> Is that really true? I suspect there's a lot of continuity between
> parents' politics and their kids' politics. I recall that someone -
> Richard Freeman maybe? - did a survey of campus anti-sweatshop
> activists in the late 1990s and found a very large share of them had
> parents who were activists of some sort in the 1960s. And just last
> night we were talking with a friend who's in Solidarity who said that
> many of her comrades with grown kids reported their offspring to be
> involved in radical politics in some way. I'm guessing these "aha!"
> conversion experiences are unusual. Not unheard of but not the norm.
Zinn doesn't say that the obstacles (he lists: "years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television") are easy to overcome. And I don't think we want to claim that origin is destiny, that people cannot transcend the ideological horizon of their parents, that there's some sort of absolute barrier to human intercourse. (I'd think that, under the conditions of cultural segregation prevailing in the U.S., family, school, church, and the immediate social milieu become much more influential ideologically. But their influence must have limits.)
Zinn's main point -- I think -- is that we need to (1) engage with the people around us and (2) bring to the synthesis our own standpoint, the perception that arises from our own individual working and living conditions. If you have more resources, a larger megaphone, you use it. But, basically, you communicate and try to put forth your honest perspective, the best understanding of your own interest.
If it's not the gradual accumulation of individual, molecular, small efforts of communication that leads to a phase change in the social consciousness, then what is it? Magic? That's what I get from Zinn's article.