November 11, 2004
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Just a quick post…just arrived at the Green Tortoise Hostel in San
Fran., really cool place $20 a night, free internet, sauna, breakfast,
right downtown, i can even get an $8 haircut and a free shot of
vodka…too bad i’m only staying 3 nights.Busride was long, read lots of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the
United States,” starting to learn about my country, which is a good
thing. 1898 war w/ Cuba, why? economic gains. 1899
war w/ the Phillipines, why? economic gains. Both wars disguised
with phrases like spreading freedom and civiling people by bringing
them democracy. Sound familiar?Learning about the socialist movement at the beginning of the
1900′s…i apologize, but i really no zilch about history, so this is
all new and exciting for me, like reading a kids book…so try not to
ruin the ending for me. Anyways…interesting how the average
Joe, the farmer, industry worker, etc., was striking like mad back in
the day, and was really pissed off with the wealthy few who owned the
corporations and influcenced virtually all of politics. Even
Helen Keller, blind and deaf as she was, was an outspoken
Socialist. People back then despised capitalism for making the
work and work and work, and see almost none of the profits of their
work. Working conditions have significantly improved since then,
but, the general themes of the wealthy few remains, yet, the working
people now flock to capitalism and look at socialism as evil…i’m sure
i’ll find out what happened to change things in the next 100 pages,
don’t ruin the surprise…The opening of the education conference I’m attending is toinght, then
Fri. and Sat. will be packed with speakers and workshops. I’m so
glad I made the decision to come here, I’m really excited to see what
the next two days will bring.-dan
Comments (2)
That’s an awesome place to start with history. Whenever people told me a year ago Iraq was our first “war of choice” I just laughed. How little history could we know? The seizure of one third of Mexico… The Spanish-American War… The suppression of Filipino Independence. Did you know Puerto Rico had an elected legislature under Spain but it took 40 years for them to recover that right to self-government after we seized them? Of course the Hawaiian annexation makes Stalin’s grab of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania look legal, and we’re not offering to correct it either.
Speaking of education, why doesn’t any of that get taught in schools?
I’ve only begun to learn about history, too. So much history is made invisible in schools.