Howard Zinn: Obama "Is Going to Need Demonstrations and Protest and Letters and Petitions" to Do the Right Things

Last month in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to attend a performance of Voices of a People's History, the groundbreaking show conceived by historian Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, and Anthony Arnove, co-editor of Voices of a People's History and author of books including Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (New Press). Blending historical narrative with spoken word -- and some spunky bluegrass performed by the San Francisco-based Stairwell Sisters -- it was an event that, in one brisk hour, celebrated the power of protest and made manifest the best traditions of radical American thought, creativity, and dissent.

Howard Zinn, himself an icon of radical history at 86, kicked off the evening with humor and warmth, explaining that, as a historian and an academic, he never wanted to retreat into the past. "I wanted the voices of the past to come to the present," he explained. "You go into the past and get lost. I want to get out of the past." Zinn's own rebellion has been to reimagine the conventions of his chosen profession. Alternate histories may seem less remarkable in an age where it is possible to buy books that tell the story of everything from coffee to cod. But A People's History of the United States, which sold its one millionth copy in 2003 and has now hit the 2 million mark, first told the stories of American rebels past and present when the present included recent memories of segregation, Vietnam, and the murder of MLK. Voices has taken the documents of that and other eras of rebellion -- the speeches, the poems, the songs -- and breathed life into them....