After reading Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Bruce Springsteen sat down, wrote, and recorded “Nebraska,” perhaps his best social and political work. Zinn once said he decided to write A People’s History after listening to Woody Guthrie’s lyrics about Colorado’s Ludlow Massacre. Guthrie goosed Bob Dylan towards political consciousness who in turn moved Springsteen to consider writing stories “from below” — stories against the grain of the “great men” theory of history.
It’s a nice group, a kind of four horsemen of social justice in a way, who has lost another one it’s members.
I learned of Zinn’s death late last night while checking the news between connecting flights from Denver to Billings. I sat in the plane’s darkness looking out the window at the lights below — cities and towns — but from this height, not people in cars driving kids but abstract patterns, lights, moving slowly below or not at all.
For me, this distance-created abstraction is a Zinn moment. It recalls his commentary on modern warfare, which he oft repeated and goes this way in one of his talks:
[Continue Reading…]
