Does My Nose Look Weird

Correspondent David Brooks

newspaper La Jornada
Thursday January 28, 2010, p. 21

New York, Jan. 27. Howard Zinn, the historian who narrated the other U.S. history, from the point of view below, over his career, died Wednesday at age 87.

Author of several books, including the text of history's best-selling 's History of the United States ( A People's History of the United States ), speaker, writer, dramatist ( Marx in Soho and a work on Emma Goldman) and contributor to La Jornada , a professor emeritus of history at Boston University.

One independent voices left, was one of most admired intellectuals veterans of the social struggles of the war as young people, for his lifetime of practice: it was thought and action. The problem is not civil disobedience, but civil obedience , said in a speech in Baltimore in the 60's, during a ceremony which went instead to appear before a judge to be sentenced for his actions against the war in Vietnam , then when he returned to Boston University, a couple of policemen waiting to arrest him.

veteran of the Second World War, where he participated in bombing raids against Germany, Zinn returned after the conflict to see the destruction that was committed from 30 thousand feet. Seeing Dresden and other cities, decided that for all, without exception, had to oppose the war. He put his medals and documents he received for his military service in an envelope, closed it and never tagline, referred Rev.

Born in New York in 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants who lived in a working-class neighborhood Brooklyn. He was educated at New York University and Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. in history. In 1956 he was offered a place at Spelman College, a college for African-American women, in what was then racially segregated city of Atlanta.

There he participated in the early civil rights movement, encouraged students to participate. One of them was Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple , who became a lifelong friend of Zinn. fired for insubordination Spelman, Zinn was appointed professor at the University of Boston, where he continued his activism, both in the civil rights movement and against the war in Vietnam (one of the first American intellectuals to do so).

He retired in 1988 and spent his last day supporting a strike by nurses, but never stopped working, and enjoy, in disobedience to power, taxation, war y al imperialismo. En numerosas entrevistas con La Jornada , donde también contribuyó con decenas de artículos a lo largo de los últimos años, este ser digno, humano y modesto nunca perdió el optimismo sobre la capacidad del ser humano para rescatar a la humanidad con la rebelión ante la opresión de todo tipo.

Preguntado porqué en Estados Unidos había tan pocas señales de un movimiento masivo progresista en la era de George W. Bush, respondió que había más vitalidad y expresión progresista que en los años 60, pero estaba fragmentada y más aislada de sí misma, aunque presente en casi todas las esquinas.

He recalled that leftist intellectuals lamented the same in 50 of McCarthyism, but at that same time young people in several villages south of the country conducted the first acts of civil disobedience against racial segregation, which explode shortly after the great movement civil rights. That, surely, is happening now. That is what one learns from history, those surprises that are only felt after .

So maybe it was his last contribution to half, Zinn wrote a few paragraphs to The Nation on the first year of Barack Obama. terribly disappointed I did not expect much from him. Expected to be a traditional Democratic president. In foreign policy, that is little different from a republican nationalist, expansionist, imperial and military. People are screened by the rhetoric of Obama, and I think I should start to understand it will be a mediocre president, which means, in these times, a dangerous agent, unless this is a national movement to push it in a better direction , wrote Zinn. Among his admirers

Americans are Bruce Springsteen (the historian influenced, it is said, some of his songs) and was friends with Matt Damon, who included a reference to his famous history text in the script the movie Good Will Hunting , where his character recommends the book to his psychologist (Robin Williams). But since the youth of the battles for global justice in Seattle to the veteran activists was always Zinn reference.

had recently made a theatrical reading aloud with various actors and talented musicians (Tim Robbins, Damon, Springsteen), and other speeches, songs, poems, letters and more about historical figures, some famous others not, reflecting history from beneath the country. A documentary on the above was recorded and broadcast on the History Channel last month, and the video will soon be available. The texts are part of Voices of a People's History of the United States , a volume of primary materials he used for his famous text of history.

Zinn died of a heart attack while traveling in California. His wife died in 2008, they had two children. The historian will live through the disobedient who always held.

"The being of nothing is great."