I see you, Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn died this past week at age 87.

Bob Herbert, in the New York Times, and Alice Walker, in the Boston Globe, both wrote moving tributes to Zinn. Herbert’s article is A Radical Treasure. Walker’s is titled Saying goodbye to my friend Howard Zinn.

Having just seen the movie Avatar, there are two sentences in Walker’s article that tear at me. Speaking about both Zinn and her father, she says:

They each saw injustice as something to be acknowledged, confronted, and changed if at all possible. And they looked for signs of humanity in their opponents and spoke to that.

For me the profoundest aspect of Avatar were three little words. Not I love you, but rather I see you. I suspect that Howard Zinn would urge the world to see with just that meaning.