In Memoriam: Howard Zinn

Analysis…

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 22: Author Howard Zinn speaks during the People Speak ASCAP Music Cafe performance held during the 2009 Sundance Music Festival on January 22, 2009 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images) Content © 2010 Getty Images All rights reserved.

Howard Zinn, author, teacher, activist, died on January 27th.  He was best known for his best selling book A People’s History of the United States.  His challenge to the status quo reached far beyond those whom he taught directly.  Although I did not recognize his name until recently, I can look back and see the impact he had in my own experience as a student of history.  I was taught to see the viwe of not only those who wrote history, but also those whose stories are largely unknown, Native Americans, slaves, immigrants, women.   Zinn has been memorialized in hundreds of stories and articles.  These are just a few.

Alternet | Right until the end if his life, Howard Zinn was always there, on the front lines, observing and writing in sharp, concentrated prose that went right to the heart of matters and distilled their essence. (His comments on Barack Obama, and his insistence that social change comes not from messianic individuals but from movements, are but the latest evidence of his continued involvement and genius.) But he still always found time to help and to encourage others.

Now he is gone, rejoining his beloved partner Roz, and we—and our country—are greatly the worse for his passing. For Howard Zinn was above all a true American patriot, one who stood up and spoke out for the ideals and values that have always promised – but too often been honored only in the breach – to make this the greatest country on the planet.

Truthdig | It was particularly during those morally chaotic years that “Zinn” and “Chomsky” became more than people to many of us. As elders who did not sell out, who acted as well as taught, who did not compromise, who did not abandon genuine American values and ideals, who did not lose their passion for social justice, who did not fail to side with the poor and downtrodden and victimized, and who above all spoke the truth, they became to many of us, quite simply, some of the most important nouns of our life. Even if we did not always agree on this or that “position” they took, they represented something far higher.

“Zinn” and “Chomsky” represented a tradition and state of being that meant we were not entirely on our own.

Alas, A Blog | Howard Zinn wrote an essay The Optimism of Uncertainty. He argued that history should give us hope, not because it guaranteed that the powerless would win (it really doesn’t), but because it showed extraordinary, unpredictable change is possible. The Civil Rights Movement, particularly SNCC, is an example of the unpredictability of hope. On the 1st of February 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, sat down at the counter of their local Woolworth’s and refused to be served. Nobody could have predicted what would grow out of that action.

stuff white people do | I’m terribly saddened by the death today of one of my intellectual heroes, Howard Zinn. I’m also saddened to realize that as news of his death travels, most Americans probably won’t recognize his name. Zinn’s masterwork, A People’s History of the United States, opened my eyes, not only to the brutal and racist underpinnings of the country that I live in, but also to the fact that the “country” I live in should be more properly recognized as an empire.

Truthout | Howard never allowed himself to be seduced either by threats, the seductions of fame or the need to tone down his position for the standard bearers of the new illiteracy that now populates the mainstream media. As an intellectual for the public, he was a model of dignity, engagement and civic commitment. He believed that addressing human suffering and social issues mattered, and he never flinched from that belief.

Feministing | Howard Zinn wrote us–the forgotten, the terrorized, the murdered, the gentle–back into the history books. He helped us see our past so we could see ourselves. And for this, we are eternally grateful.

Best of the Web…

Whole Foods Incentivizes Weight Loss With Employee Discounts | Feministing

Whole Foods recently announced a new employee discount program based on qualifications like BMI, cholesterol and smoking status. Employees who rank best in these categories will have their employee discount upped from 20% to a max of 30%.

Kind of ironic that a lower BMI means you get to buy more food for less?

Or just gross.

Worship Under the Bright Lights | Get Religion

We pray for President Obama every week at my church. This isn’t a partisan thing — like many other liturgical Christians, the prayer of the church includes the country’s leader regardless of political affiliation. And when we pray for President Obama, I think of how grateful I am that I may attend my church’s Divine Services without having to have the media come in and exploit any parts of the liturgy or of my pastor’s excellent sermons.

Unpromising | Newsweek

But thanks to a 1,440-minute news cycle that spits out a new “gotcha” story every 10 seconds or so, we seem to have forgotten a few common-sense facts. First, some campaign promises are stupid—unworkable, unwise pledges made by candidates who are either too naive to know it or too myopic to care. We should be relieved, not angered, when a chastened incumbent abandons them. The C-Span commitment belongs in this category. As The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has written, “if you open the negotiations to C-Span, the result isn’t just that C-Span televises the negotiations. It’s that the negotiations change … What you’ll get are kabuki negotiations in which legislative leaders make carefully planned statements about the awesomeness of the bill while staff works in a back room to haggle out whether, say, we should tax rich folks or expensive insurance plans.”