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Howard Zinn's _Emma_

Question:

A young immigrant from Russia, Goldman gets a job working in New York’s garment district. The working conditions that Emma and countless other women had to endure were horrible, LaBorn says. Factory owners often locked doors and windows to keep laborers from leaving before an order was completed. Trapped inside buildings with no way out, the workers were always mindful of the threat of fire.

        The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was exactly such a fire.         And capitalism groupies call this era some sort of Golden Age of Capitalism. Sheesh. — Loren Petrich                           Happiness is a fast Macintosh My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html

Response:

More: Playwright to appear at staging BETH FINZER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE FAYETTEVILLE — Fayetteville joins Boston, New York, London and Tokyo as one of the few places where Emma has been staged. A free performance of the play at 8 p.m. March 31 at the University of Arkansas Fine Arts Theater has the added attraction of writer and historian Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University. The author of Emma, Zinn will open the play at 7:30 p.m. with remarks about the anarchist and her place in history. He’ll also give a lecture at 3:30 p.m. March 31 in Giffels Auditorium on the UA campus. Call (501) 587-0245. Richard Sonn, an associate professor of history at the UA, helped coordinate the efforts to bring Zinn to the campus as one of this year’s Rockefeller Foundation distinguished lecture series. For many people, Zinn’s name may be familiar for his association with the silver screen. The author is mentioned in the film Good Will Hunting by actor Matt Damon’s character. Zinn’s popular history book A People’s History of United States: 1942 to the Present gets a plug from the actor. [I believe that's 1492 to the Present -- DC] "Matt Damon, the star of the film, was kind of a prodigy of him [Zinn]," says Sonn. "There is also an audio version of The People’s History that Matt Damon reads." The book relates the often overlooked history of minorities and poor laborers in America. The book has sold more than 425,000 copies since it debuted. "He is one of the most public historians alive today," Sonn says. Zinn’s public role goes beyond name-dropping in Hollywood movies. The historian has much in common with the figures he writes about in that he is an active participant in social issues. "He was extremely active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. His first teaching job was at Spelman College, a black college in Atlanta. He was deeply involved in the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam movement," Sonn says of the author. "The overall tone of using history to critique the establishment and to raise people’s awareness and use history as a kind of liberating force is what I think I find exciting about Howard Zinn." Sonn has an added reason to look forward to the lecture and play — that of his own area of historical study. "I happen to be an expert on anarchism, and so I was particularly interested in Emma Goldman because she was a famous anarchist," he explains. Along with his history of America, Zinn has written a play on the life of Karl Marx. A collection of Zinn’s essays is found in The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy. This article was published on Friday, March 3, 2000 — Dan Clore The Website of Lord We

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