In a special broadcast, we look at voices of a people’s history inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms. Twenty years ago, Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States. The two would go on to publish a book collecting theses texts under the title Voices of a People’s History of the United States. While Zinn died in 2010, his work continues to inspire millions across the country and the globe. Arnove and Hailey Pessin have just published a new book titled Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance. It gathers more than 100 speeches, essays and other documents of activism, protest and social change. We speak with them about the book, and feature readings from texts featured in it.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Today, in this special broadcast, we look at Voices of a People’s History, inspired by the late great historian Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking book, A People’s History of the United States, which helped reshape how history is taught in classrooms.

Twenty years ago, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove began organizing public readings of historical texts referenced in A People’s History of the United States. The two would go on to publish a book collecting these texts under the title Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

While Howard Zinn died in 2010, his work continues to inspire millions across the country and the globe. Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin have just published a new book, titled Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance. It gathers more than 100 speeches, essays and other documents of activism, protest and social change.

I recently spoke with Anthony and Haley to talk about the book and about recent live readings from the text. I began by asking Anthony Arnove to talk about Howard Zinn.

ANTHONY ARNOVE: Howard was born 101 years ago in Brooklyn to working-class immigrant parents. He, from a very young age, was actually involved in political organizing, worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, had a number of working-class jobs around New York City and was around people who were talking about the need to fight for better working conditions, opposing racism. And then Howard entered World War II, where he was a bombardier. And that was an experience that profoundly transformed him. He came home a determined antiwar activist and someone who dedicated his life to opposing U.S. empire.

He then went from that experience to studying on the GI Bill and becoming a historian, where his first assignment as a teacher was at Spelman College right at the very beginning of the civil rights movement. And he threw himself completely into that movement. He said that he learned more from his students than his students learned from him as a teacher. He had students like Bernice Johnson Reagon, students like Alice Walker and others, who were some of the earliest participants in the civil rights movement in the South. He threw himself into those struggles very actively.

And in fact, as a result of that, he was pushed out of Spelman College by the administration and then migrated north to Boston, where he actually taught in the Political Science Department, because he was kind of pushed to the margins of the historian’s profession because of his involvement in civil rights organizing, which then transitioned very naturally into his work against the Vietnam War. He was one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War, wrote a very important book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. He then, of course, ran afoul of the administration at Boston University, where he was teaching, again threw himself into supporting efforts by the staff at that university to organize, supporting students who were speaking out against injustice.

And then, all of this work culminated in 1980 with the publication of A People’s History of the United States, which really provides a groundbreaking rethinking of the entire history of the United States, from the bottom up, a perspective that radically rethinks the way that our history is taught.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to say, when I saw the two of you, Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin, on the stage at Town Hall, it really was a beautiful sight. You have a generation between you. And, Haley, I’m wondering if you can talk about how you discovered Howard Zinn’s writing and how you came to co-edit this book?

HALEY PESSIN: I discovered Howard Zinn as a high school student. So I was lucky to have A People’s History of the United States as one of the textbooks that we read. And I really read it voraciously, in a way that no textbook had ever really grabbed my attention. This one was very much a breath of fresh air, because I was an activist.

And it was a book that began with Christopher Columbus, but really unpacked his actual legacy, in his own words, through his diaries, showing that rather than the brave explorer that we were all taught to admire growing up, he immediately saw that his job while being in the New World was to enslave and to, you know, kill Indians, to kill Native Americans. So, seeing that and understanding that this was the history that this country was founded on was really profound.

But also, the acts of resistance at every stage of history, whether by enslaved people against slavery or by labor activists against their conditions of work or antiwar resisters or civil rights activists — this was a history from the bottom up, that was really about not great people or usually great men whose actions were usually taught to see as shaping history, but a history that is actually shaped by ordinary people acting in concert, acting collectively and acting on their own behalf to change the world. And so, that really profoundly shaped my understanding of history and of what’s possible.

I then did, you know, a number of activist projects. I’ve been involved in Palestine solidarity work and abortion rights work and a number of other things, labor rights. And through that work, I got to meet Anthony, who heads Haymarket Books, is one of the founders of Haymarket Books. And we use their books as, you know, a resource in a lot of activist work and education. And so, we met in that way.

And I was truly honored when Anthony invited me to co-edit this new edition of the book. The previous edition, which is encompassing the entirety of U.S. history, was beginning to get a little bit long as more and more things were added to the book, more and more people’s voices. And so, our editor, Dan Simon, had the idea that we should actually create a new book which focused primarily on the 21st century, so voices from the last 20 years of social movements like Occupy Wall Street, like the antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, like the Standing Rock movement and Black Lives Matter, and all the movements that have shaped the last 20 years. And so, knowing that I was a student of that history and that method of learning history and how inspired I’ve been by Howard Zinn’s work, I couldn’t be more, you know, pleased and grateful to be part of this.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re not just a co-editor, Haley. One of your speeches on abortion is included in this collection, right? Can you talk about what you spoke about there, and also the whole issue of — I hope it’s not an illegal word yet — intersectionality? As you know, Ron DeSantis enters the presidential race, the whole banning of books, which leads to people feeling like they’re having forbidden discussions and ideas, and intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, certainly among those concepts that have been — or, they’re attempting, it seems, to erase.

HALEY PESSIN: Yes. So, I’ll start with my speech. So, I gave the speech at a rally in New York a few months, actually, before the fall of Roe v. Wade, the historic abortion rights Supreme Court decision. And so, I was with activists who were concerned about this, and had been concerned for years, but were specifically concerned as people organizing in New York City, where, you know, we’re considered being in a blue state where abortion rights are protected. And, in fact, the right wing has been emboldened even here to attack people at clinics. The NYPD escorts the anti-abortion activists who, you know, essentially, try to harass people outside of clinics and make it that much harder for them to access what is supposedly a right in this state. And so, we began organizing.

And the speech that I gave was really to speak to, one, the fact that we couldn’t be complacent here, that this issue, affecting primarily states that are so-called red states, was actually important to the entire country regardless of where we were, but also to call out the fact that while these efforts were being driven primarily by Republican lawmakers, it was the concessions by Democrats over the years that had made those rollbacks more likely and much more possible, including things like calling abortion something that should be safe, legal and rare, rather than something that is fundamental to women’s rights, to the right of all people who can become pregnant, to bodily autonomy, to decide their futures economically and their fates. And so, I wanted to draw out........

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