And Matt Damon told a lot of stories about growing up at Zinn’s knee, barbecues, things of the like. But the story I loved the most was that Howard Zinn was giving their family early drafts of A People’s History of the United States. And at 10 years old, Matt Damon’s mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, who’s an incredible education activist, by the way, Nancy Carlsson-Paige read her 10-year-old son the opening chapter of A People’s History of the United States, which is, of course, all about the plunder of Christopher Columbus, the depravity in terms of how he treated Indigenous people in this country. So, 10-year-old Mattie Damon goes to school and does an oral report in class about Christopher Columbus and all of his crimes. And they actually — they called his parents, because they were so concerned that he was coming into school talking about this. And as Damon said to me, he said, “Donald Trump might say that was the beginning of my indoctrination.”
Dave Zirin
