Engaging exposition of Zinn's remarkable insights, and his life

worleythom

Howard Zinn: You can't be neutral on a moving train: DVD 2004.

An engaging exposition of Zinn's remarkable insights and his personal history.

"If you go to war against a tyrant, you are killing the victims of the tyrant."

"The resources of a university, of a college, should not be wasted in merely academic pursuits."

"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents. And to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

"The good things that have been done, the reforms . . . all of that was not done by government edict. . . . It was all done by citizens' movements. And then keep in mind that great movements in the past have arisen from small movements, from tiny clusters of people that have gotten together here and there. If you have a movement strong enough, it doesn't matter who's in the White House. What really matters is what are people doing, and what are people saying, what are people demanding."

"I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives, who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard, you would become rich. The meaning of that was, if you were poor, it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie—about my father, and millions of others: men and women who worked harder than anyone."

The quotes are from Zinn's books, https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=✓&query=Zinn, Howard speeches, and interviews.

"The law is made by very mortal people. Very limited people. Very opinionated people. And people who have very special interests."

"I wanted to go fight against fascism. I volunteered for the air force. . . . I got my lieutenant's bars and my bombardier's wings. I was in the air force 2.5 years. . . . We bombed a little town in France. The war was a few weeks from being over, and everybody knew it. There were several thousand German soldiers around the town. They weren't doing anything, they weren't bothering anyone, they were just waiting for the war to end. . . . Several thousand people were killed. . . . Only after the war did I begin to question the total goodness of the good war. . . . It remains to be seen how many people in our time will make that journey—from war, to nonviolent struggle against war. It is the great challenge of our time: how to achieve justice—with struggle, but without war."

"We have learned something, these past few years, about the inadequacy of our regular political structure to bring about desirable social change in a situation of urgency."

"When people turn in desperation to marches and parades, picketing, sit-ins, mass meetings, and freedom rides, this suggests that the normal channels of government are inadequate for the expression of their grievances, and that the mechanism for solution is arrested."

"We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, . . . but only by expanding them."

"There has always been a common-sense perception that there are things seriously wrong, and that we can't really depend on those in charge to set them right."

"I'm supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion, rather than in the solid centuries of warfare."

"In my case there also was a sort of a single event which you can sort of point out as important. And I guess that was the event that when I was 17, these young communists in the neighborhood took me to a demonstration in Times Square. I had never been to a demonstration, but, it sounded exciting, you know, young kids will do anything for excitement. I vaguely thought that probably they were demonstrating for something good, like, 'no more war' or something. . . . I see policemen on horses galloping through the crowd, and hitting people. While I'm just taking this in, I am spun around and hit, on the side of the head, and knocked out. It had suddenly come home to me that, hey, I guess the police are not neutral. I guess the government is not neutral. . . . It was a turning point in my political consciousness."

"The best way to make sure that a country turns to communism is to put foreign military forces in it. . . . then the communists will have a nationalist cause which they can use against the foreign power.

score 10/10

worleythom 12 January 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2940547/