Boston Globe, front page, 1/30
I first met him a few months after moving to Massachusetts; Howard was supposed to talk about what was then his latest book, Three Strikes, but seeing as how the event at the BPL took place in mid September 2001, the conversation quickly moved to,uh, more timely subjects. Having finally got around A People’s History, I wanted to see the man; I was not disappointed.
Nor was I disappointed on the several occasions he joined us on Boston Common as we fulminated against the Iraq War; when he spoke at First Parish, along with Patti Smith, on behalf of Ralph Nader; or when I last saw him, Spring ’08, at Old South Church, where he did a benefit for Spare Change newspaper.
autographing a pic for Cate
at Old South Church, Spring 2008)
Because that what was Howard did–whatever was needed at the time. Whether it meant signing on in World War II to fight fascists, teaching (and organizing) at a black college in the fifties, putting his job on the line (again) to protest against the Viet Nam war in the sixties, he was there. Physically. He knew the importance of getting out of the libraries and away from the computer screens, of putting theory on the backburner and putting your reputation, your livelihood, and your physical well-being on the line.
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addressing the crowd at antiwar rally, Boston Common, 2005
Which didn’t mean he ever discounted the importance of the printed word–or picture, seeing as how his last book, A Peopel’s History of American Empire, was an instant classic in the burgeoning field of graphic novels(Viggo Mortenson reads from it here, accompanied by the graphics). If there was a medium through which to change lives, he was all over it–including supporting the production of Shouting Theatre in a Crowded Fire a surrealistic adaptation of his writing performed at Suffolk U last year.
I know many of you had far more, and more intimate, contact; I’m envious; and I hope to hear your reminisces below–same with all those who never met him personally, but whose lives were altered as profoundly as was my mine by this man, and who found his own cheerful persistence in even the dreariest of years reason to carry on. Me, I’m grateful to have moved to and lived in Boston whilst giants like he and Chomsky roamed the landscape.
Damn. It really isn’t going to be the same without him.
Campaigning for Nader, First Parish Church, C’bridge, 2004
On Boston Common, 2005
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From a 2004 interview in Guernica magazine:
Howard Zinn: I think the next most important issue is health care, which is going to take a beating as a result of the money allocated for the war-which can’t be solved. The problem of giving health care to everybody cannot be solved so long… as we’re spending huge sums of money for war. Already we have a very wasteful healthcare system, the most wasteful healthcare system in the world. I mean, we spend the most money and still have 40 million people without insurance.
Compare us to Cuba. You know, Cuba is our enemy, run by a dictator, Fidel Castro. But people in Cuba get health care at least equal to that of the United States-with very scarce resources. Canada does a much better job, a much more efficient job of giving health care to its citizens. So I think this issue is the most important domestic issue.
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Zinn’s passing reminds me of how crucial it is that political engagement does not just encounter the present and future, but also to become aware of the past and the struggles that came before. History provides the context and potential to realizing and imagining the future. When I realize that those things I take for granted were fought for, in word and deed, it gives the backdrop and knowledge necessary to carry out that struggle forward.
Mass media and the institutions that socialize us present a distorted and biased picture of the past. There is no greater aid to political change than a populace with a self-aware and critical understanding of their past, something which cannot be assumed but must be encouraged consciously in the ways people are politically engaged. Forums, media, art, journalism, celebrations, music, speeches, and even soundbites in the last instance can start the process of a critical and public historical awareness.
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Tribute to Zinn in The Globe from James Carroll, whom I’ve long considered the best writer, not merely for the paper, but in Boston. (House of War is a deeply personal account of the Pentagon in the post-war period–can’t recommend it highly enough).