[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn's view of the struggle

[Morton K. Brussel]

Zinn is realistic, anything but pollyanna, yet upbeat. Be sure to  
read the opening chapter of his book, reproduced below, following the  
interview.


A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
by Howard Zinn
Published by City Lights Books | Available now
296 pages | ISBN: 0-87286-475-7 | www.citylights.com


1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book with, A Power  
Governments Cannot Suppress, is about? What is it trying to communicate?

The book assembles my most recent writings on a variety of subjects,  
from the war in Iraq to essays on Eugene Debs, Henry David Thoreau,  
and Sacco and Vanzetti. The central theme is probably best expressed  
in the final essay, "The Optimism of Uncertainty," in which I draw  
upon historical experience to suggest that the apparent power of  
governments and corporations is in fact fragile, that it rests on the  
obedience of the citizenry, and when that obedience is withdrawn,  
extraordinary change can take place.


2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the  
content come from? What went into making the book what it is?

The book is really the idea of my editor at City Lights, Greg  
Ruggiero, who thought (and who was I to contradict him?) that my  
fugitive essays for the Progressive magazine and other publications  
deserved to be brought together, updated, and published as a book.   
Matt Rothschild, editor of "The Progressive,"  where I am a regular  
columnist, graciously gave permission, and because he allows me to  
write on whatever subject I choose, there is a wide range of topics  
in the book.  The editors at Princeton University Press allowed us to  
reprint my Introduction to a collection of Thoreau's political  
writings. Deepa Fernandes agreed to let us use my introduction to her  
fine book "Targeted" on the immigration debate.  We reprinted, with  
his permission, my introduction to David Cortright's timely book on  
GI resistance to the Vietnam War.  The magazine "Cineaste," which has  
the most thoughtful and probing writing on the movies, offered to let  
me reprint the essay I wrote for them on the relatinship of film to  
the telling of history. The book also contains several essays that  
have never been published before.


3) What are your hopes for A Power Governments Cannot Suppress? What  
do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the  
effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to  
be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking?  
What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?

It is rare that any one book will have a cataclysmic effect on  
society — yes there was Tom Paine's "Common Sense"  and Harriet  
Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"  and "The Communist Manifesto."   
All any writer can hope for is that his or her book plays a small  
part in raising the consciousness of its readers, in pointing to new  
ways of seeing the world, in making them conscious of their own power  
when joined to others.  So to talk about "success" is only reasonable  
if "success" is defined modestly. And if that is so, then a writer  
can never wonder if his or her book was "worth all the time and effort."


4) A Power Governments Cannot Suppress has a beautiful cover photo  
taken during the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Were you on  
that march? Can you relay a story?

I was on the last leg of that march, the last twenty miles to  
Montgomery. We had spent the night before  that — the thousands of  
people on the march — on a field of mud, because there had been a  
torrential rain, and so our sleeping bags rested on pure mud.  As we  
came into the city of Montgomery, the streets were lined with people,  
mostly black, cheering and applauding.  I decided that I didn't want  
to stay for the speeches and ceremony that would take place in front  
of the state capitol. And so, tired, my clothes caked with mud, I  
decided to go home and made my way to the Montgomery Airport.  At the  
airport I ran into my friend and former colleague, Whitney Young. He  
was arriving to be at the ceremony concluding the march. Whitney was  
a tall, distinguished looking black man.  I was pretty disheveled. We  
decided to have a coffee together. The airport cafeteria in  
Birmingham was still segregated. Indeed, all over the South, the  
motto was "The Deep South Says Never." But we decided to try anyway.  
We sat down.  The waitress, a young woman, came over to us. I could  
see in her eyes her indecision. Then she turned to Whitney: "What  
will you have, sir?"   I look at her uniform. On it was a huge  
button: "The Deep South Says Never."

That is the point of much of what I say in the book. All those cries  
by the Establishment — "We will never give in...we will never cut and  
run...we will never end apartheid, etc. etc." have turned out to be  
hollow claims, because when movements of people grow and become  
overwhelming, things change.


###


For more information about A Power Governments Cannot Suppress and  
Howard Zinn's upcoming media & speaking schedule, see:  
www.citylights.com
The following is the opening chapter from Howard Zinn's new book A  
Power Governments Cannot Suppress, just published by City Lights.


If History is to be Creative

America's future is linked to how we understand our past. For this  
reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act. By  
writing, I hope to awaken a great consciousness of racial injustice,  
sexual bias, class inequality, and national hubris. I also want to  
bring into the light the unreported resistance of people against the  
power of the Establishment: the refusal of the indigenous to simply  
disappear; the rebellion of black people in the anti-slavery movement  
and in the more recent movement against racial segregation; the  
strikes carried out by working people all through American history in  
attempt to improve their lives.

To omit these acts of resistance is to support the official view that  
power only rests with those who have the guns and possess the wealth.  
I write in order to illustrate the creative power of people  
struggling for a better world. People, when organized, have enormous  
power, more than any government. Our history runs deep with the  
stories of people who stand up, speak out, dig in, organize, connect,  
form networks of resistance, and alter the course of history.

I don't want to invent victories for people's movements. But to think  
that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures  
that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an  
endless cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to anticipate  
a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe,  
emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of  
the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability  
to resist, to join together, and occasionally to win. I am supposing,  
or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's  
fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of  
warfare.

History can help our struggles, if not conclusively, then at least  
suggestively. History can disabuse us of the idea that the  
government's interests and the people's interests are the same.

History can tell how often governments have lied to us, how they have  
ordered whole populations to be massacred, how they deny the  
existence of the poor, how they have lead us to our current  
historical moment-the "Long War," the war without end.

True, our government has the power to spend the country's wealth as  
it wishes. It can send troops anywhere in the world. It can threaten  
indefinite detention and deportation of twenty million immigrant  
Americans who do not yet have green cards and have no Constitutional  
rights. In the name of our "national interest," the government can  
deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, round up Muslim men from  
certain countries, secretly listen in on our conversations, open our  
emails, examine our bank transactions, and try to intimidate us into  
silence.

The government can control information with the collaboration of a  
timid mass media. Only this accounts for the popularity-waning by  
2006 (33% of those polled), but still significant-of George W. Bush.  
Still, this control is not absolute. The fact that the media are 95%  
in favor of continuing the occupation of Iraq (with only superficial  
criticism of how it is done), while over 50% of the public are in  
favor of withdrawal, suggests a common-sense resistance to official  
lies.

  Consider also the volatile nature of public opinion, how it can  
change with dramatic suddenness. Note how the large majority of  
public support for George Bush the elder quickly collapsed once the  
glow of victory from the first Gulf War faded and the reality of  
economic trouble set in.
Think of how, at the start of the Vietnam War in 1965, two-thirds of  
Americans supported the war. A few years later, two-thirds of  
Americans opposed the war. What happened in those three or four  
years? A gradual osmosis of truth seeped through the cracks of the  
propaganda system-a realization of having been lied to and deceived.  
That is what is happening in America as I write this in the summer of  
2006.

  It is easy to be overwhelmed or intimidated by the realization that  
the warmakers have enormous power. But some historical perspective  
can be useful, because it tells us that at certain points in history  
governments find that all their power is futile against the power of  
an aroused citizenry.
There is a basic weakness in governments, however massive their  
armies, however vast their wealth, however they control images and  
information, because their power depends on the obedience of  
citizens, of soldiers, of civil servants, of journalists and writers  
and teachers and artists. When the citizens begin to suspect they  
have been deceived and withdraw their support, government loses its  
legitimacy and its power.
We have seen this happen in recent decades all around the globe.  
Awaking one morning to see a million angry people in the streets of  
the capital city, the leaders of a country begin packing their bags  
and calling for a helicopter.

This is not fantasy; it is recent history. It's the history of the  
Philippines, of Indonesia, of Greece, Portugal and Spain, of Russia,  
East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Rumania. Think of Argentina and South  
Africa and other places where change looked hopeless and then it  
happened. Remember Somoza in Nicaragua scurrying to his private  
plane, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos hurriedly assembling their jewels  
and clothes, the Shah of Iran desperately searching for a country  
that would take him in as he fled the crowds in Tehran, Duvalier in  
Haiti barely managing to put on his pants to escape the wrath of the  
Haitian people.

We can't expect George Bush to scurry off in a helicopter. But we can  
hold him accountable for catapulting the nation into two wars, for  
the death and dismemberment of tens of thousands of human beings in  
this country, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and for his violations of the  
U.S. Constitution and international law. Surely these acts meet the  
constitutional requirement of "high crimes and misdemeanors" for  
impeachment.

Indeed, people around the country have begun to call for his  
impeachment. Of course we cannot expect a craven Congress to impeach  
him. Congress was willing to impeach Nixon for breaking into a  
building, but will not impeach Bush for breaking into a country. They  
were willing to impeach Clinton because of his sexual shenanigans,  
but will not impeach Bush for turning the wealth of the country over  
to the super-rich.

There has been a worm eating at the innards of the Bush  
Administration's complacency all along: the knowledge of the American  
public-buried, but in a very shallow grave, easy to disinter-that  
this government came to power not by popular will but by a political  
coup. So we may be seeing the gradual disintegration of the  
legitimacy of this administration, despite its supreme confidence.

There is a long history of imperial powers gloating over victories,  
becoming over-extended and overconfident, and not realizing that  
power is not simply a matter of arms and money. Military power has  
its limits-limits created by human beings, their sense of justice,  
and capacity to resist. The United States with 10,000 nuclear weapons  
could not win in Korea or Vietnam, could not stop a revolution in  
Cuba or Nicaragua. Likewise, the Soviet Union with its nuclear  
weapons and huge army was forced to retreat from Afghanistan, and  
could not stop the Solidarity movement in Poland.

A country with military power can destroy but it cannot build. Its  
citizens become uneasy because their fundamental day-to-day needs are  
sacrificed for military glory while their young are neglected and  
sent to war. The uneasiness grows and grows and the citizenry gathers  
in resistance in larger and larger numbers, which become too many to  
control; one day the top-heavy empire collapses.

Change in public consciousness starts with low-level discontent, at  
first vague, with no connection being made between the discontent and  
the policies of the government. And then the dots begin to connect,  
indignation increases, and people begin to speak out, organize, and act.
Today, all over the county there is growing awareness of the shortage  
of teachers, nurses, medical care, and affordable housing, as budget  
cuts take place in every state of the union. A teacher recently wrote  
a letter to the Boston Globe: "I may be one of 600 Boston teachers  
who will be laid off as a result of budget shortfalls." The writer  
then connects it to the billions spent for bombs, for, as he puts it,  
"sending innocent Iraqi children to hospitals in Baghdad."

When we become overwhelmed at the thought of the enormous power that  
governments, multinational corporations, armies, and police have to  
control minds, crush dissent, and destroy rebellion, we should  
consider a phenomenon that I have always found interesting. Those who  
possess enormous power are surprisingly nervous about their ability  
to hold on to their power. They react almost hysterically to what  
seem to be puny and unthreatening signs of opposition.

We see the American government, armored with its thousand layers of  
power, work strenuously to put a few pacifists in jail or keep a  
writer or an artist out of the country. We remember Nixon's  
hysterical reaction to a solitary man picketing in front of the White  
House: "Get him!"

Is it possible that the people in authority know something we don't  
know? Perhaps they know their own ultimate weakness. Perhaps they  
understand that small movements can become big ones, that an idea  
that takes hold in the population can become indestructible. People  
can be induced to support war, to oppress others, but that is not  
their natural inclination. There are those who talk of "original  
sin." Kurt Vonnegut challenges that and talks of "original virtue."

There are millions of people in this country opposed to the current  
war. When you see a statistic "40% of Americans support the war,"  
that means that 60% of Americans do not. I am convinced that the  
number of people opposed to the war will continue to rise while the  
number of war supporters will continue to sink. Along the way,  
artists, musicians, writers, and cultural workers lend a special  
emotional and spiritual power to the movement for peace and justice.  
Rebellion often starts as something cultural.

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces:  
money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people  
of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.

Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age- 
old lesson-that everything thing we do matters-is the meaning of the  
people's struggle here in United States and everywhere. A poem can  
inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil  
disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think. When we  
organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and  
speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.

We live in a beautiful country. But men who have no respect for human  
life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of  
us to take it back.
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