Bill Moyers remembers Howard Zinn
The historian Howard Zinn, who died this week, was a man who believed that working people couldn't wait for a better life - they had to fight for it.
He once wrote, "historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and freedom rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action."
Howard Zinn didn't just write history, he lived it, practicing what he preached, gaining enemies and critics by leaping into the fray himself. A working class kid from Brooklyn, he came home from fighting for America in World War II, to fight alongside other Americans for justice, peace, and jobs.
His fame and popularity came from helping us see America from the ground up - as ordinary people struggling to gain and hold their place in it. When no history book told that story as it should be told, he wrote the book himself -- "A People's History of the United States". It became a perennial best seller....Transcript
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