The author of ‘A People’s History of the United States’ talks about falling into academia, his new book and the people making tomorrow’s history today.

Of his newest book, Voices of a People’s History of the United States (co-edited with Anthony Arnove), Zinn has said, “Educators and politicians may say that students ought to learn pure facts, innocent of interpretation, but there’s no such thing! Long before I decided to write A People’s History, which came out in 1980, my partisanship was shaped by my upbringing in a working-class immigrant family, by my three years as a shipyard worker, by my experience as a bombardier in World War II, and by the civil rights movement in the South and the movement against the war in Vietnam. So I’ve chosen to emphasize voices of resistance — to class oppression, racial injustice, sexual inequality, nationalist arrogance — left out of the orthodox histories.”

Continue reading “Howard Zinn: Vision and Voice”

This worldview — shared by indigenous peoples for millennia, revealed by science since early in the 20th century, and obvious every time we walk outside or look into the eyes of another living creature — is disavowed in practice by almost every powerful institution in American society. It thrives, however, at the annual Bioneers conference, held each fall in the San Francisco Bay area.

In addition to founding and co-directing Bioneers, Kenny Ausubel co-founded the organic seed company Seeds of Change. He is the author of Seeds of Change; Restoring the Earth and When Healing Becomes a Crime. His wife, Nina Simons, is co-executive director of Bioneers and co-producer of the Bioneers Conference since 1990. In 2002, she produced a retreat called UnReasonable Women for the Earth, out of which grew the women’s activist group, CodePink.

AlterNet spoke to the two just in advance of this year’s Bioneers conference.

Continue reading “The Evolution of Environmental Activism”

In his irreverent new book, journalist John Dicker reveals the super-high social costs of Wal-Mart’s super-low prices.

A documentary about Rafe Esquith, fifth-grade teacher a large inner-city school, inspires his students to lead extraordinary lives, despite language barriers and poverty.

September 6, 2005  |  Documentaries today may be giving us what we hunger for. The film March of the Penguins, which reveals the birds’ harsh and glorious Antarctic mating season, has become the second highest grossing documentary in history, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11. Another documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, takes us inside a ballroom dancing competition for New York City’s fifth graders. A third film, The Hobart Shakespeareans (premiering on PBS Tuesday, Sept. 6), made by filmmaker Mel Stuart, follows Rafe Esquith’s fifth-grade class in inner-city Los Angeles as they learn to perform a full-text Hamlet by the end of their school year.

Whether it’s penguins or fifth graders, all these documentaries are about goodness, dedication and purpose, as well as respect and treating others well. There’s something joyful and painfully touching when we see the life force in action with purpose.

Rafe Esquith leads his fifth graders through an uncompromising curriculum of English, mathematics, geography and literature. His classroom mottos are “Be nice. Work hard,” and “There are no shortcuts.” Every student performs in a full-length Shakespeare play. Despite language barriers and poverty, many of these Hobart Shakespeareans move on to attend outstanding colleges.

Esquith, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended the city’s public schools, has taught fifth grade at Hobart Boulevard Elementary for over 20 years. “I don’t want my students to be ordinary,” he says. “I want them to be extraordinary because I know that they are. If a 10-year-old, who doesn’t speak English at home, can step in front of you and do a scene from Shakespeare, then there is nothing that he cannot accomplish.”

Continue reading “The Atticus Finch of Hobart Elementary”