Howard Zinn: We are not a democracy in foreign policy
Howard Zinn told an audience that the state of our nation lies somewhere between democracy and totalitarianism.
Beginning with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Zinn has been a tireless activist as well as a voice of dissent for over 40 years. Last night at Cobo Hall, the Cranbrook Peace Foundation honored the historian, author and lifelong peace activist.
Zinn, the author of the classic best-selling book “A People’s History of the United States, 1492 - Present,” along with other important works on history and U.S. policy, lectured and answered questions. Zinn began his career as a professor at Spellman University in the early ‘60s where he became involved with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Zinn began his lecture with an anecdote about meeting current Michigan House Representative John Conyers for the first time in Selma, Ala., in 1963. Conyers was introduced to Zinn as a young lawyer from Michigan. Zinn was there with SNCC, it was Freedom Day and black people were arriving at the county seat to try to register to vote, where they faced long lines of police cars, the deputy sheriff and his men.
“It was like a war was taking place on this street in front of the county courthouse, as if there was an enemy there. And the enemy [was] old black ladies and women carrying their kids and young men, people who wanted to vote — they were the enemy. And there was the Army brought out to intimidate them and to arrest some of them and beat some of them and cattle prod some of them and John Conyers was there that day and that was the first time I met him,” Zinn said. He called it, “a day to remember, a day of courage and commitment.”
The topics discussed ranged from our history of “violent expansion and history of ethnic cleansing,” the media’s apparent lack of fact-checking, to the Bush administration’s “war crimes.” Citing Colin Powell’s WMDs speech to the United Nations before the beginning of the war in Iraq, Zinn called it “probably the longest list of falsehoods ever spoken to the U.N.”
Read entire article at Wayne State student newspaper
Beginning with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Zinn has been a tireless activist as well as a voice of dissent for over 40 years. Last night at Cobo Hall, the Cranbrook Peace Foundation honored the historian, author and lifelong peace activist.
Zinn, the author of the classic best-selling book “A People’s History of the United States, 1492 - Present,” along with other important works on history and U.S. policy, lectured and answered questions. Zinn began his career as a professor at Spellman University in the early ‘60s where he became involved with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Zinn began his lecture with an anecdote about meeting current Michigan House Representative John Conyers for the first time in Selma, Ala., in 1963. Conyers was introduced to Zinn as a young lawyer from Michigan. Zinn was there with SNCC, it was Freedom Day and black people were arriving at the county seat to try to register to vote, where they faced long lines of police cars, the deputy sheriff and his men.
“It was like a war was taking place on this street in front of the county courthouse, as if there was an enemy there. And the enemy [was] old black ladies and women carrying their kids and young men, people who wanted to vote — they were the enemy. And there was the Army brought out to intimidate them and to arrest some of them and beat some of them and cattle prod some of them and John Conyers was there that day and that was the first time I met him,” Zinn said. He called it, “a day to remember, a day of courage and commitment.”
The topics discussed ranged from our history of “violent expansion and history of ethnic cleansing,” the media’s apparent lack of fact-checking, to the Bush administration’s “war crimes.” Citing Colin Powell’s WMDs speech to the United Nations before the beginning of the war in Iraq, Zinn called it “probably the longest list of falsehoods ever spoken to the U.N.”