Passionate Declaration Howard Zinn Chapter 7, 8,

Passionate declaration Howard Zinn chapter 7, 8, 9 Chapter 10-11 Summary response, making connection current events, school life.

Zinn's Passionate declaration

Howard Zinn's text Passionate Declarations seems particularly important to read today, in light of what has been called the '99% movement.' This social justice movement is spearheaded by the numbers of many, many people who are striving to 'make ends meet' while others are fabulously wealthy and buy bracelets at Tiffanies. In one of Zinn's memorable examples, the author contrasts the cost of a luxury market watch with the income of an unemployed man who killed himself because he was unable to pay his bills (Zinn 151). Zinn does not deny the greatness of America and its ability to provide liberty and prosperity, but he is passionately outraged at the degree to which inequities have been allowed to fester. At a certain point, when the chasm between haves and have-nots becomes so great, any sense of possible 'equality' is lost. It is impossible for all but a lucky few to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Government interference in the marketplace is seen as an unequivocal 'evil' in America, and un-American. Yet the Founding Fathers were profoundly fearful of the influence of factions upon the political landscape (Zinn 170). These factions include powerful corporate interests, such as tobacco companies, that are able to use their money to curtail the negative publicity attached to their deadly product. Without government regulation, we would still be living in the world of the unfettered capitalism of the 19th century, with its sweatshop labor and children toiling beside their parents simply to make money (Zinn 171). Today, of course, such labor still exists, although the workers are often illegal immigrants. And major corporations can still price the cost of labor artificially low, as is manifested in the example of Wal-Mart, which can price consumer goods very cheaply because it staffs its stores with low-wage earners, often part-time workers without benefits. Fast food corporations deploy a similar model of labor exploitation to keep goods extremely cheap, and to feed consumerism at the expense of fairness and compassion to workers. The market alone is not capable of perfectly determining what a person is worth, as history has revealed to us on numerous occasions (Zinn 175).

This rampant consumerism is why Zinn calls the American justice system inherently wasteful in nature -- it produces more than wealthy individuals need to consume yet does not allocate resources equitably to those who are too poor to sustain their basic needs. The economic status of a child at birth exercises a tremendous influence over the child's ability to access appropriate nutrition, have decent healthcare, go to good schools, and to make the necessary connections to succeed in life (Zinn 172). When the rich get richer and the poor get poor, the chasm between the top and the bottom is likely to grow, rather than contract, unless meaningful actions are undertaken to correct these disparities. However, Americans tend to demonize such attempts at correction as evil 'socialism.'