Refusefascism.org | March 10, 2017
Christian fascist legislators in Arkansas are seeking to enact a law banning material by or about historian Howard Zinn from public or state-supported schools. This outrageous measure is in lockstep with the fascism the Trump/Pence Regime is out to impose.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education is a staunch, longtime advocate of Christian fundamentalist, anti-scientific education. Jeff Sessions, the white supremacist Attorney General of the Trump administration promotes “state’s rights” that protects fascists like these Arkansas legislators. Zinn is best known for his book “A People’s History of the United States”. As Raymond Lotta wrote after Zinn’s death in 2010, that book has “opened the eyes of countless readers to the realities of American’s founding in genocide and slavery and America’s arc of brutal expansion. It has opened the eyes of countless readers to the resistance of the exploited and dominated”.
Deborah Menkart, Co-Director of the Zinn Education Project, told an interviewer that “I think there’s a struggle in this country right now for the right of people to think clearly about what’s going on in the world and make their own decisions. Attempts to demonize the media, attempts to demonize facts. So, I think the people’s history that Zinn writes about allows people to see themselves in history and to realize that history is a series of choices, and it has questions about power, about who benefits and who loses from certain choices that are made in history. That is very threatening to those that want to maintain the status quo, that would like to convey the idea that all we have to do is make America great again. If people are understanding and reading that history, they would ask exactly what period are you talking about and who was it great for? Those are the kind of critical questions that are generated once people read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” and other books that include the grassroots history of the United States.”