E-Mail This Article to a Friend LEFT WATCH Howard Zinn targets the next generation BY DEIRDRE FULTON

Howard Zinn deserves his reputation as a champion of the underdog. The first time I called to talk to the historian about his new book, Voices of a People’s History of the United States (Seven Stories Press), our conversation was postponed so he could watch the ultimate underdogs, the Red Sox, in game one of their playoff series against Anaheim.

The next morning, high off the 8-3 win, Zinn was happy to talk about Voices, a collection of speeches, stories, letters, and writings from others who have fought their way to the top. The volume, which Zinn co-edited with Anthony Arnove, lets the repressed and the rebellious over four centuries have their say. The authors are fighting what Zinn describes in his introduction as the "submersion of nonwhite people" in the writing of history — as well as the submersion of women, anti-war activists, gays and lesbians, and all others who have been marginalized. From Columbus’s time to Bill Clinton’s, from the Civil War to the war on terror, people have been fighting for progress, and their stories are amassed in this book.

Q: Your book is dedicated "to the rebel voices of the coming generation." Who owns those voices? What is the struggle of the coming generation?

A: I guess when I think of voices of the coming generation, I think of the high-school kid I met last year when I was speaking in Moorhead, Kentucky. She was the daughter of the guy who was driving me to my speaking engagement. And she was telling me how she got in trouble with her high school because she was wearing a T-shirt against the war. And how she was going to a demonstration in Fort Benning, Georgia — you know, she was 16 years old, or something like that, 15 — going to a demonstration to protest the existence of that outfit in Fort Benning, Georgia, that trains police and army people in Latin America.

Another high-school student I ran into — well, I suppose I didn’t run into her, but she and others invited me to this high school outside of Providence to speak to the student assembly. And it was not easy for her to do because there was opposition to it. There were certain parents who thought that their kids should not be allowed to hear me speak about the war. But she held out.

And I guess what I’m saying is, there are a lot of courageous young people around who are of that age, and college kids. These days, when I go to demonstrations, anti-war demonstrations, I don’t see any old folks, I don’t see the middle-aged folks, I don’t see any veterans of the anti-Vietnam movement, very much in the crowd. I see lots of young people and high-school kids and college kids. And so my hope lies in them.

Q: Are there any writings here that you’re particularly proud to have included?

A: I think of Helen Keller, and the fact that Helen Keller is somebody everybody learns about in school. They learn about her because she’s this person who has all these disabilities, she overcomes them and becomes famous and becomes a writer and so on, and that’s how people learn about Helen Keller. They don’t learn in school that Helen Keller was a socialist, or that she was an anti-war activist. She walked on picket lines to support strikers.

Q: I didn’t know that.

A: Well, very few do — you’re not alone. Don’t feel bad. You know, our historical education is very limited, and very poor.

I’m happy also we brought it very up-to-date, and we have a statement by a woman whose husband died in 9/11. And it’s very important to show that not everybody who was a victim of 9/11 reacted with the idea of revenge and retribution, but thinks that war is not the answer to terrorism. Because war itself is a form of terrorism. In fact, war itself is the most deadly form of terrorism.

Q: What hole do you think Voices fills in that field of historical writings and education?

A: What’s happened in the past 10 years, or 15 years or so, is that there’s been a change in our teaching of history. Oh, when I say this, I don’t mean a total change or even a majority change in the country. I think most history is still taught in a traditional way. But I think we have had, more and more, teachers who — maybe these are teachers who came out of the movements of the ’60s, and that’s why this is happening — are refusing to be, quote-unquote, "objective." Who think it’s their responsibility to bring to the attention of their students those aspects of history that have been left out, and to tell them about the struggles of black people and working people and women. And also to give them a sort of internationalist consciousness, to get away from the "rah-rah, raise the flag," all this militarism and super-patriotism. There are more and more teachers who are, I think, teaching in an enlightened and progressive way. And those teachers are always looking for more material.

Q: And it’s not just about history. The book touches on current events too.

A: You know, I would think that anybody who would read my book would understand the dangers of war, the horrors of war, and would understand how many times the American people have been deceived in going into war. And I would hope those people would be inspired by those people who opposed war — Helen Keller and Emma Goldman in that time, and the Gulf War resisters and the Vietnam War resisters in our time — I’d hope people reading the book would develop such a powerful feeling against war, and such a critical attitude toward government claims about why we must go war, that they would be provoked to resist this war more actively than they have been.

I’d also hope that they’d understand, reading this book, that elections are not the most crucial element in bringing about social change. We’ve never been able to depend on the Democratic or the Republican Parties — the Democratic Party may sometimes be a little more liberal than the Republican Party — but we’ve never been able to depend on major political parties or on the formal governmental structure to bring about significant social change. When really important change has taken place, when really serious injustices have been remedied, it’s been done not by voting one or another person into office, but it’s been done by the rise of social movements — by the anti-slavery movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, the black movement. And that puts the elections, including this election, into sort of a larger perspective, where the important thing really is not so much who is elected — though it is often better to have one person elected than another — but the really important thing is what kind of social movement is there in the country that’s going to act on whoever is elected?

Q: And do you think that kind of healthy social movement exists right now?

A: I think we have a growing social movement. I think we have a web of strong anti-war movement in this country. We have a movement against the war that developed even before this war began that actually developed quicker than the movement developed in the Vietnam years. And so there are, all over the country, there are anti-war actions taking place — vigils and gatherings and meetings. Wherever I go there are anti-war groups. There is a movement in this country. We don’t hear about it much because the media doesn’t cover it.

But I think we have a movement that will grow. So long as the war continues, that anti-war movement is bound to grow. And as in the Vietnam years, its ranks will swell by the fact that more and more Americans who are not part of a movement will become part of it because they will get tired of all this mayhem.

Howard Zinn will appear November 1 at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater, in Somerville. Voices of a People’s History will be released November 19.