Do not dishonor the man by suggesting that Howard Zinn “rest in peace.”
Dr. Zinn believed that there was no more meaningful action than to be involved in struggle, no more fulfilling or important way of living one’s life than in struggle fighting for justice.
Last November, Dr. Zinn spoke to an audience at Boston University:
…”Look for some peace organization to join. It looks small at first and pitiful and helpless, but that’s how movements start. That’s how the movement against the Vietnam War started — it started with handfuls of people who thought they were helpless, thought they were powerless. But remember that the power of people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power. When workers go on strike, huge corporations loose their power. When consumers boycott, huge business establishments have to give in. When soldiers refuse to fight…war can’t go on…government has to decide that we can’t continue. So yes, people have the power if they begin to organize, if they protest, if you create a strong enough movement people can change things. That’s all I want to say.”
Anthony Arnove (co-editor with Howard Zinn of “Voices of a People’s History of the U.S.“) said, “Howard never rested. He had such an energy and over the last few years, continued to write, speak and bring a new generation of people into contact with voices of dissent, voices of protest that this generation isn’t [gleaning] from its textbooks or the establishment media…[to keep ever-present the importance of] the power of our own voice, to remind us of the power of dissent and the power of protest.
“Howard Zinn inspired people to create the kinds of movements that brought about whatever rights, whatever freedoms, whatever liberties we have in this country and that really is the legacy that’s incumbent upon all of us to extend, to keep alive and to keep vibrant.”
It’s no wonder he titled his 2002 autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train”.
Naomi Klein reminds us that, “Howard Zinn’s message was don’t believe in great men, believe in yourself. History comes from the bottom up. We have forgotten how change happens in this country — we think that you can just vote and the change will happen for us. You make the change you want.”
You make the change you want…
And do you know who’s doing that today? Teabaggers! Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com, reported cumulative crowd size from April 15 Tax-day events to be an estimated 311,460 for 346 cities. The September 12 march on Washington brought tens of thousands. They are anarchists — seeking, by definition (Oxford’s), “a state absent of government in which each individual has absolute liberty,” defining freedom as “political and economic self-rule” and perpetuating laissez-faire capitalism which begets political corruption.
This is not the change I want.
When we fund wars to the tune of $955 billion since 2001 — and more importantly, at a cost of more than 100,000 civilians and 4,692 military forces in Iraq and an estimated 50,000 civilians and 1,608 U.S. military forces in Afghanistan (notwithstanding 2009′s nearly 350 troop suicides), when we exempt defense spending from the fiscal discipline applied to all other agencies (and to put that in context, Huffington Post reported that “the CBO estimated that for fiscal year 2009, the government will spend $584 billion on non-defense discretionary spending. Meanwhile, the U.S. will lay out $657 billion on defense spending.”), when we bail out corporations ($2,065,516,000,000 in direct loans originally…$1,841,816,000,000 outstanding; $7,126,582,000,000 in indirect loans and guarantees…$5,167,582,000,000 outstanding; and I could go on, but you can read more here)…when we protect the “haves” by taking resources from the “have nots” (a three year freeze on discretionary spending of domestic programs) we betray every fiber of our humanity if not our credibility.
I say credibility for a couple of reasons: (1) The New York Times reports that “for the coming fiscal year, the reductions would be $10 billion to $15 billion. Last year Mr. Obama proposed to cut a similar amount — $11.5 billion.” In other words, Obama’s tough talk on reining fiscal spending by freezing the budgets of domestic programs seems like standard operating procedure.
(2) “The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.”
Last thought on credibility. If Obama really thinks repealing DADT is “the right thing to do,” just do it through executive order. At this point, I think we all realize that everything the Administration puts to Congress will be subject to filibuster (if not a Tea Party event) so let’s use a little of the political capital that propelled you to office. Besides, we’ve got Defense Secretary Robert Gates applauding on tape, so go for it already.
