Howard Zinn died yesterday.
I saw Howard Zinn speak on a couple of occasions. He could best be described as unpretentious and modest. Yet he spoke truth to power based on his considerable experience helping workers organize.
Zinn was raised in a working class family and fought in World War II as a bombardier. After the war he worked his way through college and earned a doctorate in history. He became an influential civil rights activist and peace activist. He had a deep understanding of society and the skewed distribution of both power and wealth. He wrote the popular book A People’s History of the United States. He remained an optimist about human progress to his dieing day.
Here is a recent interview of Howard Zinn by Bill Moyers done on December 11, 2009.
Part 2 of the interview of Howard Zinn by Bill Moyers
Part 3 of the interview of Howard Zinn by Bill Moyers
Howard Zinn is the author of The People Speak, a recent documentary with many actors contributing to portray the voices of those who have struggled to improve the foundations of our society.
Thanks for your piece here and your comment(s) over at David Horowitz’s “SpewsRealBlog” (I’ve been long since banned from there by David Swindle for posting one too many criticisms of their demagoguery).
It is clear that Howard Zinn was a threat to the official narrative they hold so dear as factual accounts make keeping the rose colored glasses in place slightly more difficult (though never so difficult that there is ever a danger of actually removing them).