.

[…]

Howard challenged these ideas in a terrific speech he gave in 1970: “If you don’t think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition—that things are really topsy-turvy.”

Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world right side up — to put people before profit, the environment before the interests of mining companies.

¡Howard Zinn presente!

Read more . . .

Related articles

POETRY: “From Sage to Philistine”

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 By Madison S. Hughes (04.11.2009)

Chomsky, Vidal, Vonnegut and Zinn
Sages of generations past.
How will their prodigious wits last?

With Philistines of today
As far as the eye can see.
Oh sad, how sad, can this truly be?