Howard Zinn on Social Engagement

[Truth2Tell]

http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4128

A Marvelous Victory

February, 01 2010
By Zinn, Howard
Howard Zinn's ZSpace Page

American historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn died January 27, 2010, aged 87. His light will shine bright into the far off future. A new socially just world will owe a great debt to Howard and others like him who gave so much of themselves for us. -- ZNet Staff

Below is an excerpt from his recent book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress published by City Lights Books, www.citylights.com. At the bottom of this commentary are links to various ZNet obituaries remembering Howard.

In this world of war and injustice, how does a person manage to stay socially engaged, committed to the struggle, and remain healthy without burning out or becoming resigned or cynical?

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia in that most sluggish of semi feudal empires not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?

http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4128">Whole thing here...

[EFerrari]

1. Kick for beautiful Howard Zinn.

[autorank]

2. k*r What a tremendous loss. Thanks

Last of his interviews

Part 1 Dec 14, 2009
http://agonist.org/michael_collins/20100128/howard_zinn_talks_about_the_people_speak

Part 2 Jan 25, 2010
http://agonist.org/michael_collins/20100128/howard_zinn_jan_25_interview_part_2_supreme_court_haiti

[struggle4progress]

3. "We should not give up . before all . cards have been played." Amen!

[EFerrari]

4. Kick

Btw, Free Speech TV is doing a fund drive but also playing the doc "You can't be neutral on a moving train".

Catch it if you can. It's gorgeous. :party:

[Echo In Light]

5. K&R