"I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. "What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?"-- Bob Herbert, The New York Times, 1/29/10
******
Howard Zinn's history lesson is simple: If we want America to be a better place, it is up to us to make it happen.
"No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being."--Howard Zinn on History, Seven Stories Press, 2001
"Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that's what we have to do today."--Howard Zinn, The Progressive, May 2009
******
If you are not familiar with Howard Zinn's work, I recommend A People's History of the United States, HarperCollins, 1980. I guarantee, by the time you finish this book, you will be ready to join a union and/or start a rebellion.
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders"and millions have been killed because of this obedience"Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves" (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."-- from The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1970
"Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."--A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, City Lights Publishers, 2006
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
