When I first got wind of the People’s Climate March taking place in New York City on September 21, my first thought was “will my personal responsibilities allow me to get there?” My second thought was of Howard Zinn, the historian and activist who, more than thirty years ago, authored the brilliant but still-debated alternative history of the American experience titled “A People’s History of the United States.”

Surely, I thought, if Zinn were still with us, he would be crisscrossing the country reminding us of our collective responsibility to demand that our elected officials set aside the partisan divide and their distrust of international cooperation and come together to craft meaningful policies addressing the multigenerational crisis that is global warming.

I imagine Zinn would not have missed this opportunity to link arms with fellow activists at what may turn out to be a historic march. Grassroots organizing and street action were, after all, mother’s milk to Zinn. From his first civil-rights marches with students at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, to his anti-war activism during the Vietnam War, Zinn never faltered in his belief that the fundamental obligation of citizens in a democratic society is to make our voices heard through organizing, gathering together, and protesting peacefully so that we may affect government policy and push for social change. Zinn, who passed away in 2010, believed with a passion that power must never be allowed to reside solely behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms nor even within the halls of government, but must be claimed and reclaimed again and again throughout history by the people themselves.

But power, as Zinn reminded any and all who would listen, is only power if it is exercised. The People’s Climate March provides an opportunity to exercise that power.

The People’s Climate March is timed to take place just two days before the world’s leaders meet at the United Nations for what many hope will turn out to be a historic and game-changing climate summit. Organizers are predicting that the march through the streets of New York will be the largest ever. Among the one thousand participating organizations from the U.S. and abroad will be environmental, secular, religious, labor, business, and social-justice groups and schools. Supporting events are planned on September 20 and 21 in cities and towns across the U.S. and in countries around the world as part of the Global Weekend of Action.

The U.N. summit and the People’s Climate March come at a time when frightening reports about the effects of climate change assail us daily. Those reports remind us that we are surely living through one of history’s great turning points—a time when the challenge of environmental degradation is so immense it defies the imagination. With every grim revelation it becomes more difficult to hold on to a thread of hope. When I go down that road, I try to remember that Zinn’s life demonstrated that optimism and realism are not mutually exclusive. “To be hopeful in bad times,” Zinn observed, “is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”

And when I fear that the cruel complexities of our time seem to be insurmountable, I return to Zinn’s speeches and writings in which he outlined a road map that is as relevant today as when he first shaped it. “What we choose to emphasize in this complex history,” Zinn wisely observed, “will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.” Zinn goes on to remind us that if we can recall “those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

On September 21, the hope is that the People’s Climate March will demonstrate to the skeptics and the cynical deniers and those we have allowed through our complacency to profit for far too long from unchecked environmental destruction that we, the people, are tired of waiting for action on climate change. With hope for the future, the march should send a powerful message to world leaders that the world has no choice—as Howard Zinn would remind us— but to send this magnificent spinning top in a different direction.
Read the full text of the invitation to the march below. You can find a map of events taking place in your area at http://peoplesclimate.org/global/.

Dear Friends,

This is an invitation to change everything.

On September 23, world leaders are coming to New York City for a historic summit on climate change. This is an opportunity to inspire the world’s most powerful politicians to ambitious action on the climate crisis.
With our future on the line and the world watching, the People’s Climate March will meet this moment with unprecedented mobilizations in New York City and around the globe.

From New York to Paris and Delhi to Australia, we’ll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.

There is only one ingredient required: to change everything, we need everyone. Join us.

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Every July 4th, I think about Howard Zinn’s insightful essay on nationalism and its overused, over-hyped symbols. Like most everything written by Zinn, it’s compelling, poignant and virtually timeless. Although Zinn wrote it in 2006, during the height of the Iraq War, as a reflection on the faux patriotism of our national birthday and of the actions of the George W. Bush administration, I am always struck by its relevance to current events, so I’m republishing it–again. And I’m wondering, if he were here today, WWZS [What Would Zinn Say] ?

Put Away the Flags, by Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

© 2010 The Progressive

[Editor’s note: Howard Zinn (1922-2010) authored many books, including “A People’s History of the United States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.” Please read Matthew Rothschild’s “Thank you, Howard Zinn,” for more about his legacy. This article  was distributed by the Progressive Media Project in 2006.]

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Do you suffer from progressive-cause fatigue? Does daybreak reveal an inbox bursting with entreaties from progressive politicians and causes pitching the cause-du-jour and pleading for you to add your name and slide the cursor to “submit”?

If you immediately hit “delete” and don’t even bother to skim the offerings, read no further. But if you’re someone whose store of empathy is never quite full, read on.

Just a few days ago my inbox contained a petition of a different stripe. This one was forwarded by a friend whose passion for all things Greek is boundless. The petition addressed the clash between strict EU fishing regulations and a significant artifact of Greek culture—the caique, a painted, handmade wooden fishing boat beloved by locals and tourists alike. As part of their commitment to ensure the recovery of depleted fish populations in the Mediterranean, the EU has been offering cash subsidies to fishermen in exchange for stepping away from their livelihood. In Greece, the EU mandate has resulted in the confiscation and destruction of 10,000 of the traditional boats over the past decade.

The petition, calling on the Greek government to halt the destruction and find a way to repurpose the caiques, was just one of many posted on the website of Avaaz (a word that means voice in several languages), an international organization dedicated to using the fast-response capability of the Internet to funnel protest efforts and press for social justice, one local issue at a time.

Avaaz wants you to get involved

With over 14 million members in 193 countries and more than 74 million actions across the globe since 2007, Avaaz shines a light on issues you’re not likely to see on the nightly news.  Their focus is broad and ever shifting—from calling for an end to prison sentences for Honduran teenagers who take the morning-after pill; to demanding repeal of the Moroccan penal code that allows rapists to avoid prosecution by marrying their underage victims; to seeking information on the whereabouts of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has tragically been “disappeared” once again by the Chinese authorities.

Although at first glance Avaaz’s mission sounds like starry-eyed idealism—organizing “citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world we want”—their tactics are pragmatic and effective.

On its website, the organization explains the mission in this way:

Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change.  Our model of Internet organizing allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force.

The Avaaz community campaigns in fifteen languages, served by a core team on six continents and thousands of volunteers.  We take action—signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing “offline” protests and events—to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform the decisions that affect us all.

The case for global activism

The tactics of Avaaz follow a now well-trodden tradition that was first formulated in the 1960s by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty International. Since Benenson’s first letter-writing campaign (which called for the release of two Portuguese students imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom), mobilizing international support for social justice through letters and petitions has become an axiom of progressive activism.

One perspective on the imperative for global activism was recently outlined by former British diplomat Carne Ross. In his just-published book, The Leaderless Revolution, Ross recounts the failure of governments and established institutions to address the most pressing problems of humanity in the early twenty-first century.  “It would be foolish,” he writes, “to place our faith in one form of management—government—to solve them.” Avaaz and its online community couldn’t agree more.  The strength of Avaaz’s mission lies in the belief that concerned individuals must step into the breach and defend the rights of other individuals around the globe.

The Internet and armchair activism

The Internet, with its immediacy and direct access to a wide community, has rendered the petitioning tactic even more effective than it was in Benenson’s time. One question that rankles, however, is whether signing onto an online petition, such as those on the Avaaz website, is just a facile substitute for direct engagement.

Theorist, historian, and social-activist hero Howard Zinn may have indirectly provided the best answer.  Shortly before he passed away, Zinn expressed his optimism to an audience of college students when he testified to his faith in the power of information to inspire.  He put it this way: “People are decent, and when the truth comes to them, they react. “

As always, Howard Zinn was right. Some type of reaction is better than no reaction at all. So when the truth shows up in my inbox, I recall his words and the words of others like him who dedicated their lives to fight for social justice and who not once allowed themselves to feel cynical, defeated, or fatigued.  And then I figure that the least I can do is to pay attention to the truth and offer something meaningful from my place of comfort. Yes, that means that more often than not I type in my name and then “submit.”

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