Howard Zinn 1922-2010: The Anti-War Warrior
Zinn was a professor at Boston University. This nice article is from Boston's free tabloid rag, the Phoenix.
by By Raymond Mungo | The Boston Phoenix
February 3, 2010
Howard Zinn was like a daddy to Boston University students of the Vietnam War era — the students who protested and resisted the war, that is. He arrived on campus in 1964, when I was a sophomore, and within two years was the most publicly outspoken and visible member of the faculty, much to the consternation of conservative administrators. The mere mention of his name could send BU presidents into apoplexy. But they couldn't drive him out or shut him up.
The author of People's History of the United States
which has sold two million copies, has been revered by generations of students, reviled by more conventional academics, and, mostly, re-read. His literary career started modestly with SNCC: The New Abolitionists, about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, of which he was a founding member in the years when white people were included. As a professor at tiny Spelman College in Atlanta in the late '50s and early '60s, he thoroughly integrated himself with black students — ultimately, his uncompromising views got him canned. Then BU took him on.
Born poor in Brooklyn in 1922, Howard had a working-class perspective. He worked in the shipyards before joining the Army Air Force as a bombardier. The young man who bombed innocent civilians evolved into the pacifist professor who simply did not believe that any war was good or just. And while other teachers were terrified to go beyond signing petitions, the guy put his body on the line for his principles.
:/
"...The government needs to guarantee jobs to everybody who is willing to work. If private enterprise won’t hire people, the government must hire people. The government hired people in the 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of young people worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Instead of drafting them into the Army in order to solve the unemployment problem, it gave these young people a salary. They lived in camps around the country and did enormously useful work restoring forests and cleaning up rivers and building bridges. The WPA itself did a huge amount of good work around the country, and the people worked directly for the government.
We need a federal arts program in which the government will pay musicians, directors, actors, poets, writers to do what they do best: produce operas and murals and plays and books. It would take that kind of a bold program to even begin to solve the problem of unemployment." - Howard Zinn
"The Obama administration has been timid in the face of cries of big government. The administration hasn’t come directly to the American people and said, “There’s nothing wrong with big government.” In fact, the Republicans want big government. The war lovers want big government. There’s no bigger government than what you have when you go to war. The war is a government program, and we’ve always had big government in this country. " - Howard Zinn
http://www.playboy.com/articles/howard-zinn-interview/index....
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
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Interesting
My grandfather worked for and Retired from the State of Connecticut Department of Transportation. Whenever he would talk about the days working on roads and our infrastructure he would always boast about the people that worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He said they were some of the finest craftsman he had ever seen. That when the state used them was when Connecticut had some of the nicest highways in the Untied States. If not for them we wouldn't have such beautiful architecture and State parks.
"I have found that being rich is not about having the most but about needing the least"
Zinn was a Communist.
A card-carrying one, as it turns out with recent disclosures. At least he was against war, or at least consistently said he was. I'll give him a minor nod for that.
_____________________________
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -- Joseph Goebbels
Very Nice
I really enjoyed The Peoples History of the United States and all that Howard Zinn did to wake people to the ugliness of war..End the Wars and finally give Peace a chance..
"I have found that being rich is not about having the most but about needing the least"
Different people
have different reasons for claiming to be "anti-war".
For a recent example, just look at the Democrat "anti-war movement" which was so active during GWB's terms, but are AWOL now that Obama is running the same wars.
It was all a political ploy, and they weren't really "anti-war" but "anti-Bush". Now that Obama is in, it's all peachy.
Zinn's Communist Party USA affiliations, may have had something to do with his position.
Not everybody who says they are "anti-war", are "anti-war" because of principles. Some use the issue for political hay.
There may be some temporary "single issue" alliances with people like that, but their core beliefs would have you in chains if they had their way. Caution is recommended.
I know this is an old thread, but this information was just
released: In 1949, the FBI opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn (FBI File # 100-360217). The Bureau noted Zinn’s activities in what were called Communist Front Groups and received informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the CPUSA; Zinn denied ever being a member when he was questioned by agents in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the Bureau took another look at Zinn on account of his criticism of the FBI’s civil rights investigations. Further investigation was made when Zinn traveled to North Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan as an anti-war activist. The investigation ended in 1974, and no further investigation into Zinn or his activities was made by the FBI.
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/zinn_howard.htm
Why is this guy on the front page?
This guy is a liberal socialist!! Yes, he may be anti-war, which is good, but he is a socialist. Maybe someone can help me understand, but this guy was a darling of the left because he was one of them, not one of us.
what is this "one of them,
what is this "one of them, one of us" attitude? have you not learned issues are issues, beyond the left/right debauchery?
We've been rewarded for "Adversary Think" for so long.
It's easy to forget their is another way.
Free includes debt-free!
doesn't anyone find his views on 911 disturbing?
For a historian to say "that's in the past"?
Zinn: 9/11 Truth Is For “Fanatics”, Has “No Practical Political Significance”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/zinn-911-truth-is-for-fanatics-h...
we are the Remnant
No, I think his points are valid
We didn't need 911 to know that the Fed needed an audit or that in an inflationary monetary policy is where wages lag prices and is an effective tax on the middle class.
Free includes debt-free!
Who will take up his torch?
Who will hold it high?
He loosed bright light on dirty war.
No good he found in them.
He told us true what the had found
until he could no more.
RIP Howard Zinn
Free includes debt-free!
He is widely missed. Where today
are the major academic antiwar leaders? Libertarian profs yes; but of course their works are mostly ignored, unlike Zinn who had Leftist credentials so was respected.
'War what is it good for,
absolutely nothing'. Remember that old song. I was thinking today about a anti war group and what I would name it. PAWNS, People Against Wars Networking Solutions
The elite think of us as PAWNS and until the pawns say enough we're not playing your war games anymore they will continue. People have to be made aware that they are not fighting for the country they are fighting so corrupt greedy banksters,governments,generals and defense contractors can make HUGE profits.
Prepare & Share the Message of Freedom through Positive-Peaceful-Activism.
So much going on...
I missed the passing of a Person.
:(
snip...
I remember his gleeful, almost childlike amazement when A People's History started taking off in sales. He was shocked but delighted with the relatively big bucks coming in — he never thought he'd make any serious money publishing his tracts about the history of ordinary Americans. "All my other books send me a royalty of, like, $7.29," he said.
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/...
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