Howard ZinnThe word “accommodation” brings to mind the Democratic Party, which was voted into power in Congress in 2006 and which has shown us a pitiful example of what an opposition party should be, accommodating itself basically to the Bush and Republican agenda, accommodating itself to the sort of orthodox political notion that you must be timid and quiet and not speak the truth.

— Howard Zinn speaking on DemocracyNow friday morning

Listen to the segment here.

Just listened to Howard Zinn on Democracy Now’s Friday podcast (the vile in “service” provider Virgin Broadband was down most of Friday and Saturday in London’s lovely SE15 area), discussing a stage version of his book, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” called Rebel Voices. The only reason, of course, that I could get this dose of Zinn is because Democracy Now chooses to share its content online for anyone to download. Zinn’s online tech handlers could take a cue from this. So could many others who have their flags planted in the progressive camp, for that matter.

You can listen to the featuring a snippet of Rebel Voices and an interview with Zinn on Democracy Now, here.

Where can’t you hear all of Rebel Voices? Well, first of all, not at anything that could be called “rebelvoices.com” “.org.,” “.tv,” or whatever, at certainly not at the sparsely updated howardzinn.org, where if you click on the small link to the title of the work on which Rebel Voices is based, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” you’re taken to Seven Stories Press where you can buy the book. No audio files of readings by Danny Glover, et al. No pdf files of the book’s text or YouTube flash videos of it being performed on stages around the country. Just a link to a place to spend $15.16 with the chance to “Save $3.79 (20%).” I mean, come on, that’s the only incentive you’re giving out to buy this?

What about some downloads? Some video clips of this production in action? An mp3 file? a simple text file for me to format in whatever way I’d like to read it in? An e-book per chance?

Last year in Olympia, the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s Peace Works event was organized around a community staging of the work. I was out of the country at the time and would have liked to have seen it but nothing had been turned to online video. Reasons for this on an event-by-event basis can vary. People might just not think about it, or might not have the equipment or people on hand to carry it out. However, there’s also another thing that drives fear into the hearts of a lot of cash-strapped small organizations and groups who might otherwise share their performances of this and pieces like it. And that’s the oppressive, community crushing little “©” that Seven Stories slaps on its otherwise progressive titles. They’re book publishers, and so that might be fine for them in order to sell some books, but Howard and his folks should know better. They’re trying to get out the voices that have been “silenced” by mainstream historic revisionism. If that’s the case, let’s put them everywhere.

As a sort of self-defined student of progressive movement strategy, I’ve been developing a sort of mental thesis-in progress, which my good friend John Harvey recently titled for me after I tried to explain it to him: “Why We Fail.”

One way in which movements fail is in the strategic use of content. I can count Howard among groups in these movements since he’s the one publishing so much that others rely on. Look in just about every liberally liberal’s library and you’ll find a dog-eared paperback of “A People’s History of the United States.” It’s this work both Rebel Voices and “Voices of a People’s History of the United States” are descendants of.

So when Howard tells Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that he’s so happy to see the likes of Sandra Oh uttering the words of Emma Goldman — that “You won’t find Emma Goldman getting much attention in conventional histories” — I have to add that his own publishing system for spreading Emma’s much-needed anti-goosestepping-patriotism manifesto isn’t exactly helping when you look at the notion that most people still aren’t going to see it when it’s kept within the confines of copyrighted material, which seems a little ironic when you look at the idiological bent of most of the people quoted in these works.

Howard is far from alone in this zealous hoarding of content, and I don’t really think it’s a conscious act. How many decent works have you come across where you think, everyone needs to see this? We sort of add a copyright without thinking. As a matter of course. It’s just instinctive. We think it will somehow work as a talisman against the loss of imagined profits to come. Pretty much every pirate DVD I bought in Morocco had one of these somewhere one it. The theme I’m using for this blog came with a little “©” embedded down in the footer. I just noticed it there, all innocuous looking not that long ago and am planning to delete it as soon as I finish this post. The only thing a copyright does is tell people what they can’t do with your work, and this tends to lead to an over-reaction to not run afoul of things, which then leads to your work reaching more people. Otherwise people just copy it and don’t tell you about it, in which case you lose even any idea of who is looking at your work.

Among most progressive-minded individuals and organizations, the collection of content is a big problem and they aren’t even doing that right, but when it does happen, it often gets bogged down in issues of ownership, in which case you need to look at the reason you put this work together for in the first place.

Tell you what, we all know you own it if you say it’s by you. Write your name at the top of it. Do something like “by (your name here).” You don’t need to do much more than that, really. We all know it’s yours now.

If Howard Zinn’s goal is to spread these forgotten voices from history, then the texts and audio should be available for download and multiple use from any personal, library or other computer. Kids go to history class and get issued (for free in public schools) a book that has one version of U.S. history. Do you really expect that many of them to then go out and buy a copy that has another? Maybe if they saw part of it online, they might.

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