Goodnight Howard

America's greatest historian has passed away at the age of 87. Howard Zinn taught us that history is more than just the story of the rich ruling elites and the machinations of the military industrial complex. He showed us history from the view point of the people who got trampled by it (black folks, native Americans, the poor, the working class), who tried to correct it (socialists, radicals, feminists), and perhaps most importantly, he didn't just sit on his bony academic ass and and write books and teach history, he went out in the streets and made history. He was a crucial player in the early civil rights struggles, his anti war activism took him out of his cloistered office and into the fight against the travesties we know as the Vietnam war and the wars of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was a voice for those who thought they had no voice. He was a pioneer in telling the story of this country not through dewy eyes that were shaded by rose colored glasses, but through the clear strong lens of truth. And most of the time that lens showed us that the Untied States of America wasn't this do gooder nation that we heard so much about in school, it showed that our country was in fact an empire that was responsible for death, destruction, and despair for those who crossed us or who didn't see things the way we saw them.

There was no one like Howard Zinn before but I hope now that we have his works and his example, there will be many more like him. Goodnight Howard, rest in peace sir. You will be missed.