Howard Zinn Quote
The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in emergency convention in St. Louis and called the declaration a crime against the people of the United States. In the summer of 1917, Socialist antiwar meetings in Minnesota drew large crowds—five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand farmers—protesting the war, the draft, profiteering. A local newspaper in Wisconsin, the Plymouth Review, said that probably no party ever gained more rapidly in strength than the Socialist party just at the present time. It reported that thousands assemble to hear Socialist speakers in places where ordinarily a few hundred are considered large assemblages. The Akron Beacon-Journal, a conservative newspaper in Ohio, said there was scarcely a political observer . . . but what will admit that were an election to come now a mighty tide of socialism would inundate the Middle West. It said the country had never embarked upon a more unpopular war.
The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in emergency convention in St. Louis and called the declaration a crime against the people of the United States. In the summer of 1917, Socialist antiwar meetings in Minnesota drew large crowds—five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand farmers—protesting the war, the draft, profiteering. A local newspaper in Wisconsin, the Plymouth Review, said that probably no party ever gained more rapidly in strength than the Socialist party just at the present time. It reported that thousands assemble to hear Socialist speakers in places where ordinarily a few hundred are considered large assemblages. The Akron Beacon-Journal, a conservative newspaper in Ohio, said there was scarcely a political observer . . . but what will admit that were an election to come now a mighty tide of socialism would inundate the Middle West. It said the country had never embarked upon a more unpopular war.
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About Howard Zinn
Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He wrote extensively about the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Beacon Press, 1994), was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010, at age 87.