howard zinn
intro’d via Noam and Arundhati..
what we need most: the energy of 7bn alive people
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here an interview with Bill Moyers 2009:
http://billmoyers.com/content/howard-zinn-on-the-power-of-people/
think for yourselves…
ordinary people.. getting together..
Matt was Howard’s next door neighbor
democracy isn’t the 3 branches of the govt. it’s people. bottom up.
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Matt Damon, a lifelong friend of Howard Zinn and his family, read excerpts from a speech Howard Zinn gave in 1970 as part of a debate on civil disobedience.
Matt Damon from Howard Zinn’s speech: The Problem is Civil Obedience
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http://howardzinn.org/
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Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, author, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University for 24 years and taught history at Spelman College for 7 years. Zinn wrote more than 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People’s History of the United States. He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn’s life and work.
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You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
2 min – to be neutral is to collaborate with whatever is going on
3 min – if you worked hard you would become rich – really meant – if you were poor – you weren’t working hard enough
earn a living ness – work ethic
5 min – dickens influence – 10 cent start – after finding books on the street – tarzan
13 min – Howard describes his first ideas on the war and bombing..
18 min – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
20 min – spellman college
22 min – when people turn to protest, et al, proof that there is not proper means of communication
24 min – fired from spellman
25 min – on fbi’s list
35 min – first time on the receiving end of bombing
42 min – book on vietnam
47 mn – the law is not holy writ
purpose of civil disobedience is to trouble people
48 min – howard arrested aggressively
53 min – he (silber) had these buildings, trees, … and i had these 400 students
57 min – in writing this book (a people’s history) i wanted to awaken a consciousness and a hidden resistance… people who seem to have no power – once the organize – have a power that no govt can suppress
1:02 – we are not starting from scratch
1:03 – writes plays: emma and marx in soho
1:04 – 60’s to 99 – howard has made himself useful… to people
1:05 – don’t ask who deserves it – every human being deserves it
1:06 – war is like crack – you get a fix.. a high.. then you need another…. wars are always accompanied by lies… one basic notion – expansion/economics/power
1:08 – a govt that is ruthless about what it does to other countries.. is ruthless about what it does to its own people
1:11 – the language of terrorism – collateral damage.. accident.. after all of that will iraq be a democracy – the real question is will the us be a democracy.. all we lose is the soul of america
1:13 – if the movement is strong enough – it doesn’t matter who is in the white house
the secret is people
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Howard interviewed on – you can’t be neutral on a moving train:
Howard interviewed on – you can’t be neutral on a moving train:
42 min – on war as addiction. war gets labeled as by the people – when it’s by the govt. studies are done to show the aggressiveness of people.. to say we need war to keep aggressive people in line.. and because they want it. if people were more inclined to war than to compassion – we wouldn’t have to recruit for war..
http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Neutral-Moving-Train/dp/0807071277
http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Quit-Reflections-Optimistic-Historian/dp/0896086763
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on a people’s history:
a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites. A People’s History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States.[1] It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored.[2] The book was a runner-up in 1980 for the National Book Award. It has been frequently revised, with the most recent edition covering events through 2005. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique for the French version of this book, Une histoire populaire des États-Unis. More than two million copies have been sold.
In a 1998 interview, Zinn said he had set “quiet revolution” as his goal for writing A People’s History. “Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions.
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a people’s history:
book links to amazon
notes/highlights:
ch 1 – columbus
. . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 1). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
my short version – columbus – got money from nobility in spain (who were 2% of population – owning 95% of land) – for the purpose of looking for gold. he would take natives as slaves to help them find gold on their lands.
On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.
In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route.
In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it , they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 4). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations. To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves— unwittingly— to justify what was done.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 8-9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It is as if there really is a “national interest” represented in the Constitution, in…. territorial expansion..
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
My viewpoint , in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 10). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 10). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 10). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 10). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer , the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 18). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Columbus called them Indians, because he miscalculated the size of the earth. In this book we too call them Indians, with some reluctance, because it happens too often that people are saddled with names given them by their conquerors. And yet, there is some reason to call them Indians, because they did come, perhaps 25,000 years ago, from Asia, Europe, Africa were going through about the same time
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 18). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: “No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers. . . . Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 20). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. They were taught equality in status and the sharing of possessions. The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children; they did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn self-care.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 20). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
So, Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 21). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: “Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 21-22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 2 – color lines
There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States. And the problem of “the color line,” as W. E. B. Du Bois put it, is still with us. So it is more than a purely historical question to ask: How does it start?— and an even more urgent question: How might it end? Or, to put it differently: Is it possible for whites and blacks to live together without hatred?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 23). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Their helplessness made enslavement easier. The Indians were on their own land. The whites were in their own European culture. The blacks had been torn from their land and culture, forced into a situation where the heritage of language, dress, custom, family relations, was bit by bit obliterated except for the remnants that blacks could hold on to by sheer, extraordinary persistence.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The inhabitants of the Guinea Coast were described by one traveler around 1680 as “very civil and good-natured people, easy to be dealt with, condescending to what Europeans require of them in a civil way, and very ready to return double the presents we make them.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts law in the Congo in the early sixteenth century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punished brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted, the idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million human beings to death and slavery in those centuries we call the beginnings of modern Western civilization, at the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
If racism can’t be shown to be natural, then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 31). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp , has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were “remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences.” Black and white worked together, fraternized together.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 31). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
By 1700, in Virginia, there were 6,000 slaves, one-twelfth of the population. By 1763, there were 170,000 slaves , about half the population.
Blacks were easier to enslave than whites or Indians. But they were still not easy to enslave. From the beginning, the imported black men and women resisted their enslavement. Ultimately their resistance was controlled, and slavery was established for 3 million blacks in the South.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 32). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
When the very first black slaves were brought into Hispaniola in 1503 , the Spanish governor of Hispaniola complained to the Spanish court that fugitive Negro slaves were teaching disobedience to the Indians.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 32). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make $ 257 on every Negro in a year, and spend only $ 12 or $ 13 on his keep.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 33). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A letter to London from South Carolina in 1720 reports: I am now to acquaint you that very lately we have had a very wicked and barbarous plot of the designe of the negroes rising with a designe to destroy all the white people in the country and then to take Charles Town in full body but it pleased God it was discovered and many of them taken prisoners and some burnt and some hang’d and some banish’d.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 36). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 37). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Virginia’s ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 37). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not “natural.” This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 38). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 3
lots of bad stuff.. and lots of.. fearing that indians and black and poor whites would unite and overtake..
Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 57-58). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 4 – tyranny
Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 59). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command. Starting with Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, by 1760, there had been eighteen uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial governments. There had also been six black rebellions, from South Carolina to New York , and forty riots of various origins.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 59). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
With the French defeated, the British government could turn its attention to tightening control over the colonies. It needed revenues to pay for the war, and looked to the colonies for that.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 60). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Gary Nash’s study of city tax lists shows that by the early 1770s, the top 5 percent of Boston’s taxpayers controlled 49% of the city’s taxable assets.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 60). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own purposes.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 61). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In that county in the 1760s, the Regulators organized to prevent the collection of taxes, or the confiscation of the property of tax delinquents. Officials said “an absolute Insurrection of a dangerous tendency has broke out in Orange County,” and made military plans to suppress it. At one point seven hundred armed farmers forced the release of two arrested Regulator leaders.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 64). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The biggest problem was to keep the propertyless people, who were unemployed and hungry in the crisis following the French war, under control.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 65). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
At this time, the top 10 percent of Boston’s taxpayers held about 66 percent of Boston’s taxable wealth, while the lowest 30 percent of the taxpaying population had no taxable property at all. The propertyless could not vote and so (like blacks, women, Indians) could not participate in town meetings.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 65). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A crowd gathered in front of the customhouse and began provoking the soldiers, who fired and killed first Crispus Attucks, a mulatto worker, then others. This became known as the Boston Massacre. ..Perhaps ten thousand people marched in the funeral procession for the victims of the Massacre, out of a total Boston population of sixteen thousand.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 67). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The crowd forced the officials to resign. The Committees of Correspondence of Boston and other towns welcomed this gathering, but warned against destroying private property. (boston tea party)
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 67). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Later, during the controversy over adopting the Constitution, Paine would once again represent urban artisans, who favored a strong central government. He seemed to believe that such a government could represent some great common interest. In this sense, he lent himself perfectly to the myth of the Revolution— that it was on behalf of a united people. The Declaration of Independence brought that myth to its peak of eloquence.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 70). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Then, in its second paragraph, came the powerful philosophical statement: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 71). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
All this, the language of popular control over governments, the right of rebellion and revolution, indignation at political tyranny, economic burdens, and military attacks, was language well suited to unite large numbers of colonists, and persuade even those who had grievances against one another to turn against England. Some Americans were clearly omitted from this circle of united interest drawn by the Declaration of Independence: Indians, black slaves, women. Indeed, one paragraph of the Declaration charged the King with inciting slave rebellions and Indian attacks:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 72). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Thomas Jefferson had written a paragraph of the Declaration accusing the King of transporting slaves from Africa to the colonies and “suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” This seemed to express moral indignation against slavery and the slave trade (Jefferson’s personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 72). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Surely, inspirational language to create a secure consensus is still used, in our time , to cover up serious conflicts of interest in that consensus, and to cover up , also, the omission of large parts of the human race.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 73). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The philosophy of the Declaration, that government is set up by the people to secure their life, liberty, and happiness, and is to be overthrown when it no longer does that, is often traced to the ideas of John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 73). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Locke’s statement of people’s government was in support of a revolution in England for the free development of mercantile capitalism at home and abroad. Locke himself regretted that the labor of poor children “is generally lost to the public till they are twelve or fourteen years old” and suggested that all children over three, of families on relief, should attend “working schools” so they would be “from infancy . . . inured to work.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 73-74). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Christopher Hill wrote in The Puritan Revolution: “The establishment of parliamentary supremacy, of the rule of law, no doubt mainly benefited the men of property.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 74). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Four days after the reading (of the declaration of independence), the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 76). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 5 – revolution
Alexander Hamilton, an aide of George Washington and an up-and-coming member of the new elite, wrote from his headquarters: “. . . our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep. . . . They are determined not to be free. . . . If we are saved, France and Spain must save us.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 77). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the military became a place of promise for the poor, who might rise in rank, acquire some money, change their social status. Here was the traditional device by which those in charge of any social order mobilize and discipline a recalcitrant population—offering the adventure and rewards of military service to get poor people to fight for a cause they may not see clearly as their own.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 78). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
(1739)
Ruling elites seem to have learned through the generations—consciously or not— that war makes them more secure against internal trouble.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 79). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
What looks like the democratization of the military forces in modern times shows up as something different: a way of forcing large numbers of reluctant people to associate themselves with the national cause, and by the end of the process believe in it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 79). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Now Washington was ready. Six hundred men, who themselves had been well fed and clothed, marched on the mutineers and surrounded and disarmed them. Three ringleaders were put on trial immediately, in the field . One was pardoned, and two were shot by firing squads made up of their friends, who wept as they pulled the triggers. It was “an example,” Washington said.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 81). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In Maryland, for instance, by the new constitution of 1776, to run for governor one had to own 5,000 pounds of property; to run for state senator, 1,000 pounds. Thus, 90 percent of the population were excluded from holding office.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 82). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Washington’s military commander in the lower South, Nathanael Greene, dealt with disloyalty by a policy of concessions to some, brutality to others. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson he described a raid by his troops on Loyalists. “They made a dreadful carnage of them, upwards of one hundred were killed and most of the rest cut to pieces. It has had a very happy effect on those disaffected persons of which there were too many in this country.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 83). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Indeed, this became characteristic of the new nation: finding itself possessed of enormous wealth, it could create the richest ruling class in history, and still have enough for the middle classes to act as a buffer between the rich and the dispossessed.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 84). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Looking at the situation after the Revolution, Richard Morris comments: “Everywhere one finds inequality.” He finds “ the people” of “We the people of the United States” (a phrase coined by the very rich Gouverneur Morris) did not mean Indians or blacks or women or white servants. In fact, there were more indentured servants than ever, and the Revolution “did nothing to end and little to ameliorate white bondage.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 84). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
George Washington was the richest man in America.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 85). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Jefferson tried his best, as an enlightened, thoughtful individual might. But the structure of American society, the power of the cotton plantation, the slave trade, the politics of unity between northern and southern elites, and the long culture of race prejudice in the colonies, as well as his own weaknesses— that combination of practical need and ideological fixation— kept Jefferson a slaveowner throughout his life.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 89). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The problem of democracy in the post-Revolutionary society was not, however, the Constitutional limitations on voting. It lay deeper, beyond the Constitution, in the division of society into rich and poor. ..—how could voting, however broad , cut into such power? There was still another problem: wasn’t it the nature of representative government, even when most broadly based, to be conservative, to prevent tumultuous change?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 96). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 97). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
(constitution) – people’s liberties: to speak, to publish, to worship, to petition, to assemble, to be tried fairly, to be secure at home against official intrusion. It was, therefore, perfectly designed to build popular backing for the new government. What was not made clear— it was a time when the language of freedom was new and its reality untested— was the shakiness of anyone’s liberty when entrusted to a government of the rich and powerful.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 99). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
They all sound benign and neutral until one asks: Tax who, for what? Appropriate what, for whom?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 100). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Thus, to protect these contracts is to put the great power of the government, its laws, courts, sheriffs , police, on the side of the privileged—and to do it not, as in premodern times, as an exercise of brute force against the weak but as a matter of law.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 100). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights shows that quality of interest hiding behind innocence. Passed in 1791 by Congress, it provided that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .” Yet, seven years after the First Amendment became part of the Constitution, Congress passed a law very clearly abridging the freedom of speech. This was the Sedition Act of 1798, passed under John Adams’s administration, a…made it a crime to say or write anything “false , scandalous and malicious” against the government, Congress, or the President, with intent to defame them, bring them into disrepute, or excite popular hatreds against them.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 100). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Thus, Congress has a convenient legal basis for the laws it has enacted since that time, making certain kinds of speech a crime.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 100). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 6 – women
ch 7 – land/water – (indian removal)
If you look through high school textbooks and elementary school textbooks in American history you will find Jackson the frontiersman, soldier, democrat , man of the people— not Jackson the slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians. .. After Jackson was elected President in 1828 (following John Quincy Adams, who had followed Monroe, who had followed Madison, who had followed Jefferson), the Indian Removal bill came before Congress and was called, at the time, “the leading measure” of the Jackson administration and “the greatest question that ever came before Congress”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 130). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 8 – war
The war had barely begun, the summer of 1846, when a writer, Henry David Thoreau, who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, refused to pay his Massachusetts poll tax, denouncing the Mexican war. He was put in jail and spent one night there. His friends, without his consent, paid his tax, and he was released. Two years later, he gave a lecture, “Resistance to Civil Government,” which was then printed as an essay, “Civil Disobedience”: It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. . . . Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers . . . marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars , against their wills, ay , against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. His friend and fellow writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, agreed, but thought it futile to protest. When Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “What are you doing in there?” it was reported that Thoreau replied, “What are you doing out there?”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 156). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
war of mexico to annex texas – 1846
Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune, May 12, 1846: We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer and “annex” their territory; but what then? Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such extensions of empire by the sword no lesson for us? Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the “annexation” of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality, prosperous Industry, than we now have? . . . Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 159). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Mexico was a despotism, a land of Indians and mestizos (Indians mixed with Spanish) controlled by criollos— whites of Spanish blood.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 159). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
An artillery captain named John Vinton, writing to his mother, told of sailing to Vera Cruz: The weather is delightful, our troops in good health and spirits, and all things look auspicious of success. I am only afraid the Mexicans will not meet us & give us battle,— for, to gain everything without controversy after our large & expensive preparations . . . would give us officers no chance for exploits and honors.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 165). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Colonel Hitchcock, coming into the city, wrote: “I shall never forget the horrible fire of our mortars . . . going with dreadful certainty and bursting with sepulchral tones often in the centre of private dwellings— it was awful. I shudder to think of it.” Still, Hitchcock, the dutiful soldier, wrote for General Scott “a sort of address to the Mexican people” which was then printed in English and Spanish by the tens of thousands saying “. . . we have not a particle of ill-will towards you— we treat you with all civility—we are not in fact your enemies; we do not plunder your people or insult your women or your religion . . . we are here for no earthly purpose except the hope of obtaining a peace.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 166). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 9 – slavery
How can slavery be described? Perhaps not at all by those who have not experienced it. ..Economists or cliometricians (statistical historians) have tried to assess slavery by estimating how much money was spent on slaves for food and medical care. But can this describe the reality of slavery as it was to a human being who lived inside it? Are the conditions of slavery as important as the existence of slavery?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 172). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
But can statistics record what it meant for families to be torn apart, when a master, for profit, sold a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 172). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A great number of southerners at all times held the firm belief that the negro population was so docile, so little cohesive, and in the main so friendly toward the whites and so contented that a disastrous insurrection by them would be impossible.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 174-175). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The need for slave control led to an ingenious device, paying poor whites— themselves so troublesome for two hundred years of southern history— to be overseers of black labor and therefore buffers for black hatred. Religion was used for control. A book consulted by many planters was the Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book, which gave these instructions to overseers: “You will find that an hour devoted every Sabbath morning to their moral and religious instruction would prove a great aid to you
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 177). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 182). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
John Brown was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the national government. It was the national government which, while weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew Jackson’s administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 186). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Lincoln read the Constitution strictly, to mean that Congress, because of the Tenth Amendment (reserving to the states powers not specifically given to the national government), could not constitutionally bar slavery in the states.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 187). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Lincoln refused to denounce the Fugitive Slave Law publicly. He wrote to a friend: “I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down . . . but I bite my lips and keep quiet.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 188). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
He (Lincoln) opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 188). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address, in March 1861, was conciliatory toward the South and the seceded states: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 189). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Ex-slave Thomas Hall told the Federal Writers’ Project: Lincoln got the praise for freeing us, but did he do it? He gave us freedom without giving us any chance to live to ourselve and we still had to depend on the southern white man for work, food, and clothing, and he held us out of necessity and want in a state of servitude but little better than slavery.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 197-198). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Was Du Bois right— that in that growth of American capitalism, before and after the Civil War, whites as well as blacks were in some sense becoming slaves?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 210). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 10 – the other civil war
striking, marches.. one 20,000 people – people against the bank.. 1830s – economic crisis of 1857
Is it not murder when, compelled by want, people are forced to fester in squalid, germ-filled tenements, where the sunlight never enters and where disease finds a prolific breeding-place? Untold thousands went to their deaths in these unspeakable places. Yet, so far as the Law was concerned, the rents collected by the Astors, as well as by other landlords, were honestly made. The whole institution of Law saw nothing out of the way in these conditions , and very significantly so , because, to repeat over and over again, Law did not represent the ethics or ideals of advanced humanity; it exactly reflected, as a pool reflects the sky, the demands and self-interest of the growing propertied classes. . . . In the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, the law was increasingly interpreted in the courts to suit the capitalist development of the country. Studying this, Morton Horwitz (The Transformation of American Law) points out that the English commonlaw was no longer holy when it stood in the way of business growth. Mill owners were given the legal right to destroy other people’s property by flood to carry on their business.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 238-9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 11 – control/school
Between the Civil War and 1900, steam and electricity replaced human muscle, iron replaced wood , and steel replaced iron
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 253). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Machines changed farming. Before the Civil War it took 61 hours of labor to produce an acre of wheat. By 1900, it took 3 hours, 19 minutes.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 253). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Between 1860 and 1914, New York grew from 850,000 to 4 million, Chicago from 110,000 to 2 million, Philadelphia from 650,000 to 11⁄2 million. In some cases the inventor himself became the organizer of businesses— like Thomas Edison,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 254). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad, and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of “rags to riches” were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 254). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
irish and chinese immigrants dying by the 100s as they gruelingly build the railroad – while the bankers make bank
J. P. Morgan had started before the war, as the son of a banker who began selling stocks for the railroads for good commissions. During the Civil War he bought five thousand rifles for $ 3.50 each from an army arsenal, and sold them to a general in the field for $ 22 each. The rifles were defective and would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 255). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Morgan had escaped military service in the Civil War by paying $ 300 to a substitute. So did John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, Jay Gould, and James Mellon. Mellon’s father had written to him that “a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.” It was the firm of Drexel , Morgan and Company that was given a U.S. government contract to float a bond issue of $ 260 million. The government could have sold the bonds directly; it chose to pay the bankers $ 5 million in commission.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 255). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
There was a human cost to this exciting story of financial ingenuity (3 banks privately meeting to garner power – money/railroad). That year, 1889, records of the Interstate Commerce Commission showed that 22,000 railroad workers were killed or injured.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 256). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 258). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1887, with a huge surplus in the treasury, Cleveland vetoed a bill appropriating $ 100,000 to give relief to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought. He said: “Federal aid in such cases . . . encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.” But that same year, Cleveland used his gold surplus to pay off wealthy bondholders at $ 28 above the $ 100 value of each bond— a gift of $ 45 million.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 259). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
One year after that decision, the American Bar Association, organized by lawyers accustomed to serving the wealthy, began a national campaign of education to reverse the Court decision. Its presidents said, at different times: “If trusts are a defensive weapon of property interests against the communistic trend, they are desirable.” And: “Monopoly is often a necessity and an advantage.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 261). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure , and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extraordinary luck.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 262). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Russell Conwell – yale prof/preacher – preaching to millions.. That is why they are trusted with money . That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. . . . . . . I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. .. to sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins . . . is to do wrong. . . . let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. . . . Conwell was a founder of Temple University. Rockefeller was a donor to colleges all around the country..
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 262). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The rich, giving part of their enormous earnings in this way, became known as philanthropists. These educational institutions did not encourage dissent; they trained the middlemen in the American system—the teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, engineers, technicians, politicians— those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 263). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the spread of public school education enabled the learning of writing, reading, and arithmetic for a whole generation of workers, skilled and semiskilled, who would be the literate labor force of the new industrial age. It was important that these people learn obedience to authority. A journalist observer of the schools in the 1890s wrote: “The unkindly spirit of the teacher is strikingly apparent; the pupils, being completely subjugated to her will, are silent and motionless, the spiritual atmosphere of the classroom is damp and chilly.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 263). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Joel Spring, in his book Education and the Rise of the Corporate State, says: “The development of a factory-like system in the nineteenth-century schoolroom was
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 263). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
This continued into the twentieth century, when William Bagley’s Classroom Management became a standard teacher training text, reprinted thirty times. Bagley said: “One who studies educational theory aright can see in the mechanical routine of the classroom the educative forces that are slowly transforming the child from a little savage into a creature of law and order, fit for the life of civilized society.” It was in the middle and late nineteenth century that high schools developed as aids to the industrial system, that history was widely required in the curriculum to foster patriotism. Loyalty oaths, teacher certification, and the requirement of citizenship were introduced to control both the educational and the political quality of teachers. Also, in the latter part of the century, school officials— not teachers— were given control over textbooks. Laws passed by the states barred certain kinds of textbooks. Idaho and Montana, for instance, forbade textbooks propagating “political” doctrines, and the Dakota territory ruled that school libraries could not have “partisan political pamphlets or books.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 263-64). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It seemed that despite the strenuous efforts of government, business, the church, the schools, to control their thinking, millions of Americans were ready to consider harsh criticism of the existing system, to contemplate other possible ways of living .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 264). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
By 1880, Chinese immigrants, brought in by the railroads to do the backbreaking labor at pitiful wages, numbered 75,000 in California, almost one-tenth of the population. They became the objects of continuous violence.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 265). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In London a meeting of protest was sponsored by George Bernard Shaw, William Morris, and Peter Kropotkin, among others. Shaw had responded in his characteristic way to the turning down of an appeal by the eight members of the Illinois Supreme Court: “If the world must lose eight of its people, it can better afford to lose the eight members of the Illinois Supreme Court.” A year after the trial, four of the convicted anarchists— Albert Parsons, a printer, August Spies, an upholsterer, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel— were hanged. Louis Lingg, a twenty-one-year-old carpenter, blew himself up in his cell by exploding a dynamite tube in his mouth. Three remained in prison. The executions aroused people all over the country. There was a funeral march of 25,000 in Chicago.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 271). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
1886 became known to contemporaries as “the year of the great uprising of labor.” From 1881 to 1885, strikes had averaged about 500 each year, involving perhaps 150,000 workers each year. In 1886 there were over 1,400 strikes, involving 500,000 workers.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 273). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
On the night of October 31, 1891, a thousand armed miners took control of the mine area, set five hundred convicts free, and burned down the stockades in which the convicts were kept.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 275). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Two years after he came out of prison, Debs wrote in the Railway Times: The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 281). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The farmer had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The bankers, getting the loans back , were getting dollars worth more than when they loaned them out— a kind of interest on top of interest. That is why so much of the talk of farmers’ movements in those days had to do with putting more money in circulation— by printing greenbacks (paper money for which there was no gold in the treasury) or by making silver a basis for issuing money.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 284). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
And always, as a way of drowning class resentment in a flood of slogans for national unity, there was patriotism. McKinley had said, in a rare rhetorical connection between money and flag: . . . this year is going to be a year of patriotism and devotion to country . I am glad to know that the people in every part of the country mean to be devoted to one flag, the glorious Stars and Stripes; that the people of this country mean to maintain the financial honor of the country as sacredly as they maintain the honor of the flag. The supreme act of patriotism was war. Two years after McKinley became President, the United States declared war on Spain.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 296). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 12 – empire & people
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: “In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” The year of the
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 297). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
However, this preference on the part of some business groups and politicians for what Williams calls the idea of “informal empire,” without war , was always subject to change. If peaceful imperialism turned out to be impossible, military action might be needed.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 302). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Cuba in 1898. Businessmen had been interested, from the start of the Cuban revolt against Spain, in the effect on commercial possibilities there. There already was a substantial economic interest in the island, which President Grover Cleveland summarized in 1896:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 302). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
There were special interests who would benefit directly from war. In Pittsburgh, center of the iron industry, the Chamber of Commerce advocated force, and the Chattanooga Tradesman said that the possibility of war “has decidedly stimulated the iron trade.” It also noted that “actual war would very decidedly enlarge the business of transportation.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 305). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Of the more than 274,000 officers and men who served in the army during the Spanish-American War and the period of demobilization, 5,462 died in the various theaters of operation and in camps in the U.S . Only 379 of the deaths were battle casualties, the remainder being attributed to disease and other causes.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 308). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
By the end of the occupation, in 1901, Foner estimates that at least 80 percent of the export of Cuba’s minerals were in American hands, mostly Bethlehem Steel.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 310). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
President McKinley (on taking the philippines.. and his message from god.. including the inability for them to take care of themselves)
It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops— four tìmes as many as were landed in Cuba— and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 312). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The “patience, industry, and moderation” preached to blacks, the “patriotism” preached to whites, did not fully sink in. In the first years of the twentieth century, despite all the demonstrated power of the state, large numbers of blacks, whites, men , women became impatient, immoderate, unpatriotic.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 320). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 13 – the socialist challenge
Emma Goldman, the anarchist and feminist, whose political consciousness was shaped by factory work, the Haymarket executions, the Homestead strike, the long prison term of her lover and comrade, Alexander Berkman, the depression of the 1890s , the strike struggles of New York , her own imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island, spoke at a meeting some years after the Spanish-American war: How our hearts burned …..when we sobered up from our patriotic spree— it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar. . . . that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 321). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, published in 1906,…. it spoke of socialism, of how beautiful life might be if people cooperatively owned and worked and shared the riches of the earth.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 322). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the purpose of Taylorism was to make workers interchangeable, able to do the simple tasks that the new division of labor required—like standard parts divested of individuality and humanity, bought and sold as commodities.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 324). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the year 1904, 27,000 workers were killed on the job, in manufacturing, transport, and agriculture. In one year, 50,000 accidents took place in New York factories alone.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 327). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
According to a report of the Commission on Industrial Relations, in 1914, 35,000 workers were killed in industrial accidents and 700,000 injured. That year the income of forty-four families making $ 1 million or more equaled the total income of 100,000 families earning $ 500 a year.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 327). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
IWW organizer Joseph Ettor said: If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 331). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Helen Keller, writing in 1911 to a suffragist in England: Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. . . . You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 345). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Emma Goldman was not postponing the changing of woman’s condition to some future socialist era—she wanted action more direct, more immediate, than the vote. Helen Keller, while not an anarchist, also believed in continuous struggle outside the ballot box. Blind, deaf, she fought with her spirit, her pen. When she became active and openly socialist, the Brooklyn Eagle, which had previously treated her as a heroine, wrote that “ her mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development.” Her response was not accepted by the Eagle, but printed in the New York Call. She wrote that when once she met the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle he complimented her lavishly. “But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and esp liable to error.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 345-346). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Mother Jones did not seem especially interested in the feminist movement. She was busy organizing textile workers and miners, and organizing their wives and children. One of her many feats was the organization of a children’s march to Washington to demand the end of child labor (as the twentieth century opened, 284,000 children between the ages of ten and fifteen worked in mines, mills, factories).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 346). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Colorado had been a scene of ferocious class conflict, whose
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 356). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 14
He pointed to the paradox of greater “democracy” in America alongside “increased aristocracy and hatred toward darker races.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 363). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
American capitalism needed international rivalry— and periodic war—to create an artificial community of interest between rich and poor , supplanting the genuine community of interest among the poor that showed itself in sporadic movements. How conscious of this were individual entrepreneurs and statesmen? That is hard to know. But their actions, even if half-conscious, instinctive drives to survive, matched such a scheme. And in 1917 this demanded a national consensus for war.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 363-364). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Despite the rousing words of Wilson about a war “to end all wars” and “to make the world safe for democracy,” Americans did not rush to enlist. A million men were needed, but in the first six weeks after the declaration of war only 73,000 volunteered. Congress voted overwhelmingly for a draft.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 364). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in emergency convention in St. Louis and called the declaration “a crime against the people of the United States.” In the summer of 1917, Socialist antiwar meetings in Minnesota drew large crowds— five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand farmers—protesting the war, the draft, profiteering.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 364). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The Espionage Act was used to imprison Americans who spoke or wrote against the war.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 365). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Debs refused at his trial to take the stand in his defense, or to call a witness on his behalf. He denied nothing about what he said. But before the jury began its deliberations, he spoke to them:
I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone. . . . I have sympathy with the suffering, struggling people everywhere. It does not make any difference under what flag they were born, or where they live. . . . The jury found him guilty of violating the Espionage Act. Debs addressed the judge before sentencing: Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings , and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 367). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
900 people went to prison for espionage act
At the same time, Theodore Roosevelt was talking to the Harvard Club about Socialists, IWWs, and others who wanted peace as “a whole raft of sexless creatures.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 369). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Creel’s Committee on Public Information advertised that people should “report the man who spreads pessimistic stories.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 369). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Ultimately, over 330,000 men were classified as draft evaders.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 370). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
At a mass meeting of the Union, plans were made to destroy a railroad bridge and cut telegraph wires in order to block military enlistments. A march on Washington was planned for draft objectors throughout the country. (This was called the Green Corn Rebellion because they planned to eat green corn on their march.) Before the Union could carry out its plans, its members were rounded up and arrested, and soon 450 individuals accused of rebellion were in the state penitentiary. Leaders were given three to ten years in jail, others sixty days to two years.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 370). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
On July 1, 1917, radicals organized a parade in Boston against the war , with banners: IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION? WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI? WE DEMAND PEACE. The New York Call said eight thousand people marched,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 370). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The Post Office Department began taking away the mailing privileges of newspapers and magazines that printed antiwar articles.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 370). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
And so it went, multiplied two thousand times (the number of prosecutions under the Espionage Act).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 371). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Three men who were jailed at Fort Riley, Kansas, for refusing to perform any military duties, combatant or noncombatant, were taken one by one into the corridor and: . . . a hemp rope slung over the railing of the upper tier was put about their necks, hoisting them off their feet until they were at the point of collapse. Meanwhile the officers punched them on their ankles and shins. They were then lowered and the rope was tied to their arms, and again they were hoisted off their feet . This time a garden hose was played on their faces with a nozzle about six inches from them, until they collapsed completely. .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 371). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The first woman in the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin , did not respond when her name was called in the roll call on the declaration of war. One of the veteran politicians of the House, a supporter of the war , went to her and whispered, “Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country. . . .” On the next roll call she stood up: “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote No.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 371-372). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Emma Goldman and her fellow anarchist, Alexander Berkman (he had already been locked up fourteen years in Pennsylvania; she had served a year on Blackwell’s Island), were sentenced to prison for opposing the draft. She spoke to the jury: Verily, poor as we are in democracy how can we give of it to the world? . . . a democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all. It is despotism— the cumulative result of a chain of abuses which, according to that dangerous document, the Declaration of Independence, the people have the right to overthrow. . . .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 372). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The war ended in November 1918. Fifty thousand American soldiers had died, and it did not take long, even in the case of patriots, for bitterness and disillusionment to spread through the country.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 373). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In January 1920, four thousand persons were rounded up all over the country, held in seclusion for long periods of time, brought into secret hearings, and ordered deported.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 375). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
And still, even from the cells of the condemned, the message was going out: the class war was still on in that supposedly classless society, the United States. Through the twenties and the thirties, it was still on.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 376). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 15 – self-help in hard times
1919 – seattle – city strikes.. and takes care of each other
The city now stopped functioning, except for activities organized by the strikers to provide essential needs. Firemen agreed to stay on the job . Laundry workers handled only hospital laundry. Vehicles authorized to move carried signs “Exempted by the General Strike Committee.” Thirty-five neighborhood milk stations were set up. Every day thirty thousand meals were prepared in large kitchens, then transported to halls all over the city and served cafeteria style, with strikers paying twenty-five cents a meal, the general public thirty-five cents. People were allowed to eat as much as they wanted of the beef stew, spaghetti, bread, and coffee.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 377). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
On the blackboard at one of its headquarters was written: “The purpose of this organization is to preserve law and order without the use of force. No volunteer will have any police power or be allowed to carry weapons of any sort, but to use persuasion only.” During the strike, crime in the city decreased.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 378). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
commander of us army sent in – and he said: in forty years of military experience he hadn’t seen so quiet and orderly a city.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 378). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
What scares them most is That NOTHING HAPPENS! They are ready For DISTURBANCES. They have machine guns And soldiers, But this SMILING SILENCE Is uncanny. The business men Don’t understand That sort of weapon . . . It is your SMILE That is UPSETTING Their reliance On Artillery, brother! It is the garbage wagons That go along the street Marked “EXEMPT by STRIKE COMMITTEE.” It is the milk stations That are getting better daily, And the three hundred war Veterans of Labor Handling the crowds WITHOUT GUNS, For these things speak Of a NEW POWER And a NEW WORLD That they do not feel At HOME in.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 378). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The strike had been peaceful. But when it was over, there were raids and arrests: on the Socialist party headquarters, on a printing plant. Thirty-nine members of the IWW were jailed as “ring-leaders of anarchy.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 379). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Why such a reaction to the general strike, to the organizing of the Wobblies? A statement by the mayor of Seattle suggests that the Establishment feared not just the strike itself but what it symbolized. He said: The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence does not alter the fact. . . . The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system; here first, then everywhere. . . . True, there were no flashing guns , no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn’t need violence. The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community. . . . That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt— no matter how achieved.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 379-380). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
steel workers strike
The strikes were beaten down by force, and the economy was doing just well enough for just enough people to prevent mass rebellion.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 382). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
One-tenth of 1 percent of the families at the top received as much income as 42 percent of the families at the bottom , according to a report of the Brookings Institution. Every year in the 1920s, about 25,000 workers were killed on the job and 100,000 permanently disabled. Two million people in New York City lived in tenements condemned as firetraps.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 382-383). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
During the presidencies of Harding and Coolidge in the twenties, the Secretary of the Treasury was Andrew Mellon, one of the richest men in America. – Mellon plan lowered rich taxes 50 to 25% and poor 4-3%
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 384). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Hoover had said, not long before the crash: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” Henry Ford, in March 1931, said the crisis was here because “the average man won’t really do a day’s work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.” A few weeks later he laid off 75,000 workers.
There were millions of tons of food around, but it was not profitable to transport it, to sell it. Warehouses were full of clothing, but people could not afford it. There were lots of houses, but they stayed empty because people couldn’t pay the rent, had been evicted , and now lived in shacks in quickly formed “Hoovervilles” built on garbage dumps.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 387). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Steinbeck captures this in grapes of wrath:
And a homeless hungry man, driving the road with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 389). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The anger of the veteran of the First World War, now without work, his family hungry, led to the march of the Bonus Army to Washington in the spring and summer of 1932. War veterans, holding government bonus certificates which were due years in the future, demanded that Congress pay off on them now, when the money was desperately needed.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 391). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
20,000 came… The bill to pay off on the bonus passed the House, but was defeated in the Senate, and some veterans, discouraged, left. Most stayed— some encamped in government buildings near the Capitol, the rest on Anacostia Flats, and President Hoover ordered the army to evict them. Four troops of cavalry, four companies of infantry, a machine gun squadron, and six tanks assembled near the White House. General Douglas MacArthur was in charge of the operation, Major Dwight Eisenhower his aide. George S. Patton was one of the officers. MacArthur led his troops down Pennsylvania Avenue, used tear gas to clear veterans out of the old buildings, and set the buildings on fire. Then the army moved across the bridge to Anacostia. Thousands of veterans, wives, children, began to run as the tear gas spread.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 391-392). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
When it was all over, two veterans had been shot to death, an eleven-week-old baby had died, an eight-year-old boy was partially blinded by gas, two police had fractured skulls, and a thousand veterans were injured by gas. The hard , hard times , the inaction of the government in helping, the action of the government in dispersing war veterans— all had their effect on the election of November 1932. Democratic party candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover overwhelmingly, took office in the spring of 1933, and began a program of reform legislation which became famous as the “New Deal.” When a small veterans’ march on Washington took place early in his administration, he greeted them and provided coffee; they met with one of his aides and went home. It was a sign of Roosevelt’s approach.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 391). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
People organized to help themselves, since business and government were not helping them in 1931 and 1932. In Seattle, the fishermen’s union caught fish and exchanged them with people who picked fruit and vegetables, and those who cut wood exchanged that. There were twenty-two locals, each with a commissary where food and firewood were exchanged for other goods and services: barbers, seamstresses, and doctors gave of their skills in return for other things. By the end of 1932, there were 330 self-help organizations in thirty-seven states, with over 300,000 members. By early 1933, they seem to have collapsed; they were attempting too big a job in an economy that was more and more a shambles.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 394-395). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Adam Greenfield‘s write up of operation sandy..
By 1934, 5 million tons of this “bootleg” coal were produced by twenty thousand men using four thousand vehicles. When attempts were made to prosecute, local juries would not convict, local jailers would not imprison.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 395). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Breaking through the confines of private property in order to live up to their own necessities, the miners’ action is, at the same time a manifestation of the most important part of class consciousness—namely, that the problems of the workers can be solved only by themselves.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 395). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The New Deal gave federal money to put thousands of writers, artists, actors, and musicians to work— in a Federal Theatre Project, a Federal Writers Project , a Federal Art Project: murals were painted on public buildings; plays were put on for working-class audiences who had never seen a play; hundreds of books and pamphlets were written and published. People heard a symphony for the first time. It was an exciting flowering of arts for the people, such as had never happened before in American history, and which has not been duplicated since. But in 1939, with the country more stable and the New Deal reform impulse weakened, programs to subsidize the arts were eliminated. When the New Deal was over, capitalism remained intact. The rich still controlled the nation’s wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police , newspapers, churches, colleges. Enough help had been given to enough people to make Roosevelt a hero to millions, but the same system that had brought depression and crisis— the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need— remained.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 403). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Roosevelt, careful not to offend southern white politicians whose political support he needed, did not push a bill against lynching.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 404). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Many Americans began to change their thinking in those days of crisis and rebellion. In Europe, Hitler was on the march. Across the Pacific, Japan was invading China. The Western empires were being threatened by new ones. For the United States, war was not far off.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 406). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 16 – a people’s war
18 million served in the armed forces, 10 million overseas; 25 million workers gave of their pay envelope regularly for war bonds. But could this be considered a manufactured support,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 407). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Would the country’s wartime policies respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? …..At the time of World War II, the atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to permit them to be aired. For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 408). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It had opposed the Hatian revolution for independence from France at the start of the nineteenth century. It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country . It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention. It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos. It had “opened” Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats. It had declared an Open Door Policy in China as a means of assuring that the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years. While demanding an Open Door in China, it had insisted (with the Monroe Doctrine and many military interventions) on a Closed Door in Latin America— that is, closed to everyone but the United States . …….
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 408). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In short, if the entrance of the United States into World War II was (as so many Americans believed at the time, observing the Nazi invasions) to defend the principle of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, the nation’s record cast doubt on its ability to uphold that principle.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 409). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
blacks, looking at anti-Semitism in Germany, might not see their own situation in the U.S. as much different.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 409). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Italy’s attack on Ethiopia, Hitler’s invasion of Austria, his takeover of Czechoslovakia, his attack on Poland— none of those events caused the United States to enter the war, ….What brought the United States fully into the war was the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. …..it was the Japanese attack on a link in the American Pacific Empire that did it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 410). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Pearl Harbor was presented to the American public as a sudden, shocking, immoral act . Immoral it was, like any bombing—but not really sudden or shocking to the American government.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 410-411). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Quietly, behind the headlines in battles and bombings, American diplomats and businessmen worked hard to make sure that when the war ended, American economic power would be second to none in the world.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 413). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Assistant Secretary of State, spoke critically of what he saw in the postwar world : “As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief . . . without moral purpose or human interest. . . .”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 414). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
section about fascist tendencies – when there was even a possibility to curtail some of hitlers – ie: separating b&w blood, separating ship quarters, sending japanese to concentration camps…
Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066 , in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings , to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast—110,000 men, women, and children— to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 416). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Out of 10 million drafted for the armed forces during World War II, only 43,000 refused to fight. But this was three times the proportion of C.O .’ s (conscientious objectors) in World War I. Of these 43,000, about 6,000 went to prison, which was, proportionately, four times the number of C.O.’ s who went to prison during World War I. Of every six men in federal prison, one was there as a C.O….. and this in the face of an american community almost unanimously for the war.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 418). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 420). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender—that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place— the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war. Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves , head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 423). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. …
Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed. The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 422). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Truman had said, “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 423). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A. J. Muste, the revolutionary pacifist, had predicted in 1941: “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 424). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The war not only put the United States in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 425). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control . Charles E. Wilson, the president of General Motors, was so happy about the wartime situation that he suggested a continuing alliance between business and the military for “a permanent war economy.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 425). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Perhaps 2 million Koreans, North and South, were killed in the Korean war (declared by Truman), all in the name of opposing “the rule of force.” –
the Soviet Union was real— that country had come out of the war with its economy wrecked and 20 million people dead ,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 425). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 428). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
auschwitz – 1.1 mill
McCarthy stirring up panic with his changing lists of communists in us office…. banning books of communist nature (including edison and children’s hour) et al
There had been a worldwide campaign of protest. Albert Einstein, whose letter to Roosevelt early in the war had initiated work on the atomic bomb, appealed for the Rosenbergs, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, and the sister of Bartolomeo Vanzetti. There was an appeal to President Truman, just before he left office in the spring of 1953. It was turned down. Then, another appeal to the new President, Dwight Eisenhower, was also turned down. At the last moment, Justice William O. Douglas granted a stay of execution. Chief Justice Vinson sent out special jets to bring the vacationing justices back to Washington from various parts of the country. They canceled Douglas’s stay in time for the Rosenbergs to be executed June 19, 1953. It was a demonstration to the people of the country, though very few could identify with the Rosenbergs, of what lay at the end of the line for those the government decided were traitors.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 434-435). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
maintaining and building our preparations for war will be big business in the United States for at least a considerable period ahead.” That prediction turned out to be accurate. At the start of 1950, the total U.S. budget was about $ 40 billion, and the military part of it was about $ 12 billion. But by 1955, the military part alone was $ 40 billion out of a total of $ 62 billion.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 437). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
2/3 on war – wealth inequality ness
Kennedy administration added $ 9 billion to defense funds, .. By 1962, …. It had the equivalent, in nuclear weapons , of 1,500 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs, far more than enough to destroy every major city in the world—…
the U.S. budget kept mounting, the hysteria kept growing , the profits of corporations getting defense contracts multiplied, and employment and wages moved ahead just enough to keep a substantial number of Americans dependent on war industries for their living.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 437). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Marshall Plan of 1948 , which gave $ 16 billion in economic aid to Western European countries in four years,… beyond humanitarianism… (strings attached for profit)
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 438). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
When John F. Kennedy took office, he launched the Alliance for Progress, a program of help for Latin America, emphasizing social reform to better the lives of people. But it turned out to be mostly military aid to keep in power right-wing dictatorships and enable them to stave off revolutions.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 438). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In power, Castro moved to set up a nationwide system of education, of housing, of land distribution to landless peasants.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 439). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
When Kennedy took office in the spring of 1961 the CIA had 1,400 exiles, armed and trained. He moved ahead with the plans, and on April 17, 1961, the CIA -trained force , with some Americans participating, landed at the Bay of Pigs on the south shore of Cuba, 90 miles from Havana. They expected to stimulate a general rising against Castro. But it was a popular regime. There was no rising. In three days, the CIA forces were crushed by Castro’s army. The whole Bay of Pigs affair was accompanied by hypocrisy and lying . The invasion was a violation— recalling Truman’s “ rule of law”—of a treaty the U.S. had signed, the Charter of the Organization of American States, which reads: “No state or group of states has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state.” Four days before the invasion— because there had been press reports of secret bases and CIA training for invaders—President Kennedy told a press conference: “. . . there will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces.” True, the landing force was Cuban, but it was all organized by the United States, and American war planes, including American pilots, were involved; Kennedy had approved the use of unmarked navy jets in the invasion. Four American pilots of those planes were killed, and their families were not told the truth about how those men died.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 440). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
april 19, 1961
The country seemed under control. And then, in the 1960s, came a series of explosive rebellions in every area of American life, which showed that all the system’s estimates of security and success were wrong.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 442). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 17 – or does it explode
word was that american govt had outlawed segregation in 54.. but still going on in 65. more than 75% school districts segregated. build up of ongoing promises with no follow through.. 55 – Rosa Parks
King’s home was bombed. But the black people of Montgomery persisted, and in November 1956 , the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on local bus lines.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 451). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
King for love/nonviolence
Robert Williams – president of naacp – w/violence was best.
Harlem.. young Negro teacher of mathematics named Bob Moses saw a photo in the newspapers of the Greensboro sit-inners. “The students in that picture had a certain look on their faces, sort of sullen, angry, determined. Before, the Negro in the South had always looked on the defensive, cringing. This time they were taking the initiative. They were kids my age, and I knew this had something to do with my own life.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 453). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
freedom rides.. b&w riding busses through south to address segregation
Such segregation had long been illegal, but the federal government never enforced the law in the South; the President now was John F. Kennedy, but he too seemed cautious about the race question, concerned about the support of southern white leaders of the Democratic party. The two buses that left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, headed for New Orleans, never got there. In South Carolina, riders were beaten. In Alabama, a bus was set afire.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 453). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The U.S. Defense Department study of the Vietnam war, intended to be “top secret” but released to the public by Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the famous Pentagon Papers case, described Ho Chi Minh’s work:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 470). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
One of the letters was sent both to Truman and to the United Nations: I wish to invite attention of your Excellency for strictly humanitarian reasons to following matter. Two million Vietnamese died of starvation during winter of 1944 and spring 1945 because of starvation policy of French who seized and stored until it rotted all available rice. . . . Three-fourths of cultivated land was flooded in summer 1945, which was followed by a severe drought; of normal harvest five-sixths was lost. . . . Many people are starving. . . . Unless great world powers and international relief organizations bring us immediate assistance we face imminent catastrophe. . . . Truman never replied.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 470-471). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
then the us preceded to aid the french – attack nam
When Kennedy took office in early 1961 he continued the policies of Truman and Eisenhower in Southeast Asia. Almost immediately, he approved a secret plan for various military actions in Vietnam and Laos, including the “dispatch of agents to North Vietnam” to engage in “sabotage and light harassment,” according to the Pentagon Papers. Back in 1956, he had spoken of “the amazing success of President Diem” and said of Diem’s Vietnam: “Her political liberty is an inspiration.” One day in June 1963, a Buddhist monk sat down in the public square in Saigon and set himself afire. More Buddhist monks began committing suicide by fire to dramatize their opposition to the Diem regime. Diem’s police raided the Buddhist pagodas and temples, wounded thirty monks, arrested 1,400 people, and closed down the pagodas.
[earlier said Diem imprisoned people to maintain control… et al]
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 473). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Under the Geneva Accords, the United States was permitted to have 685 military advisers in southern Vietnam. Eisenhower secretly sent several thousand. Under Kennedy, the figure rose to sixteen thousand, and some of them began to take part in combat operations.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 474). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Three weeks after the execution of Diem, Kennedy himself was assassinated, and his Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson, took office.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 475). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told the American public there was an attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on American destroyers. “While on routine patrol in international waters,” McNamara said, “the U.S . destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack.” It later turned out that the Gulf of Tonkin episode was a fake, that the highest American officials had lied to the public—just as they had in the invasion of Cuba under Kennedy.
used as reason to launch war on nam
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 475-476). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
500— were killed by the strikes. The American contention is that they were Vietcong soldiers. But three out of four patients seeking treatment in a Vietnamese hospital afterward for burns from napalm, or jellied gasoline, were village women.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 477). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Few Americans appreciate what their nation is doing to South Vietnam with airpower . . . innocent civilians are dying every day in South Vietnam. Large areas of South Vietnam were declared “free fire zones,” which meant that all persons remaining within them—civilians, old people, children— were considered an enemy, and bombs were dropped at will.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 477). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The CIA in Vietnam, in a program called “Operation Phoenix,” secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilians in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 478). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
After the war, the release of records of the International Red Cross showed that in South Vietnamese prison camps, where at the height of the war 65,000 to 70,000 people were held and often beaten and tortured, American advisers observed and sometimes participated.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 478). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
By the end of the Vietnam war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, more than twice the total bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II— almost one 500-pound bomb for every human being in Vietnam. It was estimated that there were 20 million bomb craters in the country. In addition, poisonous sprays were dropped by planes to destroy trees and any kind of growth— an area the size of the state of Massachusetts was covered with such poison. Vietnamese mothers reported birth defects in their children.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 478). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
On March 16, 1968, a company of American soldiers went into the hamlet of My Lai 4, in Quang Ngai province. They rounded up the inhabitants, including old people and women with infants in their arms. These people were ordered into a ditch, where they were methodically shot to death by American soldiers. ….. between 450 and 500 people— most of them women, children and old men— had been slain and buried there.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 478). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Several of the officers in the My Lai massacre were put on trial, but only Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced twice; he served three years— Nixon ordered that he be under house arrest rather than a regular prison— and then was paroled.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 479). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
1000s of deaths in Laos. 100s of 1000s refugee
One of the great sports figures of the nation, Muhammad Ali, the black boxer and heavyweight champion, refused to serve in what he called a “white man’s war”; boxing authorities took away his title as champion.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 485). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the summer of 1965, a few hundred people had gathered in Washington to march in protest against the war: the first in line, historian Staughton Lynd, SNCC organizer Bob Moses, and long-time pacifist David Dellinger, were splattered with red paint by hecklers.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 486). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1971, twenty thousand came to Washington to commit civil disobedience, trying to tie up Washington traffic to express their revulsion against the killing still going on in Vietnam. Fourteen thousand of them were arrested, the largest mass arrest in American history.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 486). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
As the war became more and more unpopular, people in or close to the government began to break out of the circle of assent. The most dramatic instance was the case of Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was a Harvard-trained economist, a former marine officer, employed by the RAND Corporation, which did special, often secret research for the U.S. government. Ellsberg helped write the Department of Defense history of the war in Vietnam, and then decided to make the top-secret document public, with the aid of his friend , Anthony Russo , a former RAND Corporation man. The two had met in Saigon, where both had been affected, in different experiences, by direct sight of the war, and had become powerfully indignant at what the United States was doing to the people of Vietnam. Ellsberg and Russo spent night after night , after hours, at a friend’s advertising agency, duplicating the 7,000-page document. Then Ellsberg gave copies to various Congressmen and to the New York Times. In June 1971 the Times began printing selections from what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. It created a national sensation.
watergate unfolding called off their jury proceedings
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 487). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The following May, Philip Berrigan— out on bail in the Baltimore case—was joined in a second action by his brother Daniel, a Jesuit priest who had visited North Vietnam and seen the effects of U.S. bombing. They and seven other people went into a draft board office in Catonsville, Maryland, removed records, and set them afire outside in the presence of reporters and onlookers. They were convicted and sentenced to prison, and became famous as the “Catonsville Nine.” Dan Berrigan wrote a “Meditation” at the time of the Catonsville incident: Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. . . . We say : killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk , when the poor can die without defense.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 488-489). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I was there when American planes were bombing the Congo, and we were very close to the Congo border. The planes came over and bombed two villages in Uganda. . . . Where the hell did the American planes come in?
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 489). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The climax of protest came in the spring of 1970 when President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia . At Kent State University in Ohio, on May 4, when students gathered to demonstrate against the war, National Guardsmen fired into the crowd. Four students were killed. One was paralyzed for life. Students at four hundred colleges and universities went on strike in protest. It was the first general student strike in the history of the United States. During that school year of 1969– 1970, the FBI listed 1,785 student demonstrations, including the occupation of 313 buildings.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 490). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It seems that the media, themselves controlled by higher-education, higher-income people who were more aggressive in foreign policy , tended to give the erroneous impression that working-class people were superpatriots for the war.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 492). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
One evening he heard actor Donald Sutherland read from the post–World War I novel by Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun, about a soldier whose limbs and face were shot away by gunfire, a thinking torso who invented a way of communicating with the outside world and then beat out a message so powerful it could not be heard without trembling. Sutherland began to read the passage and something I will never forget swept over me. It was as if someone was speaking for everything I ever went through in the hospital. . . . I began to shake and I remember there were tears in my eyes. Kovic demonstrated against the war, and was arrested. He tells his story in Born on the Fourth of July:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 496-497). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
From a long-range viewpoint, something perhaps even more important had happened. The rebellion at home was spreading beyond the issue of war in Vietnam.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 502). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 19 – surprises
With such power in the hands of the courts, the poor, the black, the odd, the homosexual, the hippie, the radical are not likely to get equal treatment before judges who are almost uniformly white, upper middle class, orthodox.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 517). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The events of those years underlined what prisoners already sensed—that whatever crimes they had committed, the greatest crimes were being committed by the authorities who maintained the prisons, by the government of the United States. The law was being broken daily by the President, sending bombers to kill, sending men to be killed, outside the Constitution, outside the “highest law of the land.” State and local officials were violating the civil rights of black people, which was against the law, and were not being prosecuted for it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 518). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1961, five hundred tribal and urban Indian leaders met in Chicago. Out of this came another gathering of university-educated young Indians who formed the National Indian Youth Council.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 525). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The United States government had signed more than four hundred treaties with Indians and violated every single one.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 526). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1969, November 9, there took place a dramatic event which focused attention on Indian grievances as nothing else had. It burst through the invisibility of previous local Indian protests and declared to the entire world that the Indians still lived and would fight for their rights. On that day, before dawn, seventy-eight Indians landed on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and occupied the island. Alcatraz was an abandoned federal prison, a hated and terrible place nicknamed “The Rock.” In 1964 some young Indians had occupied it to establish
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 527-528). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The same massacres happened to the Indians 100 years ago. Germ warfare was used then. They put smallpox in the Indians’ blankets. . . . I got to know the Vietnamese people and I learned they were just like us. . . . What we are doing is destroying ourselves and the world.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 531). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
That year (1969) the Indian Historian Press was founded. It evaluated four hundred textbooks in elementary and secondary schools and found that not one of them gave an accurate depiction of the Indian.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 531). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the sixties and seventies, it was not just a women’s movement, a prisoner’s movement, an Indian movement. There was general revolt against oppressive, artificial, previously unquestioned ways of living. It touched every aspect of personal life: childbirth, childhood, love, sex, marriage, dress, music, art, sports, language, food, housing, religion, literature, death, schools.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 536). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols . A middle-aged woman on the West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist thinking and her libertarian spirit,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 537-538). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
ch 20 – 70s
Undoubtedly, much of this national mood of hostility to government and business came out of the Vietnam war, its 55,000 casualties, its moral shame, its exposure of government lies and atrocities. On top of this came the political disgrace of the Nixon administration in the scandals that came to be known by the one-word label “Watergate,” and
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 542). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
No respectable American newspaper said what was said by Claude Julien, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in September 1974. “The elimination of Mr. Richard Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 545). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The word was out: get rid of Nixon, but keep the system.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 546). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The whole nation heard the details of the quick break-in at the Watergate apartment; there was never a similar television hearing on the long-term break-in in Vietnam.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 547). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
(after section talking about corp’s buying time/attention/protection of president et al) Whether Nixon or Ford or any Republican or Democrat was President, the system would work pretty much the same way.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 549). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1975, congressional committees in the House and Senate began investigations of the FBI and CIA. The CIA inquiry disclosed that the CIA had gone beyond its original mission of gathering intelligence and was conducting secret operations of all kinds. For instance, back in the 1950s, it had administered the drug LSD to unsuspecting Americans to test its effects: one American scientist, given such a dose by a CIA agent, leaped from a New York hotel window to his death. The CIA had also been involved in assassination plots against Castro of Cuba and other heads of state. It had introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971, bringing disease and then
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 554). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The FBI had sent forged letters, engaged in burglaries (it admitted to ninety-two between 1960 and 1966), opened mail illegally, and, in the case of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, seems to have conspired in murder.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 555). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
another instance of cooperation between the mass media and the government in instances of “national security.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 555). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The Church Committee uncovered CIA operations to secretly influence the minds of Americans: The CIA is now using several hundred American academics (administrators, faculty members, graduate students engaged in teaching) who, in addition to providing leads and, on occasion, making introductions for intelligence purposes, write books and other material to be used for propaganda purposes abroad. . . . These academics are located in over 100 American colleges, universities and related institutions. At the majority of institutions, no one other than the individual concerned is aware of the CIA link.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 555-556). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
aaron‘s research et al
In 1961 the chief of the CIA’s Covert Action Staff wrote that books were “the most important weapon of strategic propaganda.” The Church Committee found that more than a thousand books were produced, subsidized, or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 556). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
People no longer felt the same obligation to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents. All this, he said, “produced problems for the governability of democracy in the 1970’ s. .
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 559). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Noam Chomsky, one of the leading antiwar intellectuals during the Vietnam period, looked in mid-1978 at how the history of the war was being presented in the major media and wrote that they were “destroying the historical record and supplanting it with a more comfortable story . . . reducing ‘lessons’ of the war to the socially neutral categories of error , ignorance , and cost.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 567). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The renegotiation of the Panama Canal treaty with the tiny Central American republic of Panama was an example (of power flaunt). The canal saved American companies $ 1.5 billion a year in delivery costs, and the United States collected $ 150 million a year in tolls, out of which it paid the Panama government $ 2.3 million dollars, while maintaining fourteen military bases in the area.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 568). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
There were, by the early seventies, about three hundred U.S. corporations, including the seven largest banks, which earned 40 percent of their net profits outside the United States. They were called “multinationals,” but actually 98 percent of their top executives were Americans. As a group , they now constituted the third-largest economy in the world, next to the United States and the Soviet Union. The relationship of these global corporations with the poorer countries had long been an exploiting one,
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 568). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
U.S. corporations in Europe between 1950 and 1965 invested $ 8.1 billion and made $ 5.5 billion in profits, in Latin America they invested $ 3.8 billion and made $ 11.2 billion in profits, and in Africa they invested $ 5.2 billion and made $ 14.3 billion in profits. It was the classical imperial situation, where the places with natural wealth became victims of more powerful nations whose power came from that seized wealth.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 568). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The Carter administration promised to end the sale of arms to repressive regimes, but when it took office the bulk of the sales continued.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 569). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
And the military continued to take a huge share of the national budget. When Carter was running for election, he told the Democratic Platform Committee: “Without endangering the defense of our nation or commitments to our allies, we can reduce present defense expenditures by about 5 to 7 billion dollars annually.” But his first budget proposed not a decrease but an increase of $ 10 billion for the military. Indeed, he proposed that the U.S . spend a thousand billion dollars (a trillion dollars) in the next five years on its military forces. And the administration had just announced that the Department of Agriculture would save $ 25 million a year by no longer giving free second helpings of milk to 1.4 million needy schoolchildren who got free meals in school.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 569-570). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It soon became clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President, were bitterly disappointed with his policies.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 570). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In June 1992 more than a hundred countries participated in the Earth Summit environmental conference in Brazil. Statistics showed that the armed forces of the world were responsible for two-thirds of the gases that depleted the ozone layer.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 577). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
While he built up the military (allocations of over a trillion dollars in his first four years in office), Reagan tried to pay for this with cuts in benefits for the poor. There would be $ 140 billion of cuts in social programs through 1984 and an increase of $ 181 billion for “defense” in the same period. He also proposed tax cuts of $190 billion (most of this going to the wealthy).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 577). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
periods of lowered corporate taxes (1973– 1975, 1979– 1982) did not at all show higher capital investment, but a steep drop. The sharpest rise of capital investment (1975– 1979) took place when corporate taxes were slightly higher than they had been the preceding five years.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 577). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Much of the public did not know, and were not informed by either political leaders or the media, that welfare took a tiny part of the taxes, and military spending took a huge chunk of it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 579). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
William Greider pointed out, in his remarkable book Who Will Tell The People? The Betrayal of American Democracy:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 580). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
By the early 1990s, a middle-income family earning $ 37,800 a year paid 7.65 percent of its income in Social Security taxes. A family earning ten times as much, $ 378,000 paid 1.46 percent of its income in Social Security taxes.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 581). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
because of favorable changes for the rich in the tax structure, the richest 1 percent, in the decade ending in 1990, saw their after-tax income increase 87 percent. In the same period, the after-tax income of the lower four-fifths of the population either went down 5 percent (at the poorest level) or went up no more than 8.6 percent.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 581). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
(end of 80s) In Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore, the mortality rate for black babies was higher than in Jamaica or Costa Rica.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 582). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition
42 percent of young black men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five were either in jail, or out on probation or parole.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 582). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The spending of trillions of dollars to build up nuclear and nonnuclear forces was justified by fears that the Soviet Union, also building up its military forces, would invade Western Europe.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 583). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the creation of such a fear in the public mind was useful in arguing for the building of frightful and superfluous weapons. For instance, the Trident submarine, which was capable of firing hundreds of nuclear warheads, cost $ 1.5 billion. It was totally useless except in a nuclear war , in
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 583). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the mid-1980s, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, which did research for the Defense Department, told an interviewer in an unusually candid statement, that the enormous number of weapons was unnecessary from a military point of view, but were useful to convey a certain image at home and abroad:
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 583). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
National Press Club showed that 59 percent of American voters wanted a 50 percent cut in defense spending over the next five years. It seemed that both parties had failed in persuading the citizenry that the military budget should continue at its high level. But they continued to ignore the public they were supposed to represent.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 584). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The media, in a country priding itself on its level of education and information, kept the public informed only on the most superficial level. The limits of Democratic
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 587). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
According to Elizabeth Drew, a writer for the New Yorker, Bush’s aide John Sununu “was telling people that a short successful war would be pure political gold for the President and would guarantee his re-election.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 595). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
On June 12, 1982, the largest political demonstration in the history of the country took place in Central Park, New York City. Close to a million people gathered to express their determination to bring an end to the arms race.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 604). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
1983 , David Nyhan of the Boston Globe wrote: “There is something brewing in the land that bodes ill for those in Washington who ignore it.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 609). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The unemployment rate among young African-Americans had risen above 50 percent, and the Reagan administration’s only response to poverty was to build more jails. Understanding that blacks would not vote for him, Reagan tried, unsuccessfully, to get Congress to eliminate a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ..
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 609-610). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
An ingenious radio person in Boulder, Colorado, named David Barsamian recorded a speech by Noam Chomsky made at Harvard— a devastating critique of the war. He then sent the cassette out to his network of community stations, which were eager for a point of view different from the official one.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 624-625). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
After the disintegration of the Soviet bloc began in 1989, there had been talk in the United States of a “peace dividend,” the opportunity to take billions of dollars from the military budget and use it for human needs.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 625). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
A member of the Bush administration said: “We owe Saddam a favor. He saved us from the peace dividend” (New York Times, March 2, 1991).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 625). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
For the first time in all the years that the country had celebrated Columbus Day, there were nationwide protests against honoring a man who had kidnapped, enslaved, mutilated, murdered the natives who greeted his arrival with gifts and friendship.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 626). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
“a permanent adversarial culture” which refused to surrender the possibility of a more equal, more humane society. If there was hope for the future of America, it lay in the promise of that refusal.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 630). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
the awakening… from pluralistic ignorance..
They (most history books) teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions. The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 631). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
voting ness
These rebellions , so far, have been contained. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 632). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen , winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media—none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty. One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another:….. to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 632). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Madison… “We the people . . . ,” pretending that the new government stood for everyone, and hoping that this myth, accepted as fact, would ensure “domestic tranquillity.”
The pretense continued over the generations, helped by all-embracing symbols, physical or verbal: the flag, patriotism, democracy, national interest, national defense, national security.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 632). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Blacks, cajoled by Supreme Court decisions and congressional statutes, rebelled. Women, wooed and ignored, romanticized and mistreated, rebelled. Indians, thought dead, reappeared, defiant. Young people, despite lures of career and comfort, defected. Working people, thought soothed by reforms, regulated by law, kept within bounds by their own unions, went on strike. Government intellectuals, pledged to secrecy, began giving away secrets. Priests turned from piety to protest. To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget— ..
the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 634). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one’s humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 634). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
most histories understate revolt, overemphasize statesmanship, and thus encourage impotency among citizens
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 635). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In a system of intimidation and control, people do not show how much they know, how deeply they feel, until their practical sense informs them they can do so without being destroyed.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 635). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police , teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbagemen and firemen. These people— the employed, the somewhat privileged— are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls. That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica— expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control , kill us.
Certain new facts may, in our time, emerge so clearly as to lead to general withdrawal of loyalty from the system. The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system— the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government—to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 635). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Millions of people have been looking desperately for solutions to their sense of impotency, their loneliness, their frustration, their estrangement from other people, from the world , from their work, from themselves.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 636). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 638). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. aka: all people
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 639). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
authentic energy ness
The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods— a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name “socialist.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 639). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
a people experiment – short – govern\ment
People would need to begin to transform their immediate environments—the workplace, the family, the school, the community— by a series of struggles against absentee authority, to give control of these places to the people who live and work there.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 639). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
when such a movement took hold in hundreds of thousands of places all over the country it would be impossible to suppress, because the very guards the system depends on to crush such a movement would be among the rebels.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 640). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
because it would be a process over time, starting without delay, there would be the immediate satisfactions that people have always found in the affectionate ties of groups striving together for a common goal.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 640). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
no prep/training.. game plan already in each heart…
There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done—bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite’s weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of the determined population.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 640). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
and so imagine a plan that includes the elite as well. one for 100% of humanity. that’s what we can do today. imagine the momentum/spread of a revolution every soul wants. based on 2 needs.. deep enough.. imagine a game plan – where everyone is in. ie: nationality? – human.
The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel, as before, in ways that cannot be foreseen, at times that cannot be predicted. The new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards. We readers and writers of books have been, for the most part, among the guards. If we understand that, and act on it, not only will life be more satisfying , right off, but our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 642). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Clinton was eager to show he was “tough” on matters of “law and order.” Running for President in 1992 while still Governor of Arkansas, he flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man on death row.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 645). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
(Clinton & Reno) – Instead of waiting for negotiations to bring about a solution, the FBI attacked with rifle fire, tanks, and gas, resulting in a fire that swept through the compound, killing at least 86 men, women, and children.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 645-646). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Professor James Fyfe of Temple University, who taught criminal justice, said: “There is no FBI to investigate the FBI. There is no Justice Department to investigate the Justice Department.” One of the people sentenced by the judge was Renos Avraam, who commented: “This nation is supposed to run under laws, not personal feelings. When you ignore the law you sow the seeds of terrorism.” This turned out to be a prophetic statement. Timothy McVeigh, who some years after the Waco tragedy was convicted of bombing the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which cost 168 lives, had visited the Waco site twice.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 646). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The “Crime Bill” of 1996, which both Republicans and Democrats in Congress voted for overwhelmingly, and which Clinton endorsed with enthusiasm, dealt with the problem of crime by emphasizing punishment, not prevention. It extended the death penalty to a whole range of criminal offenses, and provided $ 8 billion for the building of new prisons.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 647). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In early 1996, Congress and the President joined to pass an “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” allowing deportation of any immigrant ever convicted of a crime, no matter how long ago or how serious. Lawful permanent residents who had married Americans and now had children were not exempt. The New York Times reported that July that “hundreds of long-term legal residents have been arrested since the law passed.” There was a certain irrationality to this new law, for it was passed in response to the blowing up of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, who was native born.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 648-649). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the summer of 1996 (apparently seeking the support of “centrist” voters for the coming election), Clinton signed a law to end the federal government’s guarantee, created under the New Deal, of financial help to poor families with dependent children. This was called “welfare reform,” and the law itself had the deceptive title of “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 649). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Columnist Molly Ivins suggested that the bombing of Baghdad for the purpose of “sending a powerful message” fit the definition of terrorism. “The maddening thing about terrorists is that they are indiscriminate in their acts of vengeance, or cries for attention, or whatever. . . . What is true for individuals . . . must also be true of nations.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 654). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
a military operation that ended with the killing of 19 Americans and perhaps 2,000 Somalis in October 1993. The attention of the American public was concentrated, as usual, on the deaths of Americans (glamorized in the film Black Hawk Down). The lives of Somalis seemed much less important.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 654). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
when this did not serve the “national interest,” which was a euphemism for corporate interest.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 658). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In an even more flagrant violation of the principle of free trade, the United States would not allow shipments of food or medicine to Iraq or to Cuba. In 1996, on the television program 60 Minutes, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was asked about the report that “a half million children have died as a result of sanctions against Iraq. . . . That is more children than died in Hiroshima. . . . Is the price worth it?” Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 659). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
What the incident showed was that a matter of personal behavior could crowd out of the public’s attention far more serious matters, indeed, matters of life and death. The House of Representatives would impeach the president on matters of sexual behavior, but it would not impeach him for endangering the lives of children by welfare reform, or for violating international law in bombing other countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan), or for allowing hundreds of thousands of children to die as a result of economic sanctions (Iraq).
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 659-660). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The United States was the richest country in the world, with 5 percent of the earth’s population yet consuming 30 percent of what was produced worldwide. But only a tiny portion of the American population benefited; this richest 1 percent of the population saw its wealth increase enormously starting in the late 1970s.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 662). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
To put it another way, war in our time is always a war against children. And if the children of other countries are to be granted an equal right to life with our own children, then we must use our extraordinary human ingenuity to find nonmilitary solutions for world problems.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 664). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
a culture where the young no longer were taught to strive for “success” as a mask for greed.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 665). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
University of California at Berkeley in the year 2000, ….student address at commencement was a young Palestinian woman named Fadia Rafeedie…. She agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But, she said: When he was gassing the Kurds, he was gassing them using chemical weapons that were manufactured in Rochester, New York. And when he was fighting a long and protracted war with Iran, where one million people died, it was the CIA that was funding him. It was U.S. policy that built this dictator . When they didn’t need him, they started imposing sanctions on his people. Sanctions should be directed at people’s governments, not at the people.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (pp. 666-667). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In 1990 the average pay of the chief executive officers of the 500 largest corporations was 84 times that of the average worker. By 1999, it was 475 times the average worker’s pay.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 668). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Students around the country organized a Workers Rights Consortium. (starting w/harvard, 1998 – student sit in’s to raise custodians et al salaries) – Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 670). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Seattle, Washington, in the last months of 1999. Seattle had been chosen as the meeting place of the World Trade Organization, and representatives of the most wealthy and powerful institutions on the globe were there to make plans to maintain their wealth and power, to bring the principles of capitalism to work across national boundaries, over all the earth. Tens of thousands of people converged on Seattle to protest the plans of the World Trade Organization to expand “free trade” agreements.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 672). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The summit meeting of the World Trade Organization was shaken by all this, and at a certain point the talks collapsed. It was a remarkable illustration of the ability of organized citizens to challenge the most powerful corporations in the world.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 673). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In the year following the Seattle demonstrations, protesters showed up wherever a summit of wealthy entrepreneurs was taking place: Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Davos, Switzerland; Los Angeles; and Prague. Officials of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund could not ignore such a protest movement.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 674). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Dan Rather declared: “George Bush is the President. . . . Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where.” (in portraying us bombings in afghanistan after 9/11)
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 680). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Some family members of those who had died in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon wrote to President Bush, urging that he not match violence with violence, that he not proceed to bomb the people of Afghanistan.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 681). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Critics of the bombing campaign argued that terrorism was rooted in deep grievances against the United States, and that to stop terrorism, these must be addressed. The grievances were not hard to identify: the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, site of the most holy of Moslem shrines; the ten years of sanctions against Iraq which, according to the United Nations, had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; the continued U.S. support of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, including billions in military aid. However, these issues could not be addressed without fundamental changes in American foreign policy….. in short, relinquishing the cherished role of the United States as a superpower.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 681). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States (p. 682). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States . HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
how nationalist fervor— inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing—permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own.
Zinn, Howard (2010-01-14). A People’s History of the United States . HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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Arundhati Roy & Howard Zinn on Democracy & Dissent, Racism & Empire, and War & Peace (2003)
…
1:14 – a revolution that must cross national boundaries – but must start here in america – you have access to the emperiel palace and the emperors chambers
you have a rich history of resistance – you only need to read Howard Zinn’s – a history
you are not a great nation – but you are a great people – history is giving you a chance – seized the time
1:21 – Howard – we need to reclaim the word – democracy
1:26 – Modi – indian govt has never been closer to govt of us – and also worse time for indians
1:35 – annoyed by – saving private ryan – when ww2 is paraded before us – to glorify war – ww2 – the “best of wars” and at the end 50 mill people have died. and has it ended…/ – Howard
1:37 – we have reached that point in human history that we can not tolerate the mass killing – for whatever cause – Howard
1:39 – defending the american people – so called anti -indian .. – we must disagree about what america is – it’s not the govt… govt are artifical constructs – when govt become destructive of those ends – it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the govt – the govt is being anti-american when it goes against the principals of democracy- Howard
1: 41 – i try not to participate in these categories – i’m actually not a nationalist of any kinds. it’s time for us to stop coming up short of these artificial boundaries.. – Arhundhati
the danger of nationalism -..- if all children everywhere have an equal right to live – then war is impossible.. because war is against children. – Howard
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@haymarketbooks
“How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?” –Howard Zinn
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Haymarket Books (@haymarketbooks) tweeted at 9:54 AM – 21 Jan 2018 :
“Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.” —Howard Zinn https://t.co/fluIXszgcK (http://twitter.com/haymarketbooks/status/955121489501675520?s=17)
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just putting some things not learned in school here:
- george washington’s slave teeth: http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/george-washingtons-false-teeth-come-slaves-look-evidence-responses-evidence-limitations-history/
- edison torturing animals: https://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/19/edison-publicly-tortured-animals-to-discredit-ac-power/
- leadskalnin http://www.leedskalnin.com/ and tesla https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla ignored/blocked works
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Haymarket Books (@haymarketbooks) tweeted at 9:06 PM – 2 Jan 2020 :
“How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”
Thinking of Howard Zinn, who left us 10 years ago this month https://t.co/zMnAzjPTKZ (http://twitter.com/haymarketbooks/status/1212948415711186947?s=17)
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be you. 