Content area
Full Text
Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (2004)
Produced and directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller.
Distributed by First Run Features
firstrunfeatures.com
78 minutes
Howard Zinn (1922- 2010) was a nationally known historian, author, playwright, and crusader for civil rights and the peace movement. Zinn came from humble origins, living in poor areas of New York City with a father, a waiter, who had a fourth grade education, and a mother with a seventh grade education. Though poor, he longed for education and learning. His first book was one that he found in the street, pages torn out.
That first torn book, found by Zinn in the street when his family had no books in their apartment, was Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Over time, his parents introduced him to literature through the collected works of Charles Dickens, which they obtained by sending ten cents and a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes. Zinn later explained that these volumes taught him, at a young age, about poverty as a worldwide problem, not just something he experienced in New York. These early experiences sewed seeds of awareness in a boy who would grow champion the cause of factory workers and agricultural workers
Ellis' film follows Zinn in documentary style through these early years of his life. After working in the shipyards as a young man, he volunteered for the Air Force, yet returned from war as a bombardier over Germany and France profoundly disillusioned with the moral...