Matt Damon channels Howard Zinn

[Scuba]

http://worleydervish.blogspot.com/2013/11/matt-damon-channels-howard-zinn.html

By the latter part of May 1970, feelings about the war in Vietnam had become almost unbearably intense. In Boston, about a hundred of us decided to sit down at the Boston Army Base and block the road used by buses carrying draftees off to military duty. We were not so daft that we thought we were stopping the flow of soldiers to Vietnam; it was a symbolic act, a statement, a piece of guerrilla warfare. We were all arrested and charged, in the quaint language of an old statute, with "sauntering and loitering" in such a way as to obstruct traffic.

Eight of us refused to plead guilty, insisting on trial by jury, hoping we could persuade the members of the jury that ours was a justified act of civil disobedience. We did not persuade them. We were found guilty, chose jail instead of paying a fine, but the judge, apparently reluctant to have us in jail, gave us forty-eight hours to change our minds, after which we should show up in court to either pay the fine or be jailed.

In the meantime, I had been invited to go to Johns Hopkins University to debate with the philosopher Charles Frankel on the issue of civil disobedience. I decided it would be hypocritical for me, an advocate of civil disobedience, to submit dutifully to the court and thereby skip out on an opportunity to speak to hundreds of students about civil disobedience. So, on the day I was supposed to show up in court in Boston I flew to Baltimore and that evening debated with Charles Frankel. Returning to Boston I decided to meet my morning class, but two detectives were waiting for me, and I was hustled before the court and then spent a couple of days in jail.

When I first stumbled across this video of Matt Damon reading Howard Zinn's statement on civil disobedience, I didn't realize that Damon was reading from Zinn until about three paragraphs in. Damon breathes new life into the 43-year old statement and dynamically delivers its punch as convincingly as if he were Zinn himself.


http://vimeo.com/48834336

[enough]

1. Damon has also recorded an abridged version of Zinn's "A People's History

of the United States," which is available at Audible. They also have an unabridged version.