Posted by alexbradshaw (Msg) on 2010-01-28 12:49:44:

Howard Zinn: Rest In Peace

Reflections from some of his closest friends

Howard Zinn is an individual who had a great impact on me. I still have a copy of the unreturned A People's History of the United States that I checked out from the U of L library so many years ago, getting a radical analysis when I was probably supposed to be studying a more moderate, safe, and liberal one.

Howard Zinn was a personification of bottom-up struggle; while he was a brilliant scholar and writer, he never once attempted to be a vanguardist. He stood with the oppressed people, whether the working class, dissident soldiers, or communities of color in the South. He was a consistent peace and social justice activist, as well as an active participant in the civil rights movement.

He championed the unsung heroes of history, from anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman, to the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the South, the kind of organization that participated with others and, from the grassroots, created platforms for celebrities and "leaders" of the civil rights movement. One of Zinn's missions was to make sure that history wasn't written at such a crude level, that we had an understanding that it was not charismatic leaders that create movements, rather the oppressed people from the bottom-up.

Yesterday we lost a voice that can never be replaced, leaving an eternal void. Zinn's optimism for true democracy and people's capacity to change their current situation, however,lives on in the millions of lives he touched; I'm certainly one of them. Spare a thought today for our fallen comrade, Howard Zinn.