Washington, DC Activists Gather to Keep the Spirit of Howard Zinn Alive

“The struggle for justice doesn’t end with me. This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the ones who will come after me.” -- Troy Davis 

Last week, Andy Shallal, artist, activist and owner of the DC-based grassroots restaurant Busboys & Poets, hosted a special event at his latest location in Hyattsville, Maryland.  In the rear of the newly opened restaurant stands a beautiful room, with a stage, a full bar and most importantly, an enormous mural that takes up an entire wall filled with pictures of world-renowned activists that have inspired and continue to inspire movements for social change. Shallal calls this room the Zinn Room and symbolically chose International Peace Day (September 21^st) to formally dedicate it to the late historian and activist Howard Zinn.

According to Shallal, the mural combines Zinn's best-known work, A People’s History of the United States, with Langston Hughes’ famous poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which tells the story of how “rivers carry the power of history with them.”

I am personally grateful to have a community space like Busboys where I and other progressives can eat, drink, and talk with people of like mind, which can be hard to come by in a place like Washington DC, riddled with lobbyists and politicians. That’s exactly why Andy Shallal started Busboys & Poets. He told me that he wanted a space to go beyond “Facebook friends or email friends, I want to see people, I want to look them in the eye, I want to sit with them, I want to talk with them, I want to feel their warmth, and that’s really what transforms people, those one-on-one encounters that we have.” 

The night was dominated largely by the pending execution of Troy Anthony Davis.  In his opening remarks, Shallal said it was “a very sad day for this country and for humanity,” because “tonight, within moments, this country is about to execute a man.” 

Still, Shallal maintained hope, which he attributed to the many familiar faces displayed on the mural along and in the audience. “Hope is in our midst, it’s in our DNA, any activist understands what hope looks and feels like.”

It was an emotional night for all of us in attendance, as we awaited news of whether or not the scheduled 7 PM execution occurred.  Dave Zirin, progressive activist and sports editor for the Nation, was the MC and kept the audience up to date about the status of the execution. 

For that brief moment when the media reported that the Supreme Court had issued a stay, the audience erupted in cheers and applause and Zirin jumped on stage and led us into the chant, “They say death row, we say hell no!”  The momentary sense of victory that swept through the room prompted the composer, singer, scholar, and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon, to lead the crowd into civil rights songs.  Unfortunately, the celebration was short-lived as we received word that the Supreme Court granted a reprieve rather than a stay, meaning the execution could still take place that night, which it ultimately did.

Even as Zirin appeared disturbed and overwhelmed by the potential killing of a person that was near and dear to his heart, when I asked him how activists could continue fighting injustice in the face of possibly losing Troy Davis he replied, “It doesn’t matter who’s sitting in the White House, it matters who’s sitting in,” a lesson he attributes to Zinn.

“The civil rights movement didn’t happen because Lyndon Johnson made it happen, the 1930s didn’t happen because Franklin Roosevelt decreed it, and the death penalty is not going to end with one magic person doing it for us," he continued.