Hearing about the death of Howard Zinn yesterday, I thought about my friendship with him over the years, and his relationship with the world. He will be remembered by all of us in so many ways.

Howard taught a couple of generations of young people how to rethink how we look at and understand the history of our country with his book, "A Peoples History of the United States," which is now standard reading in many high schools and colleges across the country.

When the Middle East Children's Alliance was under investigation by the government for two years, it was Howard I would call late into the night for guidance and friendship. When Howard was not there I would talk sometimes for hours to Roz, his beloved wife. Both of them made themselves available to me during that difficult period.

Howard came to the Bay Area many times to help raise much-needed money for children of Palestine. His last visit was in 2006 when MECA produced a reading of "Voices of a Peoples History of the United States" with Howard, his longtime close friend Alice Walker, Mos Def and other talented artists.

Howard Zinn was an activist, a teacher, a filmmaker, a writer, a man with a great sense of humor but most of all Howard made all of us think. He made us see that through understanding the history of slavery, poverty, and the struggle for civil rights in this country, we were better equipped to stand up and fight for justice here at home and in the rest of the world. Howard Zinn made us all better people and we will miss him terribly.

On his last day of teaching at Boston University, Howard Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line in support of an on-campus nurses' strike, and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.

Sincerely,
Barbara Lubin
Middle East Children's Aliance