RIP Howard Zinn

The death of an author can be, in my opinion, a really beautiful thing. Death can be such a reminder of life; when we hear that someone like Howard Zinn has died, what do we do? Well, bookstores order more of his books. Many of us who never got around to reading A People's History pick it up. His words and ideas take over newspapers, the internet. Howard Zinn is dead, but the rest of us are provided with an opportunity to take his ideas and run with them.

It's amazing that he was still working so hard for a just world at his age. Just a few short weeks before his death he very effectively called out Obama on being not that different from the other guys. I was planning to see him speak in Olympia in a couple weeks. Instead, I am honoring his death and feeling inspired once again from reading a recent essay of his, The Optimism of Uncertainty.


"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t 'win', there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile....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." -Howard Zinn