[xmca] Remembering Howard Zinn

["C Barker" <C.Barker@mmu.ac.uk>]

A friend sent me this. Howard Zinn didn't just write the people's history, he helped make it.

****

A Memory of HowardJanuary 27, 2010

By Daniel Ellsberg

AP / Dima Gavrysh

I just learned that my friend Howard Zinn diedtoday. Earlier this morning, I was being interviewed by the BostonPhoenix, in
connection with the February release of a documentary inwhich he is featured prominently. The interviewer asked me who my
ownheroes were, and I had no hesitation in answering, first, “Howard Zinn.”

Just weeks ago, after watching the film, I woke upthinking that I had never told him how much he meant to me. For once inmy life,
I acted on that thought in a timely way. I sent him an e-mail inwhich I said, among other things, what I had often told others:
that hewas, “in my opinion, the best human being I’ve ever known. The bestexample of what a human can be, and can do with their
life.” 

Our first meeting was at Faneuil Hall in Boston inearly 1971, where we both spoke against the indictments of Eqbal Ahmadand Phil
Berrigan for “conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger.” We marchedwith the rest of the crowd to make citizens’ arrests at the Boston
officeof the FBI. Later that spring, we went with our affinity group (includingNoam Chomsky, Cindy Fredericks, Marilyn Young, Mark
Ptashne, ZeldaGamson, Fred Branfman and Mitch Goodman), to the May Day actions blockingtraffic in Washington (“If they won’t stop
the war, we’ll stop thegovernment”). Howard tells that story in the film, and I tell it atgreater length in my memoir, “Secrets: A
Memoir of Vietnam and thePentagon Papers.”  But for reasons of space, I had to cut out thenext section in which Howard—who had
been arrested in D.C. after most ofthe rest of us had gone elsewhere—came back to Boston for a rally and ablockade of the Federal
Building. I’ve never published that story, sohere it is, an outtake from my manuscript:

A day later, Howard Zinn was the last speaker at alarge rally in Boston Common. I was at the back of a huge crowd,listening to him
over loudspeakers. Twenty-seven years later, I canremember some of what he said. “On May Day in Washington, thousands of uswere
arrested for disturbing the peace. But there is no peace. We werereally arrested because we were disturbing the war.” 

He said, “If Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamiltonhad been walking the streets of Georgetown yesterday, they would havebeen
arrested. Arrested for being young.”

At the end of his comments, he said: “I want tospeak now to some of the members of this audience, the plainclothespolicemen among
us, the military intelligence agents who are assigned todo surveillance. You are taking the part of secret police, spying on
yourfellow Americans. You should not be doing what you are doing. You shouldrethink it, and stop. You do not have to carry out
orders that go againstthe grain of what it means to be an American.” 

Those last weren’t his exact words, but that was thespirit of them. He was to pay for that comment the next day, when we
weresitting side by side in a blockade of the Federal Building in Boston. Wehad a circle of people all the way around the
building, shoulder toshoulder, so no one could get in or out except by stepping over us.Behind us were crowds of people with
posters who were supporting us butwho hadn’t chosen to risk arrest. In front of us, keeping us from gettingany closer to the main
entrance to the building, was a line of policemen,with a large formation of police behind them. All the police had largeplastic
masks tilted back on their heads and they were carrying longblack clubs, about four feet long, like large baseball bats. Later
thelawyers told us that city police regulations outlawed the use of batonsthat long. 

But at first the relations with the police werealmost friendly. We sat down impudently at the very feet of the policemenwho were
guarding the entrance, filling in the line that disappearedaround the sides until someone came from the rear of the building
andannounced over a bullhorn, “The blockade is complete. We’ve surroundedthe building!” There was a cheer from the crowd behind
us, and morepeople joined us in sitting until the circle was two or three deep. 

We expected them to start arresting us, but for awhile the police did nothing. They could have manhandled a passagethrough the
line and kept it open for employees to go in or out, but forsome reason they didn’t. We thought maybe they really sympathized
withour protest, and this was their way of joining in. As the morning woreon, people took apples and crackers and bottles of water
out of theirpockets and packs and shared them around, and they always offered some tothe police standing in front of us. The
police always refused, but theyseemed to appreciate the offer. 

Then one of the officers came over to Howard andsaid, “You’re Professor Zinn, aren’t you?” Howard said yes, and theofficer reached
down and shook his hand enthusiastically. He said, “Iheard you lecture at the Police Academy. A lot of us here did. That was
awonderful lecture.” Howard had been asked to speak to them about the roleof dissent and civil disobedience in American history.
Several otherpolicemen came over to pay their respects to Howard and thank him for hislecture. The mood seemed quite a bit
different from Washington. 

Then a line of employees emerged from the building,wearing coats and ties or dresses. Their arms were raised and they wereholding
cards in their raised hands. As they circled past us, they heldout the cards so we could see what they were: ID cards, showing
they werefederal employees. They were making the peace sign with their otherhands, they were circling around the building to show
solidarity withwhat we were doing. Their spokesman said over a bullhorn, “We want thiswar to be over, too! Thank you for what you
are doing! Keep it up.”Photographers, including police, were scrambling to take pictures ofthem, and some of them held up their ID
cards so they would get in thepicture. It was the high point of the day.

A little while after the employees had gone backinside the building, there was a sudden shift in the mood of the police.An order
had been passed. The bloc of police in the center of the squaregot into tight formation and lowered their plastic helmets. The
policestanding right in front of us, over us, straightened up, adjusted theiruniforms and lowered their masks. Apparently the time
had come to startarrests. The supporters who didn’t want to be arrested fell back. 

But there was no arrest warning. There was awhistle, and the line of police began inching forward, black batonsraised upright.
They were going to walk through us or over us, push usback. The man in front of us, who had been talking to Howard about
hislecture a little earlier, muttered to us under his breath, “Leave! Now!Quick, get up.” He was warning, not menacing us. 

Howard and I looked at each other. We’d comeexpecting to get arrested. It didn’t seem right to just get up and movebecause someone
told us to, without arresting us. We stayed where wewere. No one else left either. Boots were touching our shoes. The voiceover
our heads whispered intensely, “Move! Please. For God’s sake, move!”Knees in uniform pressed our knees. I saw a club coming down.
I put myhands over my head, fists clenched, and a four-foot baton hit my wrist,hard. Another one hit my shoulder. 

I rolled over, keeping my arms over my head, got upand moved back a few yards. Howard was being hauled off by severalpolicemen.
One had Howard’s arms pinned behind him, another had jerkedhis head back by the hair. Someone had ripped his shirt in two, there
wasblood on his bare chest. A moment before he had been sitting next to me,and I waited for someone to do the same to me, but no
one did. I didn’tsee anyone else getting arrested. But no one was sitting anymore, theline had been broken, disintegrated. Those
who had been sitting hadn’tmoved very far, they were standing like me a few yards back, lookingaround, holding themselves where
they’d been clubbed. The police hadstopped moving. They stood in a line, helmets still down, slapping theirbatons against their
hands. Their adrenaline was still up, but they werestanding in place. 

Blood was running down my hand, covering the back ofmy hand. I was wearing a heavy watch, and it had taken the force of theblow.
The baton had smashed the crystal and driven pieces of glass intomy wrist. Blood was dripping off my fingers. Someone gave me
ahandkerchief to wrap around my wrist and told me to raise my arm. Thehandkerchief got soaked quickly and blood was running down
my arm while Ilooked for a first-aid station that was supposed to be at the back of thecrowd, in a corner of the square. I finally
found it, and someone pickedthe glass out of my arm and put a thick bandage around it. 

I went back to the protest. My shoulder was aching.The police were standing where they had stopped, and the blockade hadreformed,
people were sitting 10 yards back from where they had beenbefore. There seemed to be more people sitting, not fewer. Many of
thesupporters had joined in. But it was quiet. No one was speaking loudly,no laughing. People were waiting for the police to move
forward again.They weren’t expecting any longer to get arrested. 

Only three or four people had been picked out of theline to be arrested before. The police had made a decision (it turnedout) to
arrest only the “leaders,” not to give us the publicity ofarrests and trials. Howard hadn’t been an organizer of this action,
hewas just participating like the rest of us, but from the way they treatedhim when they pulled him out of the line, his comments
directly to thepolice in the rally the day before must have rubbed someone the wrongway. 

I found Roz Zinn, Howard’s wife, sitting in the lineon the side at right angles to where Howard and I had been before. I satdown
between her and their housemate, a woman her age. They had been insupport before until they had seen what happened to Howard. 

Looking at the police in formation, with theiruniforms and clubs, guns on their hips, I felt naked. I knew that it wasan illusion
in combat to think you were protected because you werecarrying a weapon, but it was an illusion that worked. For the firsttime, I
was very conscious of being unarmed. At last, in my own country,I understood what a Vietnamese villager must have felt at what
theMarines called a “county fair,” when the Marines rounded up everyone theycould find in a hamlet—all women, children and old
people never draft- orVC-age young men—to be questioned one at a time in a tent, meanwhilepassing out candy to the kids and giving
vaccinations. Winning hearts andminds, trying to recruit informers. No one among the villagers knowingwhat the soldiers, in their
combat gear, would do next, or which of themmight be detained. 

We sat and talked and waited for the police to comeagain. They lowered their helmets and formed up. The two women I was withwere
both older than I was. I moved my body in front of them, to take thefirst blows. I felt a hand on my elbow. “Excuse me, I was
sitting there,”the woman who shared the Zinns’ house said to me, with a cold look. Shehadn’t come there that day and sat down, she
told me later, to beprotected by me. I apologized and scrambled back, behind them. 

No one moved. The police didn’t move, either. Theystood in formation facing us, plastic masks over their faces, for quite awhile.
But they didn’t come forward again. They had kept open a passagein front for the employees inside to leave after 5, and eventually
thepolice left, and we left.

*  *  *


There was a happier story to tell, slightly morethan one month later. On Saturday night, June 12, 1971, we had a datewith Howard
and Roz to see “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” inHarvard Square. But that morning I learned from someone at The New YorkTimes
that—without having alerted me—The Times was about to startpublishing the top secret documents I had given them that evening.
Thatmeant I might get a visit from the FBI at any moment; and for once, I hadcopies of the papers in my apartment, because I
planned to send them toSen. Mike Gravel for his filibuster against the draft. 

>From “Secrets” (p. 386): 

“I had to get the documents out of our apartment. Icalled the Zinns, who had been planning to come by our apartment later tojoin
us for the movie, and asked if we could come by their place inNewton [Mass.] instead. I took the papers in a box in the trunk of
ourcar. They weren’t the ideal people to avoid attracting the attention ofthe FBI. Howard had been in charge of managing antiwar
activist DanielBerrigan’s movements underground while he was eluding the FBI for months(so from that practical point of view he
was an ideal person to hidesomething from them), and it could be assumed that his phone was tapped,even if he wasn’t under regular
surveillance. However, I didn’t know whomelse to turn to that Saturday afternoon. Anyway, I had given Howard alarge section of the
study already, to read as a historian; he’d kept itin his office at Boston University. As I expected, they said yesimmediately.
Howard helped me bring up the box from the car.

“We drove back to Harvard Square for the movie. TheZinns had never seen ‘Butch Cassidy’ before. It held up for all of us.Afterward
we bought ice-cream cones at Brigham’s and went back to ourapartment. Finally Howard and Roz went home before it was time for
theearly edition of the Sunday New York Times to arrive at the subway kioskbelow the square. Around midnight Patricia and I went
over to the squareand bought a couple of copies. We came up the stairs into Harvard Squarereading the front page, with the
three-column story about the secretarchive, feeling very good.”

Daniel Ellsberg is a lecturer, writer andactivist and the former American military analyst employed by the RANDCorporation who, in
1971, released the Pentagon Papers to The New YorkTimes.


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