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.
The remarkable, inimitable and endlessly courageous Howard Zinn died yesterday, at 87. It was actually my birthday, so I will use his life of service as even deeper inspiration. Not that one person, to the average citizen, could be much more inspiring than Howard Zinn.
What can be said about Howard Zinn?
From what he did at Spellman College in the late 1950s and early 60s—standing by his wondrous black, female students, including Alice Walker, and their right, their protests, demanding to be free and treated as equal human beings. This, of course, got him fired for “insubordination.”
Being the first person to write a book demanding a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, without conditions.
His massively influential and popular A People’s History of the United States, which told me about so many heroic and wondrous figures I had never heard of. A new list of heroes!
Zinn was often attacked by the intelligentsia. Arthur Schleshinger, for example, called him a polemicist, not a historian. I doubt Howard could care less. He was writing for the so-called average person, the citizen, you, me, and those suffering and struggling so much more. He cared what they thought. He was writing the alternate history.
In his own words:
“There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”
Zinn said, paraphrasing, we can’t even begin to know our history if we don’t understand what unknown people have done to change this world:
Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
I am saddened by this passing, to be sure—and for the finite nature of a human life in a never ending journey, and grateful for his inspiration. Isn’t it funny how, despite death, how much you love, how we all love and want to love? How much life matters? How much kindness and wanting the best for others matters? I love that.
I am researching for a film on the history of labour, and I was so hoping to interview Howard and meet him for the first time. Noam Chomsky was even going to give me an introduction. So in my research, in my learning, I will with joy remember Howard’s unconquerable spirit, how small actions matter. How you and I matter. And together we matter more.
There is a heartfelt tribute to Howard here.
One last line from dear Howard, who was, evidently, countless students’ favourite teacher. Boy, we’ll miss him. And we’ll carry on trying to stand up for more justice, compassion, positive change, solidarity, humour and creative out-of-the-box dreaming, thinking and acting.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. 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.
Here’s to you, Howard. Thanks a lot.
Lots of love to you and yours,
Pete