Do you remember a few years ago when Arizona banned an ethnic studies program?
I think that ban was aimed at Mexican Americans.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2017 11:30 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Matthew <mcblack@xxxxxxxxx>; Jennifer Ford <dandjford88@xxxxxxxx>; delores
selset <dselset@xxxxxxx>; jamesjarvis98 <jamesjarvis98@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Bill Introduced to Ban Howard Zinn Books From
Arkansas Public Schools
When the long entrenched Ruling Class is threatened, regardless of when or
where in Time, one of the first Defensive Acts is the Offensive Act of
destroying any literature or materials which disagree with the Ruling Class.
From the burning of the Alexandria Library...and probably far earlier examples,
to the Nazi Purge of non Aryan people, declared inferior to the Master Race,
and the burning of any books that taught, or suggested a different belief, to
the more recent times when Christian groups burn the Koran, the practice has
been an effort to protect the Ruling Class, and for the most part it has been a
total failure.
But here we go again. One of the truly great historical works, A Peoples
History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is seen as a threat to the White
Supremacists Ruling Class in Arkansas. Clear minded people understand that the
effort to remove Zinn's book from circulation is simply an admission by these
White Racists, that they have no rational defense for their long established
control over the People of Arkansas.
As an Agnostic, I disagree with books such as the Holy Bible or the Koran. And
yet, there is great value in these books. If my best argument against the
belief that there is some Intelligent Creator directing our lives, is to rush
about burning their books, then I, and my beliefs, are failures.
But beyond all of this, what people need to watch out for, is that once the
books have been removed, the next step is to begin removing those people who
subscribe to the teachings in the newly banned books.
First from their jobs. Next, from their communities. Prison. And even
execution.
Are we witnessing the res erection of the Witch Hunts of early America? Are we
going to purge our People of whatever the Ruling Class finds undesirable? Will
we wind up with everybody looking and acting like Donald Trump?
Carl Jarvis
Sent on 3/5/17:
Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
Bill Introduced to Ban Howard Zinn Books From Arkansas Public Schools
By Max Brantley, Arkansas Times
04 March 17
he deadline for new legislation is fast approaching and it can't come
too soon. Just in from Sen. Rep. Kim Hendren: Legislation to prohibit
any publicly supported schools (you, too, charters) from including in
curriculum or course materials any books or other material authored by
Howard Zinn.
(Actually, anything Zinn wrote before 1959 is not covered.)
Zinn, who died in 2010, was a Ph.D. historian, social activist andwrote the best-selling "A People's History of the United States." A
more who
version for young readers came out in 2007.
His New York Times obituary probably gives you a taste of the danger
Kim Hendren sees in Howard Zinn:
Proudly, unabashedly radical, with a mop of white hair and bushy
eyebrows and an impish smile, Mr. Zinn, who retired from the history
faculty at Boston University two decades ago, delighted in debating
ideological foes, not the least his own college president, and in
lancing what he considered platitudes, not the least that American
history was a heroic march toward democracy.
Almost an oddity at first, with a printing of just 4,000 in 1980, "A
People's History of the United States" has sold nearly two million copies.
To describe it as a revisionist account is to risk understatement. A
conventional historical account held no allure; he concentrated on
what he saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the
blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham
Lincoln. He also shined an insistent light on the revolutionary
struggles of impoverished farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters
of slavery and war.
Such stories are more often recounted in textbooks today; they were
not at the time.
"Our nation had gone through an awful lot - the Vietnam War, civil
rights, Watergate - yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental
nationalist glorification of country," Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent
interview with The New York Times. "I got the sense that people were
hungry for a different, more honest take."
Even some on the liberal side thought Zinn's revisionism went too far.
That criticism barely raised a hair on Mr. Zinn's neck. "It's not an
unbiased account; so what?" he said in the Times interview. "If you
look at history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated,
it's a different story."
He inspired a movie, documentaries and song. Dangerous stuff for the
Arkansas student in one legislator's
