{"id":6320,"date":"2010-02-03T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/static\/?p=6320"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:21:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T17:21:48","slug":"howard-zinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/2010\/howard-zinn\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard Zinn, Barack Obama, ML King, and Wind Turbine Syndrome: Their Common Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Howard<\/a>

Copyright 2001, 2019 ROBERT BIRNBAUM\/OURMANINBOSTON<\/p><\/div>\n

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD, Associate Professor of History (retired), Rutgers University<\/a><\/p>\n

January 30, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) died this week.\u00a0 A tremendous loss to democracy<\/a>.\u00a0 (Watch this interview with Bill Moyers<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0scholar (Zinn was a professor at Boston University), Zinn\u00a0emphasized that change comes from the grassroots up, not the reverse.\u00a0\u00a0Change happens only when there’s disobedience to corporate gridlock.\u00a0 Which is of course what the American Revolution and Constitution were about.<\/p>\n

“Corporate,” remember, applies to any group of people who organize and maintain an exclusive and privileged system of belief and conduct.\u00a0 This includes a religion and its adherents, a government, a corporate industry, or even an academic institution.<\/p>\n

Zinn took the point further.\u00a0 He was at pains to point out that we\u00a0should not elect people to public office, then blithely expect them to fix the current state of affairs—then get irate when they don’t and can’t.\u00a0 Think of the 19th-century anti-slavery movement that fired up Abraham Lincoln, or populism at the turn of the 20th century that fired up Theodore Roosevelt.\u00a0 Recall the wilderness appreciation\u00a0movement of the late 19th\/early 20th century.\u00a0 Or trade unions and\u00a0women’s right to vote.\u00a0 Environmentalism and the anti-war movement in the 60s and early 70s.\u00a0 And of course African-American civil rights.\u00a0 In each instance, legislation followed tumultuous civil action, oftentimes civil disobedience–which is different, by the way, from anarchy or terrorism.<\/p>\n

Civil action is both a First Amendment right and obligation.\u00a0 Anarchy and terrorism are neither a right nor obligation.\u00a0 Read Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience<\/a>” (1849).<\/p>\n

\"Barack<\/a><\/p>\n

President Barack Obama declares he wants to change the way Washington does business.\u00a0 This message came across loud and clear in his State of the Union speech this week.\u00a0 Lobbyists have a hammerlock on Congress and state governments.\u00a0 That chokehold just got firmer with the US Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited campaign contributions from lobbyists<\/a>.\u00a0 The court majority argued it’s a matter of free speech (First Amendment).\u00a0 (With this, the court confirms\u00a0the standing joke,\u00a0money talks<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent” (Gore Vidal, 1991).<\/p>\n

Don’t expect Obama to change the way Washington does business with Wall Street-financed Big Wind.\u00a0\u00a0He can’t\u00a0on his own.\u00a0 As history demonstrates, reminds Zinn, this is not how change comes to pass.\u00a0 When Corporate Wind descends upon your community, it’s you<\/em>, reader, who must\u00a0take this completely unregulated Goliath in hand.<\/p>\n

Those who have experienced the Big Wind onslaught on their community know what I’m talking about.\u00a0 You very soon realized you were not going to stop the wind developers with public meetings or with real evidence.\u00a0 The meetings, you discovered,\u00a0were a charade.\u00a0 By the time the meeting was called, the fix was already in, the deal bought and paid for.<\/p>\n

Corporate Wind hires shills (physicists, acousticians, and corporate-sponsored physicians) to write phony reports on health and noise and environmental impact.\u00a0 And with these sham studies they bury your town board in paper.\u00a0 Yards of it.\u00a0 One witnesses the same pattern the world over, as though Big Wind follows a global script.\u00a0 Many of you have discovered this.<\/p>\n

\"Mahondas<\/a><\/p>\n

In your despair, remember the stone wall Dr. Martin Luther King experienced when he agitated for black voting rights and the end of job discrimination and harassment.\u00a0\u00a0King had plenty of sociological and economic and constitutional and statutory and even theological evidence in his briefcase\u2014not unlike the evidence you have presented to your town board about Wind Turbine Syndrome.<\/p>\n

Yet King realized his evidence was going nowhere until he showed Alabama and the nation and US Attorney General and Congress: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, we are all going to take my evidence of racism and Jim Crow and lynching and economic and political harassment and general disfranchisement very seriously, okay?\u00a0 And to drive home my point that you whities are gonna take the evidence seriously, we colored folks are gonna get in your face until you take us seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/a><\/p>\n

He called\u00a0it “direct action.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. . . . Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. . . . It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. . . . My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking.\u00a0 But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’\u00a0 I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth” (M.L. King, Letter from the Birmingham Jail).<\/p>\n

No government will take seriously any of your marvelous evidence (including common sense) about the\u00a0need for proper turbine setbacks\u00a0until\u2014like King\u2014you demonstrate they are going to have to take your evidence seriously<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The operative word is demonstrate<\/em>. This is not done by reason or argument or sense of fairness or justice. Sorry to disillusion you, and sorry to shoot down one of the cornerstones of modern liberal thought: that \u201cthe truth will set you free\u201d and \u201creason prevails over ignorance.\u201d\u00a0 Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King all knew the vital word in their struggle was demonstrate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here is exactly what I mean by demonstrate<\/em>.\u00a0 Signs, placards, banners, handbills, marches, picketing, shutting down public meetings both large and small and both high falutin\u2019 and low falutin\u2019, shouting matches, getting arrested for refusing to shut up and sit down.<\/p>\n

As Rosa Parks did when she ignited the Civil Rights movement: You need to refuse to give up your seat to the wind salesman on the bus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Rosa<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is exactly what I don\u2019t mean:\u00a0 breaking the law.\u00a0 Nor am I advocating violence. \u00a0(I detest violence.\u00a0 For me, violence is not only illegal, it\u2019s abhorrent, it\u2019s inelegant, and nothing can be stupider.\u00a0 It accomplishes nothing good.\u00a0 Ever.\u00a0 I say this as a prize-winning historian, see below.\u00a0 I stand with Gandhi and M.L. King on this matter.\u00a0 My sympathies lie with Quakers, not jihadists.)<\/p>\n

\"Albert<\/a><\/p>\n

I believe in working within the system, and the system includes the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. \u201cCongress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wind developers and their shills?\u00a0 You will never convince them.\u00a0 Don\u2019t make the mistake of imagining them to be your audience, and don\u2019t argue with them.\u00a0 Cut them out of the discourse.\u00a0\u00a0The people you need to impress with your nonviolent tension are not the developers; it\u2019s the lawmakers.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally,\u00a0stop going to meetings and asking questions.\u00a0 Problem is, you\u2019re asking questions of the wind salesmen.\u00a0 This is akin to the hens asking questions of the foxes who are about to devour the occupants of that henhouse.\u00a0 Secondly, stop expressing your “concerns” at meetings.\u00a0 Weenie word.\u00a0 Your biggest rhetorical enemy in this fight for proper setbacks\u00a0is this word, concerns<\/em>.\u00a0 Drop it!\u00a0 The media loves to describe you as concerned<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cThe hens expressed their concerns to the foxes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Dispense with “concerned” and start getting angry and defiant.\u00a0 Stop asking the developers questions and start informing them of the fact they and their monster turbines and substations are not welcome in your backyard.)<\/p>\n

And the media?\u00a0 As many of you have learned to your dismay, they’re merely stenographers for the wind developers.<\/p>\n

“The only way that democracy can be made bearable is by developing and cherishing a class of men sufficiently honest and disinterested to challenge the prevailing quacks.\u00a0 No such class has ever appeared in strength in the United States. Thus, the business of harassing the quacks devolves upon the newspapers.\u00a0 When they fail in their duty, which is usually, we are at the quacks’ mercy” (H.L.\u00a0Mencken, in “Minority Report”).<\/p>\n

\"H.L.<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got your facts, your figures, your data.\u00a0 Perhaps even your copy of Pierpont’s “Wind Turbine Syndrome” in hand.\u00a0 What you don\u2019t have is constructive, nonviolent tension.\u00a0 Till you do, your facts are valueless.\u00a0 King knew his facts (my Lord, he even had the law on this side!) were worthless till he began marching and picketing and getting in their face.<\/p>\n

Whether you call it civil disobedience or direct action, I suggest that before you begin, check with your local police department and find out the local regulations on peaceful demonstration.\u00a0 (Matters like not blocking public access, not blocking automobile traffic, etc.)\u00a0 If you need a permit, get one.<\/p>\n

Police and the courts are not your enemy.\u00a0 Police, the law, and the courts are not the issue; the issue is demonstrating to lawmakers that your evidence and your plight must be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

Second, when elections come round in November, it is essential you run anti-wind candidates for town board, county legislature, state senator, etc.\u00a0 But mostly town board.\u00a0 Work within the electoral process: it works! \u00a0To elect these people means you\u2019re going to have to do a lot of leg work and advertising.\u00a0 Lots of door to door.\u00a0 Pamphlets.\u00a0 Leaflets.\u00a0 Public meetings to meet the candidates.\u00a0 It works.<\/p>\n

Many people seem to think the wind onslaught doesn’t call for such measures.\u00a0 People are being driven from homes and made ill, besides\u2014and there are some who condemn these\u00a0efforts “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” as excessive.\u00a0\u00a0They are wrong; the meetings are a mockery of democracy and public consultation and decision-making.\u00a0 History clearly argues they need to be legally obstructed to the point where they can\u2019t function.<\/p>\n

Corporate gridlock unravels only by civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

\"Henry<\/a><\/p>\n

Best of all, get arrested.\u00a0 Before TV cameras.\u00a0 It is not illegal to get arrested, nor is it shameful when the Bill of Rights is the issue.\u00a0 Arrested.\u00a0 Hundreds of you.\u00a0 Old ladies, ministers, college professors and deans, doctors.\u00a0 Little kids, too.\u00a0 Then watch to see how the county commissioners and the conniving lawyers\u2014watch how they come around.\u00a0 It’s miraculous how they change.<\/p>\n

Corporate Wind is being given a free pass to destroy communities and lives and homes and health.\u00a0 Pretend these people are Martians, with little antennae and a mother ship parked somewhere, and they’re taking over your community.\u00a0 (When you survey an operating windplant, the analogy is not far-fetched.)\u00a0 What would you do then?\u00a0 Still discuss the matter politely with your county commissioners and health commissioner and department of environmental conservation and town board? Still “follow the usual channels”?<\/p>\n

Hell no!\u00a0 You’d take to the barricades and the streets and shout, “Hey, wake up!\u00a0 We’ve been invaded!”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I repeat, what doesn’t work is polite discourse.\u00a0 Nor do letters to politicians berating them for not doing “their job.”\u00a0 Their job! Their job?<\/em>\u00a0 Their job, dear reader, is to promote big business and big ideas and panaceas.\u00a0 That’s their job.\u00a0 To think otherwise is na\u00efve.\u00a0 Your<\/em> job is to break corporate-government liplock.\u00a0 When one speaks for the other, when their agendas are interchangeable, when CEO’s shuttle back and forth between cabinet office and Wall Street office—it’s time to change the doorlocks.\u00a0Time for civil action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Politicians hate public demonstrations.\u00a0 They hate marches and banners and slogans and placards and picketing.\u00a0 The television crew arrives with cameras rolling, the klieg lights suddenly switch on\u2014and the town board, minister of the environment, county commissioner, state senator\u2014writhe.<\/p>\n

Consider the homes of scores of people described in these pages.\u00a0 They’re worthless.\u00a0 Toxic.\u00a0 Consider Barbara Ashbee<\/a>.\u00a0 She’s a realtor; she knows better than I that she could not give away her home.\u00a0 Nor can she bear to live in it.\u00a0 She\u2019s now in the horrible world of the d’Entremonts<\/a>:\u00a0 Abandonment<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"d'Entremont<\/a><\/p>\n

Abandon your home: that’s really the only option for many people, isn’t it?\u00a0 Or get bought out by the so-called developer, which, by the way, is what eventually happened to Barbara and her husband, who then had to sign a gag agreement.\u00a0 (Isn’t there a more appropriate name for people who do this to you?)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Corporate Wind picks you off, one town at a time.\u00a0 Like shooting fish in a barrel.\u00a0 Don’t think Obama can stop this.\u00a0 He’s a reformer, yes, but he can’t tame corporate Goliaths like Big Wind without your direct action.\u00a0 Democracy is more than the right to vote; it includes the obligation to disobey when life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are being systematically denied<\/em>.\u00a0 Loss of home and health (aka Wind Turbine Syndrome) qualifies under this clause.<\/p>\n

You\u00a0have the Bill of Rights at your disposal—the same constitutional right being used by Wall Street Wind lobbyists to buy Congress with campaign donations.\u00a0 You must exercise the very same First Amendment right with equal fervor to insist—not beg—insist <\/em>on proper,\u00a0clinically-demonstrated setbacks for their infrasound, low frequency noise, shadow-strobing\u00a0turbines.<\/p>\n

Besides having the First Amendment on your side, you happen to have truth<\/em> on your side.\u00a0 (That, in itself, is an inconvenient truth for Big Wind.)\u00a0 If truth is going to mean anything more than a vacuous slogan, you must stand up for it at those sham meetings—and refuse to have real, genuine, honest-to-God democracy gaveled down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Howard Zinn died, yet the People’s History of the United States<\/em> continues.\u00a0 By you and me.<\/p>\n

\"Howard<\/a>
\n\u00b7<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD, Associate Professor of History (retired), Rutgers University January 30, 2010 Howard Zinn (1922-2010) died this week.\u00a0 A tremendous loss to democracy.\u00a0 (Watch this interview with Bill Moyers.) As a\u00a0scholar (Zinn was a professor at Boston University), Zinn\u00a0emphasized that change comes from the grassroots up, not the reverse.\u00a0\u00a0Change happens only when there’s disobedience to corporate gridlock.\u00a0 Which is of course what the American Revolution and Constitution were about. “Corporate,” remember, applies to any group of people who organize and maintain an exclusive and privileged system of belief and conduct.\u00a0 This includes a religion and its adherents, a government, a corporate industry, or even an academic institution. Zinn took the point further.\u00a0 He was at pains to point out that we\u00a0should not elect people to public office, then blithely expect them to fix the current state of affairs—then get irate when they don’t and can’t.\u00a0 Think of the 19th-century anti-slavery movement that fired up Abraham Lincoln, or populism at the turn of the 20th century that fired up Theodore Roosevelt.\u00a0 Recall the wilderness appreciation\u00a0movement of the late 19th\/early 20th century.\u00a0 Or trade unions and\u00a0women’s right to vote.\u00a0 Environmentalism and the anti-war movement in the 60s and early 70s.\u00a0 And of course African-American civil rights.\u00a0 In each instance, legislation followed tumultuous civil action, oftentimes civil disobedience–which is different, by the way, from anarchy or terrorism. Civil action is both a First Amendment right and obligation.\u00a0 Anarchy and terrorism are neither a right nor obligation.\u00a0 Read Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849). President Barack Obama declares he wants to change the way Washington does business.\u00a0 This message came across loud and clear in his State of the Union speech this week.\u00a0 Lobbyists have a hammerlock on Congress and state governments.\u00a0 That chokehold just got firmer with the US Supreme Court decision toRead More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[171],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}