ISR guide to The People Speak
An amazing list of actors, musicians and other performers--among them, Matt Damon, Sandra Oh, Eddie Vedder and Danny Glover--have come together for The People Speak, a documentary inspired by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's anthology Voices of a People's History of the United States.
In the film, which premiers on the History Channel December 13, America's hidden history of resistance--the speeches, letters, testimonies and writings of men and women who spoke out and struggled against war, oppression and injustice--has been recreated for a new generation ready to make their own history.
Some of the figures featured will be familiar to many people: Martin Luther King Jr., whose 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam" is performed by actor Danny Glover; or Susan B. Anthony, addressing the judge in an 1873 courtroom where she faced charges of "unlawful suffrage," performed by actors Christina Kirk and Josh Brolin.
Others won't be as familiar: socialist Eugene Debs' Canton, Ohio, speech against the First World War, or Camilo Mejía's 2005 statement on GI resistance to Iraq war.
Here, has assembled a list of articles from the archives of the International Socialist Review magazine that relate to the historical events or people referenced in The People Speak. Most of the articles are available online--those that aren't can be ordered at the ISR Web site.
The Native American struggle
Michele Bollinger | Leonard Peltier and the Indian Struggle for Freedom
Peter Lamphere | The Life of Tecumseh: A Native War of Independence
American revolutions
Leighton Christiansen | Blacks and the American Revolution. Not available online, order a back issue of ISR 16.
Annie Zirin | We The People? The Birth of the U.S. Constitution
Ashley Smith | All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. Not available online, order a back issue of ISR 8.
Radicals and socialists in history
Bill Roberts | Eugene Debs and American Socialism
Lance Selfa | Emma Goldman: A Life of Controversy
Helen Scott | The Mark Twain They Didn't Teach Us in School
The labor movement
Interview with James Green | Remembering May Day and the Fight for Eight Hours
Sharon Smith | The 1930s: Turning Point for U.S. Labor
War and resistance to war
Lance Selfa | U.S. Imperialism: A Century of Slaughter
Eugene V. Debs | The Canton, Ohio Speech
Ashley Smith | World War Two: The Good War?
Mikki Smith | Hiroshima Was No Longer a City
Joe Allen | Vietnam: The War the U.S. Lost (part one of three articles)
Dave Zirin | The Hidden History of Muhammad Ali
Lance Selfa | The 1991 Gulf War: Establishing a New World Order
Howard Zinn | November 2001 Speech Against the U.S. War on Afghanistan
The McCarthy era
Joe Allen | Dress Rehearsal for McCarthyism
William Keach | Rehabilitating McCarthyism
Elizabeth Schulte | The Trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Black freedom struggle
Lance Selfa | Slavery and the Origins of Racism
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880
Ahmed Shawki | The Roots of the Civil Rights Movement
Aaron Hess and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field | Civil Rights Betrayed: How the Democratic Party Shut Out the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Brian Jones | Martin Luther King's Last Fight
Dan Georgakas | Revolutionary Struggles of Black Workers in the 1960s
Social movements of the 1960s and their impact
Sherry Wolf | Stonewall: The Birth of Gay Power
Sharon Smith | Where Have All the Liberals Gone? A Historical Perspective
Jen Roesch | Turning Back the Clock: Women, Work and the Family
