RE: [xmca] Howard Zinn passed away

["Worthen, Helena Harlow" <hworthen@illinois.edu>]

Hello -

I do labor education, meaning basic education about workers rights, labor history, organizing, politics and economics for working people, based in Illinois. Here, $15 an hour with a union contract is a good job if it's full time. $10 an hour with no union, no contract, no benefits is still a job worth hanging on to because you're likely to be the only person in your extended family who has a job at all and therefore the only person who is functioning in the formal cash economy (as compared to the informal economy). "Scared" is a word that everyone is using -- no one is ashamed of admitting that they're scared.

When we go to labor events -- union meetings, conferences, classes -- we bring boxes of books and lay them out on a book table for people to thumb through and skim, and buy if they have any money. When someone comes up and say, "Where should I start?" the answer is Howard Zinn's People's History. This is a book that makes the light go on in people's eyes. The two kinds of people for whom this book seems to have the most profound impact is older workers who have put in a lifetime of work and are now, age 55 or so, facing layoffs with no health insurance, too young to collect social security or be on medicare; and young people who are discovering that there are no decent jobs out there, period. They read this book and they understand how it got to be this way. 

Zinn is someone who did enough -- if you ask about someone's life, did they do enough? He did enough.  The edited books, plays, films, etc etc  -- somehow or other, he got enough stuff out there so that it really has made and will continue to make a difference, for years to come. 

Helena 


Helena Worthen
Clinical Associate Professor
Labor Education Program University of Illinois
504 East Armory, Champaign, IL 61820
217-244-4095
hworthen@illinois.edu
communicate/coordinate/cooperate/collaborate

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of ulvi icil
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 5:35 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [xmca] Howard Zinn passed away

May be some of us , not only but especially US citizens , can share with
us briefly their thoughts on (their reading on) Zinn.

Ulvi
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