His new book, A Young People’s History of the United States (Seven Stories Press), an adaptation of the original, is out May 15.

Last Tuesday evening, I tore him away from an inning of a Boston Red Sox game for to talk about the loss of history, the “impotence” of American activism, a hostile David Horowitz, the 2008 presidential race and how to cure what ails the U.S. labor movement.

In the introduction to your newest adaptation of A People’s History , you say that young people should not be spared from the harsh realities of war, oppression and imperialism. But isn’t disillusionment with “the system” among people in their ’20s and ’30s one reason they aren’t more active in the anti-war or social movements?

I don’t doubt that one of the reasons why the activism among young people is not as strong as it might be—there is activism, but not as much as there should be, given the situation we’re in—is that feeling of powerlessness, which comes partly from a loss of history, a loss of the understanding that the people in the various movements in the ’60s felt powerless also, but overcame that.

History has, to a great extent, been lost, forgotten, pushed aside. And the loss of that history has created a sense of impotence among young people, who look at the enormous power of the government—the Bush administration, the military apparatus, the major media—and are intimidated.

They don’t realize that those same constellations of power existed in the past. And yet, at certain points in history, were overcome by social movements that started small and grew to the point where they could actually accomplish something. Yes, there’s a lot of disillusionment in the face of that feeling of impotence, and inadequacy in the face of overwhelming power.

But there’s a lot more activity and consciousness on behalf of young people than is recognized because the major media won’t report the things that are happening. There’s a general underestimation of the number of people who are involved in actions, in protests.

Last year, David Horowitz published a book about the most dangerous professors in America and named you one of them. He says that our major universities are dominated by liberals. If that’s true, why do we need works like yours, which are designed to correct the “official history”?

What Horowitz is doing is merging two different groups into the “liberal establishment”: The mildly liberal philosophy of most people in academe—most people in academe, in this sense he’s accurate—are “liberal.” But liberal in the most unthreatening of ways, in the way that Bill Clinton is a liberal, or Hillary Clinton is a liberal.

But these people, they’re not radicals. In general, their approach to history is closer to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—the liberal—than, well, to me.

[Horowitz has] given the impression that the universities are dominated by Marxists and radicals, which is very far from the truth. He ignores the distinction between a kind of moderate liberal and a radical.

What’s not being talked about accurately in other histories of the last five or ten years, and the mainstream media? What will be left out of conventional histories of the Bush presidency?

What’s unreported is how much resistance there’s been in the country to the policies of the Bush administration, both Bushes—how much G.I. resistance there’s been, both to the first Gulf War and to the present war. The bias you see in newspapers is reproduced in the bias of history books.

Also, the degree that civil liberties have been violated in these last years. The many horrendous violations of civil liberties, the Patriot Act and going beyond the Patriot Act, the warrantless wiretaps, the visits by FBI people to anybody who expressed criticism of Bush, the rounding up of noncitizens, thousands of them, after 9-11. I suspect that orthodox histories of the last 10 years will not pay a lot of attention to them.

The growing inequality of income in the United States, the huge gap between the rich and the poor, and even between the rich and the middle class. The enormous concentration of wealth at the top; the benefits given to corporations; the tax favors given to corporations. The class issues that are represented by government legislation traditionally has been underreported. I suspect it will continue to be.

What are you thoughts on the 2008 presidential race?

As usual, we’re not given very good choices. Sure, there’s a clear distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans. But not clear enough. The major Democratic candidates are both very weak on the war. Both parties, Republican and Democrats, are far behind public opinion on the question of withdrawal from Iraq.

The leaders of the Democratic Party have been very weak on this issue of withdrawal, thinking they must couple the deadline for withdrawal with giving another $124 billion for the war. So the result of this is, when I look at the positions of the major candidates, they seem not to reflect public opinion. The majority of American people, who want a withdrawal from Iraq, are not represented. Certainly not by the Republican Party, but not even by the Democratic Party, which they put into power in Congress with a quite clear charge of anti-war feeling.

I’m disappointed with the major contenders for the Democratic nomination. The people who do have a strong position, like Dennis Kucinich, are obviously not even in the running. They don’t have a chance. They don’t have the money, they don’t have the organization, and so they’re left out. In other words, the political process is working the way that it usually does—to favor conservatism on the part of Republicans and moderation on the part of the Democrats.

But Kucinich is running. If the American public is so opposed to the war, and so eager to vote for someone who opposes it, why aren’t they lining up to support Kucinich, who’s been opposed all along?

He is running but he’s not getting money. He’s not getting the kind of financial support the other candidates are getting. He’s not getting the kind of press that the others are getting.

Why?

There’s a general acceptance of the fact that somebody with his views is not going to make it. The general acceptance among the big shots of the Democratic Party is that you have to be careful and cautious and moderate in order to be considered a viable candidate.

Kucinich is not cautious and moderate. He says “get out of Iraq now”—which is much closer to public opinion than the other Democratic challengers, but is not approved by these bigwigs who run the Democratic Party apparatus and who have the connections with corporate wealth, who finance the campaigns.

Next week’s May Day. What’s ahead for the U.S. labor movement?

Everybody knows the labor movement is at a low point in its history in terms of the number of members and the degree of militancy and so there’s a very big challenge. I think the challenge now is to organize the unorganized, to do what the CIO did in the ’30s: organize the service workers, organize the janitors, organize the part-time workers, organize the immigrant workers.

These people are hard to organize but that’s where the future of union organization lies. Manufacturing has fled the country and you can’t depend on the manufacturing sector to create possibilities for union growth.

A huge number of unorganized workers in the United States would probably like to join unions but they have to be organized and given support because they’re vulnerable. People who are unskilled are vulnerable; people who are illegal—even legal—immigrants are vulnerable. That’s both a challenge and a hope.

Tickets to Zinn’s 6:30 p.m. speech at the Center Church are $3 and can be purchased through Labyrinth Books, 290 York St., New Haven, 203-787-2848. labyrinthbooks.com. e_SRit●

fmoon@newhavenadvocate.com

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