"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."
-Howard Zinn, patriot, historian, and author
Showing posts with label Howard Zinn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Howard Zinn. Show all posts
4/05/2010
5/13/2009
Zinn on Obama, MLK
Howard Zinn: "I Wish Obama Would Listen to MLK"
Legendary historian Howard Zinn joins us to talk about war, torture and the teaching of history. Zinn says Obama had Obama heeded the lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he wouldn't be escalating US attacks abroad and increasing the size of the US military budget. We also play excerpts of the forthcoming documentary, The People Speak, featuring dramatic readings based on Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/13/howard_zinn_i_wish_obama_would
Legendary historian Howard Zinn joins us to talk about war, torture and the teaching of history. Zinn says Obama had Obama heeded the lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he wouldn't be escalating US attacks abroad and increasing the size of the US military budget. We also play excerpts of the forthcoming documentary, The People Speak, featuring dramatic readings based on Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/13/howard_zinn_i_wish_obama_would
7/19/2008
4/02/2008
11/07/2007
Zinn on 'Sham' War
Published on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 by The Daily Free Press
Zinn Renews Call To End ‘Sham’ War
by Vivian Ho
Former Boston University professor and political activist Howard Zinn last night said Americans need to “withdraw our obedience from our government” in response to what he called government deception surrounding modern wars.
“The war on terrorism is a sham,” Zinn said at Morse Auditorium. “Terrorism is an idea that exists all over. You can’t make war on it. If terrorism is the killing of innocent people for some presumed important purpose, then making a war on people is terrorism. War is terrorism. The terrorism of our war in Iraq has killed far, far more people than were killed in the twin towers.”
Zinn said a revolution is the only option Americans have to bring about change and charged his audience of more than 200 to form a “people’s” movement toward a “different world.”
The longtime professor also said government hype must be combated with a discussion of history.
“If you know some history that is outside the establishing view of history, you will not be fooled by the things you hear from the White House, or from members of Congress, or from leaders of political parties,” he said in his lecture, organized by BU Students for a Democratic Society, Boston Youth and Student Anti-War Movement.
The study of the history of government deception in wartime needs a closer look, Zinn said.
“What’s being told is that we are fighting in Iraq for democracy. We are occupying in order to bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people,” he said. “If you look at the history of American occupations, look at the history of U.S. interventions in other parts of the world - where have we brought democracy? There’s no evidence of America bringing democracy to the countries that we occupy.”
Zinn said the turnout was encouraging. Attendees said they reserved spots beforehand, and many filled in balcony seating.
“It was a lot of things people need to hear,” said College of Arts and Sciences junior Haley Ott. “There’s a stigma against activism, [so] for someone like him [to speak], it’s useful to have people inside like that.”
Zinn stressed the necessity of citizen involvement, a sentiment BU Anti-War Coalition member Alek Drobnjak said he strongly supports.
“He made a point on people getting involved, which was very important,” the College of Engineering sophomore said. “We need more people to join our clubs and participate in our government.”
Zinn will be speaking again this weekend with BU professor Elie Wiesel in a nonpartisan regional conference called “Race to 2008,” a discussion meant to revive political involvement among campuses in the Northeast.
“If you want something done, it happens when people come together,” said SDS President Farah Mohammadzadeh, a CAS junior. “It’s a revolution. It’s possible.”
© 2007 The Daily Free Press
Zinn Renews Call To End ‘Sham’ War
by Vivian Ho
Former Boston University professor and political activist Howard Zinn last night said Americans need to “withdraw our obedience from our government” in response to what he called government deception surrounding modern wars.
“The war on terrorism is a sham,” Zinn said at Morse Auditorium. “Terrorism is an idea that exists all over. You can’t make war on it. If terrorism is the killing of innocent people for some presumed important purpose, then making a war on people is terrorism. War is terrorism. The terrorism of our war in Iraq has killed far, far more people than were killed in the twin towers.”
Zinn said a revolution is the only option Americans have to bring about change and charged his audience of more than 200 to form a “people’s” movement toward a “different world.”
The longtime professor also said government hype must be combated with a discussion of history.
“If you know some history that is outside the establishing view of history, you will not be fooled by the things you hear from the White House, or from members of Congress, or from leaders of political parties,” he said in his lecture, organized by BU Students for a Democratic Society, Boston Youth and Student Anti-War Movement.
The study of the history of government deception in wartime needs a closer look, Zinn said.
“What’s being told is that we are fighting in Iraq for democracy. We are occupying in order to bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people,” he said. “If you look at the history of American occupations, look at the history of U.S. interventions in other parts of the world - where have we brought democracy? There’s no evidence of America bringing democracy to the countries that we occupy.”
Zinn said the turnout was encouraging. Attendees said they reserved spots beforehand, and many filled in balcony seating.
“It was a lot of things people need to hear,” said College of Arts and Sciences junior Haley Ott. “There’s a stigma against activism, [so] for someone like him [to speak], it’s useful to have people inside like that.”
Zinn stressed the necessity of citizen involvement, a sentiment BU Anti-War Coalition member Alek Drobnjak said he strongly supports.
“He made a point on people getting involved, which was very important,” the College of Engineering sophomore said. “We need more people to join our clubs and participate in our government.”
Zinn will be speaking again this weekend with BU professor Elie Wiesel in a nonpartisan regional conference called “Race to 2008,” a discussion meant to revive political involvement among campuses in the Northeast.
“If you want something done, it happens when people come together,” said SDS President Farah Mohammadzadeh, a CAS junior. “It’s a revolution. It’s possible.”
© 2007 The Daily Free Press
10/01/2007
Marx is Back!
MARX IN SOHO PRESENTED AT SUNRISE THEATER!
For one day only, Karl Marx will come back to life on the Sunrise Theater stage in play Marx in Soho. The show will be presented on Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 2:30 and 7:00 p.m. Tickets will be at $15 at the door, $12 in advance, $5 for students. Advance tickets may be purchased at Campbell House (482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines) and Nature’s Own (195 Bell Ave., Southern Pines). Proceeds from the show will benefit the Arts Council of Moore County’s Barnes-Travis Arts Scholarship for middle and high school students.
Marx in Soho is a one person play, written by renowned people’s historian Howard Zinn. In it, Marx comes back to life to address a contemporary audience in this funny and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters. Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society, and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
Winner of the 2000 Independent Publisher Award for best visionary fiction, Marx in Soho combines hard-hitting information with humor, sharp politics and sheer delight. This performance is directed by Marcela Casals and produced and performed by Fenton Wilkinson of Whispering Pines.
For additional information on Marx in Soho, please contact the Arts Council of Moore County at 910-692-4356.
For one day only, Karl Marx will come back to life on the Sunrise Theater stage in play Marx in Soho. The show will be presented on Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 2:30 and 7:00 p.m. Tickets will be at $15 at the door, $12 in advance, $5 for students. Advance tickets may be purchased at Campbell House (482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines) and Nature’s Own (195 Bell Ave., Southern Pines). Proceeds from the show will benefit the Arts Council of Moore County’s Barnes-Travis Arts Scholarship for middle and high school students.
Marx in Soho is a one person play, written by renowned people’s historian Howard Zinn. In it, Marx comes back to life to address a contemporary audience in this funny and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters. Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society, and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
Winner of the 2000 Independent Publisher Award for best visionary fiction, Marx in Soho combines hard-hitting information with humor, sharp politics and sheer delight. This performance is directed by Marcela Casals and produced and performed by Fenton Wilkinson of Whispering Pines.
For additional information on Marx in Soho, please contact the Arts Council of Moore County at 910-692-4356.
7/01/2007
Zinn on The 4th
Published on Sunday, July 1, 2007 by The Progressive
Put Away the Flags
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling “A People’s History of the United States” (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project.
©2007 The Progressive Magazine
Put Away the Flags
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling “A People’s History of the United States” (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project.
©2007 The Progressive Magazine
6/07/2007
Zinn/Marx/Wilkinson on YouTube
Here are several snippets from Marx in Soho play. Feel free to share. [Thanks, Carolyn]
Marx on Capitalism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWEfAxnRp0
Marx on Communism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSYczEWz1Q4
Marx on Commune de Paris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krwYkVXhH7w
Marx on Daughter Eleanor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJRgZ4PQWug
Marx on Capitalism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWEfAxnRp0
Marx on Communism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSYczEWz1Q4
Marx on Commune de Paris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krwYkVXhH7w
Marx on Daughter Eleanor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJRgZ4PQWug
5/13/2007
Karl Marx, Sou. Pines, May 18, 19, 20
Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx back to life to address a contemporary audience in Soho in this witty and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case. Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters. Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society, and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
(“I’ve read Marx in Soho and watched Fenton morph into Karl Marx. I highly recommend this fun and educational opportunity to learn some very important things about ourselves and the world we all live in.” — Tom Thompson )
May 18th & 19th at 7:30 p.m.
May 20 at 2:30 p.m.
Cost: $10.00
(“I’ve read Marx in Soho and watched Fenton morph into Karl Marx. I highly recommend this fun and educational opportunity to learn some very important things about ourselves and the world we all live in.” — Tom Thompson )
May 18th & 19th at 7:30 p.m.
May 20 at 2:30 p.m.
Cost: $10.00
5/05/2007
Zinn on Activism
Published on Friday, May 4, 2007 by Yale Daily News
Historian Howard Zinn Calls for Activism
by Lea Yu
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Howard Zinn may be a historian, but he lives in the present.
As demonstrators for immigrant rights made their way around New Haven on May Day, Zinn assumed the stage at the Center Church on the New Haven Green, stressing the need for youth to engage in activism, to understand the darker aspects of American domestic and foreign policy, and to distinguish between allegiance to a government and allegiance to a country.
Evoking a rare mixture of political seriousness and light-hearted wit, the 84-year-old history professor spoke conversationally, prompting many audience members to laugh at his sense of humor or applaud when his musings culminated in calls for change.
“Our interests are not the same [as the government’s], despite our culture and the way it tries to indoctrinate us into thinking our interests are the same … we and the government, Exxon and me,” Zinn said to long, drawn-out laughter.
“Bush,” he then said with a pause, “and the young person he sends to war do not have the same interests.”
Strenuous clapping ensued.
The event, sponsored by Labyrinth Books, coincided with the release of Zinn’s “A Young People’s History of the United States,” a youth-oriented articulation of his seminal “A People’s History of the United States.” Though he emphasized that the two books do not differ substantially and that his message was the same to Americans both young and old, Zinn’s speech on Tuesday focused on the need for the “next generation of youth” to question the government and understand its complexities - an implicit criticism of what he sees as older Americans’ failures to do the same.
“We need something better,” he said. “With the situation we’re in, we can’t afford to have another generation that will go along with war. Or another nation that will go along with the nation’s enormous militarism.”
Youth today need to recognize the presence of social upheaval in America’s past in order to recognize the importance of activism, Zinn said, but history teaching has traditionally emphasized American unity while ignoring social movements and conflicts of interest that steered the country toward historical change.
As a result, he said, young people become discouraged when only 20 people show up for a war protest rally; they have no idea that the civil rights protests failed on multiple occasions before the movement saw even an inkling of attention or success.
Also lost upon American youth is the nation’s history of ignoring the interests of common people, Zinn said. He said events such as the Vietnam War exemplify the United States’s long record of using foreign policy to acquire needed resources, while operating under the guise of liberty, self-determination and freedom.
In short, youth today have the daunting task of separating themselves from a self-righteous national culture, Zinn said. In spite of the hubbub over America’s greatness, the historian said, the nation significantly trails many other countries when it comes to literacy rates, infant mortality and the promotion of human rights. Illustrating what he termed the hypocrisy of America’s condemnation of nuclear weapons, Zinn recalled a letter that his friend, the late Kurt Vonnegut, had sent to the New York Times.
“Not saying anything about Iran or North Korea, his letter just said this: ‘I know of only one country that has dropped nuclear weapons on defenseless people,’” Zinn said. “The Times did not print his letter.”
Most in the audience were old enough to have lived through the 1960s and ’70s, when Vonnegut first attracted a cult following, although young adults nearly composed a third of the audience. For New Haven resident Pat Topitzer, Zinn’s words reminded her of her own youth protest experiences and addressed what she considered a pressing issue.
“I think for people … it is startling [to see] the lack of involvement of young people,” she said. “We had [an anti-war] demonstration last year on the corner of Elm and York streets and it absolutely rocked me - there we were on the corner of two residential colleges and only one college student came out.”
Local resident Baub Biden said he found the youth turnout at the talk encouraging, but that it would take more than a re-evaluation of American history to change young people’s mentalities.
“You have a lot of people you are distracted by VH1, MTV, BET, and every time you turn on the TV there’s a reality show that’s kind of catchy,” Biden said. “So these people are at home, and they’re watching all of these distractions and they’re all talking about Britney Spears cutting her hair.”
Although he was not in attendance at Zinn’s speech, history professor Jean-Christophe Agnew said he had a great deal of respect for Zinn’s historical work, which he called highly influential and widely used. Though historians make it their work to study the past, it is not unusual for prominent professors such as Zinn to weigh in on current events, he said, citing a resolution opposing the war in Iraq that was recently ratified by the American Historical Association.
But that does not mean that all historians share the same point of view.
“In these moments of crisis, when the country is split … so historians are split,” Agnew said.
Copyright 1995-2007 Yale Daily News Publishing Company, Inc.
Historian Howard Zinn Calls for Activism
by Lea Yu
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Howard Zinn may be a historian, but he lives in the present.
As demonstrators for immigrant rights made their way around New Haven on May Day, Zinn assumed the stage at the Center Church on the New Haven Green, stressing the need for youth to engage in activism, to understand the darker aspects of American domestic and foreign policy, and to distinguish between allegiance to a government and allegiance to a country.
Evoking a rare mixture of political seriousness and light-hearted wit, the 84-year-old history professor spoke conversationally, prompting many audience members to laugh at his sense of humor or applaud when his musings culminated in calls for change.
“Our interests are not the same [as the government’s], despite our culture and the way it tries to indoctrinate us into thinking our interests are the same … we and the government, Exxon and me,” Zinn said to long, drawn-out laughter.
“Bush,” he then said with a pause, “and the young person he sends to war do not have the same interests.”
Strenuous clapping ensued.
The event, sponsored by Labyrinth Books, coincided with the release of Zinn’s “A Young People’s History of the United States,” a youth-oriented articulation of his seminal “A People’s History of the United States.” Though he emphasized that the two books do not differ substantially and that his message was the same to Americans both young and old, Zinn’s speech on Tuesday focused on the need for the “next generation of youth” to question the government and understand its complexities - an implicit criticism of what he sees as older Americans’ failures to do the same.
“We need something better,” he said. “With the situation we’re in, we can’t afford to have another generation that will go along with war. Or another nation that will go along with the nation’s enormous militarism.”
Youth today need to recognize the presence of social upheaval in America’s past in order to recognize the importance of activism, Zinn said, but history teaching has traditionally emphasized American unity while ignoring social movements and conflicts of interest that steered the country toward historical change.
As a result, he said, young people become discouraged when only 20 people show up for a war protest rally; they have no idea that the civil rights protests failed on multiple occasions before the movement saw even an inkling of attention or success.
Also lost upon American youth is the nation’s history of ignoring the interests of common people, Zinn said. He said events such as the Vietnam War exemplify the United States’s long record of using foreign policy to acquire needed resources, while operating under the guise of liberty, self-determination and freedom.
In short, youth today have the daunting task of separating themselves from a self-righteous national culture, Zinn said. In spite of the hubbub over America’s greatness, the historian said, the nation significantly trails many other countries when it comes to literacy rates, infant mortality and the promotion of human rights. Illustrating what he termed the hypocrisy of America’s condemnation of nuclear weapons, Zinn recalled a letter that his friend, the late Kurt Vonnegut, had sent to the New York Times.
“Not saying anything about Iran or North Korea, his letter just said this: ‘I know of only one country that has dropped nuclear weapons on defenseless people,’” Zinn said. “The Times did not print his letter.”
Most in the audience were old enough to have lived through the 1960s and ’70s, when Vonnegut first attracted a cult following, although young adults nearly composed a third of the audience. For New Haven resident Pat Topitzer, Zinn’s words reminded her of her own youth protest experiences and addressed what she considered a pressing issue.
“I think for people … it is startling [to see] the lack of involvement of young people,” she said. “We had [an anti-war] demonstration last year on the corner of Elm and York streets and it absolutely rocked me - there we were on the corner of two residential colleges and only one college student came out.”
Local resident Baub Biden said he found the youth turnout at the talk encouraging, but that it would take more than a re-evaluation of American history to change young people’s mentalities.
“You have a lot of people you are distracted by VH1, MTV, BET, and every time you turn on the TV there’s a reality show that’s kind of catchy,” Biden said. “So these people are at home, and they’re watching all of these distractions and they’re all talking about Britney Spears cutting her hair.”
Although he was not in attendance at Zinn’s speech, history professor Jean-Christophe Agnew said he had a great deal of respect for Zinn’s historical work, which he called highly influential and widely used. Though historians make it their work to study the past, it is not unusual for prominent professors such as Zinn to weigh in on current events, he said, citing a resolution opposing the war in Iraq that was recently ratified by the American Historical Association.
But that does not mean that all historians share the same point of view.
“In these moments of crisis, when the country is split … so historians are split,” Agnew said.
Copyright 1995-2007 Yale Daily News Publishing Company, Inc.
5/04/2007
Karl Marx in Southern Pines
[May 5 is Marx's birthday.]
Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx back to life to address a contemporary audience in Soho in this witty and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters. Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society, and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
Marx Is Back!
The Awakened Heart Center will present
Marx in Soho
A one character play, written by renowned people’s historian Howard Zinn, which combines hard-hitting information with humor, sharp politics and sheer delight. Marx in Soho won the 2000 Independent Publisher Award for best visionary fiction.Directed by Marcela Casals, and
produced and performed by Fenton Wilkinson.
Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx back to life to address a contemporary audience in Soho in this witty and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters. Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society, and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
The Gilbert Theater
Bow & Green Streets Fayetteville, NC
May 4th, 5th, 11th & 12th at 8:00 p.m.
May 6th & 13th at 2:00 & 8:00 p.m.
Cost: $10.00 For reservations: 910 678-7186
The Awakened Heart Center
130 N Ashe St Southern Pines, NC
May 18th & 19th at 7:30 p.m.
May 20 at 2:30 p.m.
Cost: $10.00 For reservations: 910 315-9252
Zinn on Anarchism
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress By Howard Zinn City Lights
Thursday 03 May 2007
An excerpt from Howard Zinn's new book - a collection of essays on history, class and the strength of ordinary citizens - explores the unfair trial of Sacco and Vanzetti and the flawed justice system that still haunts us today.
Fifty years after the executions of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts set up a panel to judge the fairness of the trial, and the conclusion was that the two men had not received a fair trial. This aroused a minor storm in Boston.
One letter, signed John M. Cabot, U.S. Ambassador Retired, declared his "great indignation" and pointed out that Governor Fuller's affirmation of the death sentence was made after a special review by "three of Massachusetts' most distinguished and respected citizens - President Lowell of Harvard, President Stratton of MIT and retired Judge Grant."
Those three "distinguished and respected citizens" were viewed differently by Heywood Broun, who wrote in his column for the New York World immediately after the Governor's panel made its report. He wrote:
It is not every prisoner who has a President of Harvard University throw on the switch for him .... If this is a lynching, at least the fish peddler and his friend the factory hand may take unction to their souls that they will die at the hands of men in dinner jackets or academic gowns.
Heywood Broun, one of the most distinguished journalists of the twentieth century, did not last long as a columnist for the New York World.
On that fiftieth year after the execution, The New York Times reported that: "Plans by Mayor Beame to proclaim next Tuesday 'Sacco and Vanzetti Day' have been canceled in an effort to avoid controversy, a City Hall spokesman said yesterday."
There must be good reason why a case fifty-years-old, now over seventy-five years old, arouses such emotion. I suggest that it is because to talk about Sacco and Vanzetti inevitably brings up matters that trouble us today - our system of justice, the relationship between war fever and civil liberties, and most troubling of all, the ideas of anarchism: the obliteration of national boundaries and therefore of war, the elimination of poverty, the creation of a full democracy.
The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses "Equal Justice Before the Law" have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system - because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native-born and the foreign-born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color. And while injustice may play itself out today more subtly and in more intricate ways than it did in the crude circumstances of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, its essence remains.
In their case, the unfairness was flagrant. They were being tried for robbery and murder, but in the minds, and in the behavior of the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and the jury, the important thing about them was that they were, as Upton Sinclair put it in his remarkable novel Boston, "wops," foreigners, poor workingmen, radicals.
Here is a sample of the police interrogation:
Police: Are you a citizen?
Sacco: No.
Police: Are you a Communist?
Sacco: No.
Police: Anarchist.
Sacco: No.
Police: Do you believe in this government of ours?
Sacco: Yes, Some things I like different.
What did these questions have to do with the robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, and the shooting of a paymaster and a guard?
Sacco was lying, of course. No, I'm not a Communist. No, I'm not an anarchist. Why would he lie to the police? Why would a Jew lie to the Gestapo? Why would a black in South Africa lie to his interrogators? Why would a dissident in Soviet Russia lie to the secret police? Because they all know there is no justice for them.
Has there ever been justice in the American system for the poor, the person of color, the radical? When the eight anarchists of Chicago were sentenced to death after the Haymarket riot (a police riot, that is) of 1886, it was not because there was any proof of a connection between them and the bomb thrown in the midst of the police - not a shred of evidence. It was because they were leaders of the anarchist movement in Chicago.
When Eugene Debs and a thousand others were sent to prison during World War I, under the Espionage Act, was it because they were guilty of espionage? Hardly. They were socialists who spoke out against the war. In affirming the ten-year sentence of Debs, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made it clear why Debs must go to prison. He quoted from Debs' speech: "The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles."
Holmes, much admired as one of our great liberal jurists, made clear the limits of liberalism, its boundaries set by a vindictive nationalism. After all the appeals of Sacco and Vanzetti had been exhausted, the case was put before Holmes, sitting on the Supreme Court. He refused to review the case, thus letting the verdict stand.
In our time, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair. Was it because they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union? Or was it because they were Communists, as the prosecutor made clear, with the approval of the judge? Was it also because the country was in the midst of anti-Communist hysteria, Communists had just taken power in China, there was a war in Korea, and the weight of all that could be borne by two American Communists?
Why was George Jackson, in California, sentenced to ten years in prison for a seventy-dollar robbery, and then shot to death by guards? Was it because he was poor, black, and radical?
Can a Muslim today, in the atmosphere of the "war on terrorism" be given equal justice before the law? Why was my upstairs neighbor, a dark-skinned Brazilian who might look like a Middle East Muslim, pulled out of his car by police, though he had violated no regulation, and questioned and humiliated?
Why are the two million people in American jails and prisons, and six million people under parole, probation, or surveillance, disproportionately people of color, disproportionately poor? A study showed that seventy percent of the people in New York state prisons came from seven neighborhoods in New York City-neighborhoods of poverty and desperation.
Class injustice cuts across every decade, every century of our history. In the midst of the Sacco Vanzetti case, a wealthy man in the town of Milton, south of Boston, shot and killed a man who was gathering firewood on his property. He spent eight days in jail, then was let out on bail, and was not prosecuted. The district attorney called it "justifiable homicide." One law for the rich, one law for the poor-a persistent characteristic of our system of justice.
But being poor was not the chief crime of Sacco and Vanzetti. They were Italians, immigrants, anarchists. It was less than two years from the end of the first World War. They had protested against the war. They had refused to be drafted. They saw hysteria mount against radicals and foreigners, observed the raids carried out by Attorney General Palmer's agents in the Department of Justice, who broke into homes in the middle of the night without warrants, held people incommunicado, and beat them with clubs and blackjacks.
In Boston, five hundred were arrested, chained together and marched through the streets. Luigi Galleani, editor of the anarchist paper Cronaca Sovversiva, to which Sacco and Vanzetti subscribed, was picked up in Boston and quickly deported.
Something even more frightening had happened. A fellow anarchist of Sacco and Vanetti, a typesetter named Andrea Salsedo, who lied in New York, was kidnapped by members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (I use the word "kidnapped" to describe an illegal seizure of a person), and held in FBI offices on the fourteenth floor of the Park Row Building. He was not allowed to call his family, friends, or a lawyer, was questioned and beaten, according to a fellow prisoner. During the eighth week of his imprisonment, on May 3, 1920, the body of Salsedo, smashed to a pulp, was found on the pavement near the Park Row Building, and the FBI announced that he had committed suicide by jumping from the fourteenth floor window of the room in which they had kept him. This was just two days before Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested.
We know today, as a result of Congressional reports in 1975, of the FBI's COINTELPRO program in which FBI agents broke into people's homes and offices, carried out illegal wiretaps, were involved in acts of violence to the point of murder and collaborated with the Chicago police in the killing of two Black Panther leaders in 1969. The FBI and the CIA have violated the law again and again. There is no punishment for them.
There is little reason to have faith that the civil liberties of people in this country would be protected in the atmosphere of hysteria that followed 9/11 and continues to this day. At home there have been immigrant round-ups, indefinite detentions, deportations, and unauthorized domestic spying. Abroad there have extra-judicial killings, torture, bombings, war, and military occupations.
Likewise, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti began immediately after Memorial Day, a year and a half after the orgy of death and patriotism that was World War I, when the newspapers still vibrating with the roll of drums and the jingo rhetoric.
Twelve days into the trial, the press reported that the bodies of three soldiers had been transferred from the battlefields of France to the city of Brockton, and that the whole town had turned out for a patriotic ceremony. All of this was in newspapers that members of the jury could read.
Sacco was cross-examined by prosecutor Katzmann:
Question: Did you love this country in the last week of May, 1917?
Sacco: That is pretty hard for me to say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.
Question: There are two words you can use, Mr. Sacco, yes or no. What one is it?
Sacco: Yes
Question: And in order to show your love for this United States of America when she was about to call upon you to become a soldier you ran away to Mexico?
At the beginning of the trial, Judge Thayer (who, speaking to a golf acquaintance, had referred to the defendants during the trial as "those anarchist bastards"), said to the jury: "Gentlemen, I call upon you to render this service here that you have been summoned to perform with the same spirit of patriotism, courage and devotion to duty as was exhibited by our soldier boys across the seas."
The emotions evoked by a bomb that exploded at Attorney General Palmer's home during a time of war - like emotions set loose by the violence of 9/11 - created an anxious atmosphere in which civil liberties were compromised.
Sacco and Vanzetti understood that whatever legal arguments their lawyers could come up with would not prevail against the reality of class justice. Sacco told the court, on sentencing: "I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class ... That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class."
That viewpoint seems dogmatic, simplistic. Not all court decisions are explained by it. But, lacking a theory that fits all cases, Sacco's simple, strong view is surely a better guide to understanding the legal system than one which assumes a contest among equals based on an objective search for truth.
Vanzetti knew that legal arguments would not save them. Unless a million Americans were organized, he and his friend Sacco would die. Not words, but struggle. Not appeals, but demands. Not petitions to the governor, but take-overs of the factories. Not lubricating the machinery of a supposedly fair system to make it work better, but a general strike to bring the machinery to a halt.
That never happened. Thousands demonstrated, marched, protested, not just in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, but in London, Paris, Buenos Aires, South Africa. It wasn't enough. On the night of their execution, thousands demonstrated in Charlestown, but kept away from the prison by a huge assembly of police. Protesters were arrested. Machine-guns were on the rooftops and great searchlights swept the scene.
A great crowd assembled in Union Square on August 23,1927. A few minutes after midnight, prison lights dimmed as the two men were electrocuted. The New York World described the scene: "The crowd responded with a giant sob. Women fainted in fifteen or twenty places. Others, too overcome, dropped to the curb and buried their heads in their hands. Men leaned on one anothers' shoulders and wept."
Their ultimate crime was their anarchism, an idea which today still startles us like a bolt of lightning because of its essential truth: we are all one, national boundaries and national hatreds must disappear, war is intolerable, the fruits of the earth must be shared, and only through organized struggle against authority can such a world come about.
What comes to us today from the case of Sacco and Vanzetti is not just tragedy, but inspiration. Their English was not perfect, but when they spoke it was a kind of poetry. Vanzetti said of his friend Sacco:
Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man; a man lover of nature and mankind. A man who gave all, who sacrifice all to the cause of liberty and to his love for mankind: money, rest, mundane ambition, his own wife, his children, himself and his own life ... Oh yes, I may be more witful, as some have put it, I am a better babbler than he is, but many, many times, in hearing his heartful voice ring a faith sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering his heroism I felt small, small at the presence of his greatness, and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, quench my heart throbbing to my throat to not weep before him - this man called chief and assassin and doomed.
Worst of all, they were anarchists, meaning they had some crazy notion of a full democracy in which neither foreignness nor poverty would exist, and thought that without these provocations, war among nations would end for all time. But for this to happen the rich would have to be fought and their riches confiscated. That anarchist idea is a crime much worse than robbing a payroll, and so to this day the story of Sacco and Vanzetti cannot be recalled without great anxiety.
Sacco wrote to his son Dante: "So son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother ... take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees ... But remember always, Dante, in this play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only ... help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends .... In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved."
Yes, it was their anarchism, their love for humanity, which doomed them. When Vanzetti was arrested, he had a leaflet in his pocket, advertising a meeting to take place in five days. It is a leaflet that could be distributed today, all over the world, as appropriate now as it was the day of their arrest. It read:
You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the part comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak.
That meeting did not take place. But their spirit still exists today with people who believe and love and struggle all over the world.
Thursday 03 May 2007
An excerpt from Howard Zinn's new book - a collection of essays on history, class and the strength of ordinary citizens - explores the unfair trial of Sacco and Vanzetti and the flawed justice system that still haunts us today.
Fifty years after the executions of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts set up a panel to judge the fairness of the trial, and the conclusion was that the two men had not received a fair trial. This aroused a minor storm in Boston.
One letter, signed John M. Cabot, U.S. Ambassador Retired, declared his "great indignation" and pointed out that Governor Fuller's affirmation of the death sentence was made after a special review by "three of Massachusetts' most distinguished and respected citizens - President Lowell of Harvard, President Stratton of MIT and retired Judge Grant."
Those three "distinguished and respected citizens" were viewed differently by Heywood Broun, who wrote in his column for the New York World immediately after the Governor's panel made its report. He wrote:
It is not every prisoner who has a President of Harvard University throw on the switch for him .... If this is a lynching, at least the fish peddler and his friend the factory hand may take unction to their souls that they will die at the hands of men in dinner jackets or academic gowns.
Heywood Broun, one of the most distinguished journalists of the twentieth century, did not last long as a columnist for the New York World.
On that fiftieth year after the execution, The New York Times reported that: "Plans by Mayor Beame to proclaim next Tuesday 'Sacco and Vanzetti Day' have been canceled in an effort to avoid controversy, a City Hall spokesman said yesterday."
There must be good reason why a case fifty-years-old, now over seventy-five years old, arouses such emotion. I suggest that it is because to talk about Sacco and Vanzetti inevitably brings up matters that trouble us today - our system of justice, the relationship between war fever and civil liberties, and most troubling of all, the ideas of anarchism: the obliteration of national boundaries and therefore of war, the elimination of poverty, the creation of a full democracy.
The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses "Equal Justice Before the Law" have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system - because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native-born and the foreign-born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color. And while injustice may play itself out today more subtly and in more intricate ways than it did in the crude circumstances of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, its essence remains.
In their case, the unfairness was flagrant. They were being tried for robbery and murder, but in the minds, and in the behavior of the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and the jury, the important thing about them was that they were, as Upton Sinclair put it in his remarkable novel Boston, "wops," foreigners, poor workingmen, radicals.
Here is a sample of the police interrogation:
Police: Are you a citizen?
Sacco: No.
Police: Are you a Communist?
Sacco: No.
Police: Anarchist.
Sacco: No.
Police: Do you believe in this government of ours?
Sacco: Yes, Some things I like different.
What did these questions have to do with the robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, and the shooting of a paymaster and a guard?
Sacco was lying, of course. No, I'm not a Communist. No, I'm not an anarchist. Why would he lie to the police? Why would a Jew lie to the Gestapo? Why would a black in South Africa lie to his interrogators? Why would a dissident in Soviet Russia lie to the secret police? Because they all know there is no justice for them.
Has there ever been justice in the American system for the poor, the person of color, the radical? When the eight anarchists of Chicago were sentenced to death after the Haymarket riot (a police riot, that is) of 1886, it was not because there was any proof of a connection between them and the bomb thrown in the midst of the police - not a shred of evidence. It was because they were leaders of the anarchist movement in Chicago.
When Eugene Debs and a thousand others were sent to prison during World War I, under the Espionage Act, was it because they were guilty of espionage? Hardly. They were socialists who spoke out against the war. In affirming the ten-year sentence of Debs, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made it clear why Debs must go to prison. He quoted from Debs' speech: "The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles."
Holmes, much admired as one of our great liberal jurists, made clear the limits of liberalism, its boundaries set by a vindictive nationalism. After all the appeals of Sacco and Vanzetti had been exhausted, the case was put before Holmes, sitting on the Supreme Court. He refused to review the case, thus letting the verdict stand.
In our time, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair. Was it because they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union? Or was it because they were Communists, as the prosecutor made clear, with the approval of the judge? Was it also because the country was in the midst of anti-Communist hysteria, Communists had just taken power in China, there was a war in Korea, and the weight of all that could be borne by two American Communists?
Why was George Jackson, in California, sentenced to ten years in prison for a seventy-dollar robbery, and then shot to death by guards? Was it because he was poor, black, and radical?
Can a Muslim today, in the atmosphere of the "war on terrorism" be given equal justice before the law? Why was my upstairs neighbor, a dark-skinned Brazilian who might look like a Middle East Muslim, pulled out of his car by police, though he had violated no regulation, and questioned and humiliated?
Why are the two million people in American jails and prisons, and six million people under parole, probation, or surveillance, disproportionately people of color, disproportionately poor? A study showed that seventy percent of the people in New York state prisons came from seven neighborhoods in New York City-neighborhoods of poverty and desperation.
Class injustice cuts across every decade, every century of our history. In the midst of the Sacco Vanzetti case, a wealthy man in the town of Milton, south of Boston, shot and killed a man who was gathering firewood on his property. He spent eight days in jail, then was let out on bail, and was not prosecuted. The district attorney called it "justifiable homicide." One law for the rich, one law for the poor-a persistent characteristic of our system of justice.
But being poor was not the chief crime of Sacco and Vanzetti. They were Italians, immigrants, anarchists. It was less than two years from the end of the first World War. They had protested against the war. They had refused to be drafted. They saw hysteria mount against radicals and foreigners, observed the raids carried out by Attorney General Palmer's agents in the Department of Justice, who broke into homes in the middle of the night without warrants, held people incommunicado, and beat them with clubs and blackjacks.
In Boston, five hundred were arrested, chained together and marched through the streets. Luigi Galleani, editor of the anarchist paper Cronaca Sovversiva, to which Sacco and Vanzetti subscribed, was picked up in Boston and quickly deported.
Something even more frightening had happened. A fellow anarchist of Sacco and Vanetti, a typesetter named Andrea Salsedo, who lied in New York, was kidnapped by members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (I use the word "kidnapped" to describe an illegal seizure of a person), and held in FBI offices on the fourteenth floor of the Park Row Building. He was not allowed to call his family, friends, or a lawyer, was questioned and beaten, according to a fellow prisoner. During the eighth week of his imprisonment, on May 3, 1920, the body of Salsedo, smashed to a pulp, was found on the pavement near the Park Row Building, and the FBI announced that he had committed suicide by jumping from the fourteenth floor window of the room in which they had kept him. This was just two days before Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested.
We know today, as a result of Congressional reports in 1975, of the FBI's COINTELPRO program in which FBI agents broke into people's homes and offices, carried out illegal wiretaps, were involved in acts of violence to the point of murder and collaborated with the Chicago police in the killing of two Black Panther leaders in 1969. The FBI and the CIA have violated the law again and again. There is no punishment for them.
There is little reason to have faith that the civil liberties of people in this country would be protected in the atmosphere of hysteria that followed 9/11 and continues to this day. At home there have been immigrant round-ups, indefinite detentions, deportations, and unauthorized domestic spying. Abroad there have extra-judicial killings, torture, bombings, war, and military occupations.
Likewise, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti began immediately after Memorial Day, a year and a half after the orgy of death and patriotism that was World War I, when the newspapers still vibrating with the roll of drums and the jingo rhetoric.
Twelve days into the trial, the press reported that the bodies of three soldiers had been transferred from the battlefields of France to the city of Brockton, and that the whole town had turned out for a patriotic ceremony. All of this was in newspapers that members of the jury could read.
Sacco was cross-examined by prosecutor Katzmann:
Question: Did you love this country in the last week of May, 1917?
Sacco: That is pretty hard for me to say in one word, Mr. Katzmann.
Question: There are two words you can use, Mr. Sacco, yes or no. What one is it?
Sacco: Yes
Question: And in order to show your love for this United States of America when she was about to call upon you to become a soldier you ran away to Mexico?
At the beginning of the trial, Judge Thayer (who, speaking to a golf acquaintance, had referred to the defendants during the trial as "those anarchist bastards"), said to the jury: "Gentlemen, I call upon you to render this service here that you have been summoned to perform with the same spirit of patriotism, courage and devotion to duty as was exhibited by our soldier boys across the seas."
The emotions evoked by a bomb that exploded at Attorney General Palmer's home during a time of war - like emotions set loose by the violence of 9/11 - created an anxious atmosphere in which civil liberties were compromised.
Sacco and Vanzetti understood that whatever legal arguments their lawyers could come up with would not prevail against the reality of class justice. Sacco told the court, on sentencing: "I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class ... That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class."
That viewpoint seems dogmatic, simplistic. Not all court decisions are explained by it. But, lacking a theory that fits all cases, Sacco's simple, strong view is surely a better guide to understanding the legal system than one which assumes a contest among equals based on an objective search for truth.
Vanzetti knew that legal arguments would not save them. Unless a million Americans were organized, he and his friend Sacco would die. Not words, but struggle. Not appeals, but demands. Not petitions to the governor, but take-overs of the factories. Not lubricating the machinery of a supposedly fair system to make it work better, but a general strike to bring the machinery to a halt.
That never happened. Thousands demonstrated, marched, protested, not just in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, but in London, Paris, Buenos Aires, South Africa. It wasn't enough. On the night of their execution, thousands demonstrated in Charlestown, but kept away from the prison by a huge assembly of police. Protesters were arrested. Machine-guns were on the rooftops and great searchlights swept the scene.
A great crowd assembled in Union Square on August 23,1927. A few minutes after midnight, prison lights dimmed as the two men were electrocuted. The New York World described the scene: "The crowd responded with a giant sob. Women fainted in fifteen or twenty places. Others, too overcome, dropped to the curb and buried their heads in their hands. Men leaned on one anothers' shoulders and wept."
Their ultimate crime was their anarchism, an idea which today still startles us like a bolt of lightning because of its essential truth: we are all one, national boundaries and national hatreds must disappear, war is intolerable, the fruits of the earth must be shared, and only through organized struggle against authority can such a world come about.
What comes to us today from the case of Sacco and Vanzetti is not just tragedy, but inspiration. Their English was not perfect, but when they spoke it was a kind of poetry. Vanzetti said of his friend Sacco:
Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man; a man lover of nature and mankind. A man who gave all, who sacrifice all to the cause of liberty and to his love for mankind: money, rest, mundane ambition, his own wife, his children, himself and his own life ... Oh yes, I may be more witful, as some have put it, I am a better babbler than he is, but many, many times, in hearing his heartful voice ring a faith sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering his heroism I felt small, small at the presence of his greatness, and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, quench my heart throbbing to my throat to not weep before him - this man called chief and assassin and doomed.
Worst of all, they were anarchists, meaning they had some crazy notion of a full democracy in which neither foreignness nor poverty would exist, and thought that without these provocations, war among nations would end for all time. But for this to happen the rich would have to be fought and their riches confiscated. That anarchist idea is a crime much worse than robbing a payroll, and so to this day the story of Sacco and Vanzetti cannot be recalled without great anxiety.
Sacco wrote to his son Dante: "So son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother ... take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees ... But remember always, Dante, in this play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only ... help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends .... In this struggle of life you will find more love and you will be loved."
Yes, it was their anarchism, their love for humanity, which doomed them. When Vanzetti was arrested, he had a leaflet in his pocket, advertising a meeting to take place in five days. It is a leaflet that could be distributed today, all over the world, as appropriate now as it was the day of their arrest. It read:
You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the part comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak.
That meeting did not take place. But their spirit still exists today with people who believe and love and struggle all over the world.
4/29/2007
Karl Marx in Fayetteville
The Gilbert Theater is pleased to present
Marx in Soho
Marx in Soho is a one character play, written by renowned people’s historian Howard Zinn, which combines hard-hitting information with humor, sharp politics and sheer delight.
Marx in Soho won the 2000 Independent Publisher Award for best visionary fiction.
Directed by Marcela Casals
Produced and performed by Fenton Wilkinson
Howard Zinn brings Karl Marx back to life to address a contemporary audience in Soho in this witty and insightful “play on history.” Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin,
and a host of other characters.
Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis for society,
and his passion for radical change — and the relevance of Marx's ideas for today.
May 4th, 5th, 11th & 12th at 8:00 p.m.
May 6th & 13th at 2:00 & 8:00 p.m.
The Gilbert Theater
Bow & Green Streets
Fayetteville, NC
Cost: $10.00
For reservations: 910 678-7186
3/26/2007
Politicians or Citizens?
Published on Saturday, March 24, 2007 by The Progressive
Are We Politicians or Citizens? by Howard Zinn
As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration’s “surge” of troops, and the Republicans’ refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.
That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, “like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.”
Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.
Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite—provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence—they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home.
It is four years since the United States invaded Iraq with a ferocious bombardment, with “shock and awe.” That is enough time to decide if the presence of our troops is making the lives of the Iraqis better or worse. The evidence is overwhelming. Since the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about two million Iraqis have left the country, and an almost equal number are internal refugees, forced out of their homes, seeking shelter elsewhere in the country.
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. But his capture and death have not made the lives of Iraqis better, as the U.S. occupation has created chaos: no clean water, rising rates of hunger, 50 percent unemployment, shortages of food, electricity, and fuel, a rise in child malnutrition and infant deaths. Has the U.S. presence diminished violence? On the contrary, by January 2007 the number of insurgent attacks has increased dramatically to 180 a day.
The response of the Bush Administration to four years of failure is to send more troops. To add more troops matches the definition of fanaticism: If you find you’re going in the wrong direction, redouble your speed. It reminds me of the physician in Europe in the early nineteenth century who decided that bloodletting would cure pneumonia. When that didn’t work, he concluded that not enough blood had been let.
The Congressional Democrats’ proposal is to give more funds to the war, and to set a timetable that will let the bloodletting go on for another year or more. It is necessary, they say, to compromise, and some anti-war people have been willing to go along. However, it is one thing to compromise when you are immediately given part of what you are demanding, if that can then be a springboard for getting more in the future. That is the situation described in the recent movie The Wind That Shakes The Barley, in which the Irish rebels against British rule are given a compromise solution—to have part of Ireland free, as the Irish Free State. In the movie, Irish brother fights against brother over whether to accept this compromise. But at least the acceptance of that compromise, however short of justice, created the Irish Free State. The withdrawal timetable proposed by the Democrats gets nothing tangible, only a promise, and leaves the fulfillment of that promise in the hands of the Bush Administration.
There have been similar dilemmas for the labor movement. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that unions, fighting for a new contract, must decide if they will accept an offer that gives them only part of what they have demanded. It’s always a difficult decision, but in almost all cases, whether the compromise can be considered a victory or a defeat, the workers have been given some thing palpable, improving their condition to some degree. If they were offered only a promise of something in the future, while continuing an unbearable situation in the present, it would not be considered a compromise, but a sellout. A union leader who said, “Take this, it’s the best we can get” (which is what the MoveOn people are saying about the Democrats’ resolution) would be hooted off the platform.
I am reminded of the situation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, when the black delegation from Mississippi asked to be seated, to represent the 40 percent black population of that state. They were offered a “compromise”—two nonvoting seats. “This is the best we can get,” some black leaders said. The Mississippians, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, turned it down, and thus held on to their fighting spirit, which later brought them what they had asked for. That mantra—“the best we can get”—is a recipe for corruption.
It is not easy, in the corrupting atmosphere of Washington, D.C., to hold on firmly to the truth, to resist the temptation of capitulation that presents itself as compromise. A few manage to do so. I think of Barbara Lee, the one person in the House of Representatives who, in the hysterical atmosphere of the days following 9/11, voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Afghanistan. Today, she is one of the few who refuse to fund the Iraq War, insist on a prompt end to the war, reject the dishonesty of a false compromise.
Except for the rare few, like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, and John Lewis, our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be “realistic.”
We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.
Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”
Are We Politicians or Citizens? by Howard Zinn
As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration’s “surge” of troops, and the Republicans’ refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.
That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, “like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.”
Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.
Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite—provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence—they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home.
It is four years since the United States invaded Iraq with a ferocious bombardment, with “shock and awe.” That is enough time to decide if the presence of our troops is making the lives of the Iraqis better or worse. The evidence is overwhelming. Since the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about two million Iraqis have left the country, and an almost equal number are internal refugees, forced out of their homes, seeking shelter elsewhere in the country.
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. But his capture and death have not made the lives of Iraqis better, as the U.S. occupation has created chaos: no clean water, rising rates of hunger, 50 percent unemployment, shortages of food, electricity, and fuel, a rise in child malnutrition and infant deaths. Has the U.S. presence diminished violence? On the contrary, by January 2007 the number of insurgent attacks has increased dramatically to 180 a day.
The response of the Bush Administration to four years of failure is to send more troops. To add more troops matches the definition of fanaticism: If you find you’re going in the wrong direction, redouble your speed. It reminds me of the physician in Europe in the early nineteenth century who decided that bloodletting would cure pneumonia. When that didn’t work, he concluded that not enough blood had been let.
The Congressional Democrats’ proposal is to give more funds to the war, and to set a timetable that will let the bloodletting go on for another year or more. It is necessary, they say, to compromise, and some anti-war people have been willing to go along. However, it is one thing to compromise when you are immediately given part of what you are demanding, if that can then be a springboard for getting more in the future. That is the situation described in the recent movie The Wind That Shakes The Barley, in which the Irish rebels against British rule are given a compromise solution—to have part of Ireland free, as the Irish Free State. In the movie, Irish brother fights against brother over whether to accept this compromise. But at least the acceptance of that compromise, however short of justice, created the Irish Free State. The withdrawal timetable proposed by the Democrats gets nothing tangible, only a promise, and leaves the fulfillment of that promise in the hands of the Bush Administration.
There have been similar dilemmas for the labor movement. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that unions, fighting for a new contract, must decide if they will accept an offer that gives them only part of what they have demanded. It’s always a difficult decision, but in almost all cases, whether the compromise can be considered a victory or a defeat, the workers have been given some thing palpable, improving their condition to some degree. If they were offered only a promise of something in the future, while continuing an unbearable situation in the present, it would not be considered a compromise, but a sellout. A union leader who said, “Take this, it’s the best we can get” (which is what the MoveOn people are saying about the Democrats’ resolution) would be hooted off the platform.
I am reminded of the situation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, when the black delegation from Mississippi asked to be seated, to represent the 40 percent black population of that state. They were offered a “compromise”—two nonvoting seats. “This is the best we can get,” some black leaders said. The Mississippians, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, turned it down, and thus held on to their fighting spirit, which later brought them what they had asked for. That mantra—“the best we can get”—is a recipe for corruption.
It is not easy, in the corrupting atmosphere of Washington, D.C., to hold on firmly to the truth, to resist the temptation of capitulation that presents itself as compromise. A few manage to do so. I think of Barbara Lee, the one person in the House of Representatives who, in the hysterical atmosphere of the days following 9/11, voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Afghanistan. Today, she is one of the few who refuse to fund the Iraq War, insist on a prompt end to the war, reject the dishonesty of a false compromise.
Except for the rare few, like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, and John Lewis, our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be “realistic.”
We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.
Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”
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