You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train: R.I.P Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

I just heard the news that Howard Zinn died of a heart attack today while traveling with his family in Santa Monica. He was 87 years old, and while that is a good long life to have been lived, it still makes my heart ache that someone with such a powerful, essential voice–a voice crucial to the continuing resistance to the exploitation, apathy and historical amnesia that still prevails more often than not in this society–is now gone. I was going to say silent, but that would be the absolutely wrong word in this case. His voice is not silent by any means because of the prolific body of writings left behind by this lifelong radical. I think this may be the time for me to actually read entirely through my copy of  A People’s History of the United States. I also recommend Zinn’s autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,  a fantastic inspiration for how to lead a life well-lived.

Thank you Howard Zinn for inspiring me just as I was forming my political consciousness. If anything, I am even more inspired to continue the work of writing truth, of speaking truth to power, of not taking this life for granted and for always being a squeaky wheel against the continuing travesties of the capitalist system. Now, I’m off the crack open that first chapter of “A People’s History,” the one that talks about that guy named Columbus.