AlterNet: Howard Zinn's Rebel Voices: A Call for Civil Disobedience

Howard Zinn's Rebel Voices: A Call for Civil Disobedience

By Andre Banks, AlterNet. Posted November 20, 2007.

Rebel Voices, the dramatic counterpart to Howard Zinn's work, brings together American voices pulled from speeches, articles, memoirs and interviews to highlight a national tradition in short supply in recent years: civil disobedience.




"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- Mark Twain

What does civil disobedience sound like? It sounds like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas, Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, parents who've lost their children in war and Gulf Coast residents betrayed by their country. It sounds like a history that many of us have forgotten ... until now.

Rebel Voices, opening this week at The Cultural Project in New York, provides a full course in the struggles that have shaped America from its inception to the present day. Through staged dramatic readings, the show unites the full humor and depth of iconic figures we celebrate but don't bother to read, and those individuals on the margins whose voices drove movements for change.

Rebel Voices is the dramatic counterpart to Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voice of a People's History of the United States. The show, written by Rob Urbinati brings together American voices pulled from speeches, articles, memoirs and interviews to highlight a national tradition in short supply in recent years: civil disobedience.

Performed by a permanent cast of actors with Danny Glover, Eve Ensler, Lili Taylor and Staceyann Chin rotating in to bring additional star-power, the show blends the words of our most celebrated orators with the powerful voices of everyday women and men who fought against impossible odds to change their lives and their country.

The show presents these voices, moving chronologically across the expanse of American history. There are familiar echoes here like Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I A Woman" and Frederick Douglas,' "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?"

But the show reminds us that these great speeches weren't always Black history month clichés. In fact, the words still burn; Douglas' elegant excoriation of white liberalism and Truth's pioneering understanding of the intersection between the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage are presented here to great effect. It is political language at its best, beautiful, alive and inspiring. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/68359/

Let's hope it makes its way to the left coast.

n/t

In America, we know these truths to be self-evident but will not acknowledge them.

As long, as we choose to ignore America's institutionalized "disparities", this country, striving to uphold this lie will remain in turmoil.

They talked to him on Democracy Now! about a week ago:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/09/1455254&mode=thread&tid=25

Some old favorites (& shameless website plug)

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=8.html">Embracing Humanity: Truth in a Time of War

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=4.html">The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=5.html">Readings from "Voices of a People's History of the United States" (transcript available) I imagine "Rebel Voices" is similar to this.