A Call to Action

Howard Zinn has inspired many, many people. I know because he inspired me, spurred me to question, to learn more, and sometimes even to act. I don’t remember exactly when I learned about him--sometime when I was around eleven or twelve--but I know it is because of him that I have studied social justice issues, because of him that I have ever questioned our current economic system and governance system, because of him that I can at least purport to be a political radical, disagreeing with the actions of ruling parties, protesting imperialism.

Howard Zinn woke me up to the importance of history, a discipline I had never truly found interesting until he showed me how history connected essentially with present-day events, how it revolved around fascinating struggles of people and deeply flawed systems which we still live with, in one form or other, to this day. Howard Zinn ignited in me a deep appreciation for the study and interpretation of history, not only as an act of learning, but as an act of social conscience. With that act, he also drew from me a great respect, appreciation, and admiration for Howard Zinn as a human being.

This admiration made me leap at the chance to go to New York City to witness Howard Zinn speak about this project which we just watched, the documentary "The People Speak", and later to commit the unusual act of sitting in front of a television to watch that same documentary as it aired on the History Channel. After seeing him speak, I dreamed of sneaking off to Boston University and taking his classes, getting to actually discuss the issues I felt passionate about with the person who had made me passionate about them. Of course, I never realized that dream. I never exchanged a word with Howard Zinn. He died about three months after I saw him in New York.

My mother and I got a call from a friend the day he died, and I felt sad at his passing, though after all he had already accomplished I did not consider it too tragic. But the refrain I heard repeated constantly after his death was “Don’t Mourn, Organize.” Organize what? I didn’t know how, didn’t know what to organize. I read more Howard Zinn stuff. I shared my enthusiasm about him with fellow Zinn fans. I quoted him. I even went to Washington to protest the U.S.’s current imperialist wars, which left me with two overwhelming emotions: one of exhilaration, and one of “Now What?.” I still don’t really know. Various people, my mother among them, organized this screening, which seems to me to be an important way to invoke change, but is not the change itself.

It thrills me to think of all the people who will attend these screenings. Howard Zinn said that ”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.” I think attending this film is part of that victory. But simply attending a film is not enough if we take this idea and leave it in our minds with no life outside the realms of our imagination: if we choose, as Zinn said, to just watch rather than participate, knowing “that our choice will help determine the outcome.”

I think, then, that the most important question those of us inspired by Howard Zinn and this documentary can ask is What can I, what can we do to work toward a more peaceful, just, and equal world like the one Howard Zinn envisioned?

I think it is interesting that Noam Chomsky, a friend of Howard Zinn’s, has commented that it is only in so-called developed countries that people ask him what to do; in the global south, people don’t ask, they tell him what they’re doing. Can’t we, with our enormous privileges, in a nation which does not yet unconditionally repress peaceful dissent, find it in ourselves to act on the causes Zinn championed: Equality, justice, peace? As the countless stories of dissenters show, we, the people, do have the power, for as Howard Zinn said “The elite’s weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population.”

It is because of this that I offer the only idea I could organize for this screening: that if people feel inspired and moved to action by this film, and would like to try to learn more about social movements and act on the legacy of Howard Zinn, they can share their email addresses and communicate with other like-minded people to organize cooperative actions.

A time like this, with its enormous injustice and suffering, offers equally enormous opportunities for positive action. This movement is not a system based, like our politics and economics, on competition and hierarchy, but one that has plenty of room, and plenty of need, for us all.