Howard Zinn: Don't Mourn - Organize!

Historian and activist Howard Zinn died on January 27 at the age of 87. Our paths crossed briefly, even before I knew who he was and started reading his works. I was a student at Boston University in 1978-79 while Zinn was a professor there. During a maintenance workers strike in 1979, some professors continued to hold classes, while others (including Zinn) canceled theirs to honor the strike. Each student had to decide whether or not to cross the picket lines in order to attend those classes being held; being forced as a 19-year-old to think about where I stood on a matter of principle like this made a lasting impression on me. I'm sure Zinn would have been pleased by the lengthy discussions that went on in the dorms over this issue, because he wanted people to think about their actions.

Rather than attempt to recount his remarkable life, the impact he had on how history is told, or his contributions to our social movements, I strongly urge you to do the following:

• Read (or re-read) his classic work, A People's History Of The United States. This amazing book tells the stories you won't read anywhere else, and also retells the stories you thought you knew, but from another perspective. Beginning with the treatment of the Arawak natives of the Bahama islands by Columbus in 1492, Zinn retells our country's history through the words of people like Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and Mary "Mother" Jones. My own well-thumbed copy, purchased a few years after its 1980 publication, is where I first learned about the Haymarket Affair, the Ludlow Massacre, the annexation of Hawaii, and other events they didn't teach about in school.
• Watch Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train, the 2004 documentary narrated by actor Matt Damon. My wife and I watched it yesterday, and we were captivated by the story of his work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Georgia and by the films of his speeches providing a historical context of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
• Follow the advice of Joe Hill, an organizer and songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or "Wobblies"). In 1915, he was falsely accused of killing a grocer during a robbery in Utah, and was sentenced to death. According to Zinn's People's History (p. 327 in my copy), Joe Hill wrote a letter after the verdict saying, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."

In this case, we might allow ourselves a bit of time to mourn the loss of Howard Zinn, but after that he would want us to get right back to the work of making sure the voices of the people are heard - people from our past as well as the people of today.