The Occupy-movement has struck a chord in many people worldwide. Resistance against corporate greed and an economic system run by our times’ robber barons - the bankers - is shaping societies whether we applaud, advocate and participate - or snub, snooze and sneer...
There are people who will forever refuse to listen to the critics who would claim that such mass movements are futile, undemocratic or naïve... Those grand people tune out, and rightly so. Democracy is, in fact, about much more than mere parliamentary elections, and these mass movements form the frontlines of democracy, and they’re everything but futile.
“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 marvellous victory.”
…the words of the late Howard Zinn, who, had he been alive, would have been right in the thick of things, refusing to step down. Industry worker, war veteran, historian, and teacher; an enquiring person who became a formidable fighter and front figure of some of the most central people’s movements of the twentieth century in the United States.
His memoir, with all of its insight, determination, and heaps of compassion for those in society who have the odds stacked against them, tells us why. This is a joint tribute to the man, and kind of a book report of You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.
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Formation Years
Growing up in a humble home into which hard-working parents could only bring marginal material returns for all their efforts, made an impression on a searching young mind. Zinn would live out his life resenting the sentiment of “The American dream” – mainly because the crucial implication; if you are poor, it means you haven’t worked hard enough.
His parents – not eager readers themselves – managed to obtain the complete works of Charles Dickens by saving coupons from newspapers. And thus were life-long accompanying principles roused in their son; compassion for the poor, and anger at the power which keeps wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.
When, as a teenager, Zinn experienced being clobbered in the head by a New York police officer for partaking in a demonstration - which he vows was both peaceful and orderly - the radical awoke. Accords could not be made with the system; the core was rotten, he found. The old order would need weeding out in order to establish a cooperative, peaceful and egalitarian society.
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Teaching at Spelman College
Starting in 1956, Zinn taught for 7 years at Spelman College – a black female college in Atlanta, Georgia. Although initially just looking for a job, Zinn was well primed for the realities of the US South, and soon came to realise the stark resemblance the region bore to apartheid South Africa in terms of racial segregation. Consequently, it did not take long for Zinn and his students to have their first little run-in with the status quo of the South; taking seats in the main section of the gallery instead of the “coloured” section of a 1957 session of the Georgia state legislature.
In time, as the courage and resolve of the students grew by the week, Zinn was there to encourage them to seek social change; pointing out – as he was wont to do – that even individual acts, although many go unrecorded and seem futile or bitter, help to keep the spirit of defiance alive. There is no telling which act can become the “invisible roots of social change”.
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On the Frontlines of Democracy
In the summer of 1964 when the Gulf of Tonkin incident[1] happened in Vietnam and the United States escalated their troop presence in the country, the veteran bombardier of WWII Zinn, reading the lessons of history, became an early campaigner against the Vietnam War. His experiences in Europe in 1945 had taught him what the atmosphere and momentum of war can do; in the author’s own words, war “begets a fanaticism in which the original moral factor is buried at the bottom of a heap of atrocities committed by all sides”.
A stark believer that war can never solve any fundamental problems, whatever they may be, Zinn adamantly refused the justice of war.
With the indiscriminate slaughter it brings, modern warfare can never be justified by mere ideological – or other – differences. The occurrence of such is always manufactured by political leaders, who, through propaganda or enticement, manage to mobilise a population. These were the very beliefs which would lead Zinn to the front of the battle for the democratic principles; the most important being that all men are created equal, regardless of nationality. From encouraging young Americans to resist the draft, to engagements at vast rallies at the Boston Common, Zinn stood his ground and was an important part of the resistance movement against the US aggression in Vietnam, from beginning to end.
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A Positive Outlook to Topple the Topsy-Turviness of the World
The philosophy of Howard Zinn is one of always maintaining hope. History, in fact, consists of stories of hope – not despair. Hope, however, is based on uncertainties; wishful thinking if you will. Zinn advocates that new and more positive readings of history will prompt many to feel something of a responsibility to such wishful thinking. Reflecting more holistically on history, we even discover that we have no right to despair, but rather must insist on hope.
Howard Zinn would always insist to his students that “you cannot be neutral on a moving train” – denoting that objectivity neither does nor should exist. Honest and forward, he always made it clear that all that he read, wrote, taught and did was permeated by his personal experiences. Furthermore, “education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world”. Howard Zinn lived that belief. He believed that he could teach his students – the next generation – more by what he did than what he said.
While institutionalised racial segregation in the United States is a thing of the past by now, the structural obstacles remain – there and elsewhere. It is a fetid friend, the economic system which rewards in lavish manner a select few while many are consigned to poverty, misery and indignity – generation after generation.
Currently, global inequality is growing and the degradation of democratic values is frightening. Yet, 2011 has seen the concrete stirring of a number of peoples’ movements; something is in the air; an assail on the forces of inequality is underway. Movements are calling for change. And while we consider the desirability, prospects or likelihood of positive change, Howard Zinn’s memory and memoir is there to help us remember that things have happened before, and results have been achieved, time and time again, in similar struggles.
Not knowing history is like being born yesterday – one lacks perspective. We – the people – have a responsibility to know history. Not only that; but also to attempt to read it from below. It just might make us realise our responsibility of remaining positive and inspire the right kinds of responses.
[1] The Tonkin incident refers to the alleged attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy. The US story has long been denounced as a forgery.
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