This book chronicles a quest to turn the tide after decades of storms.
Our recent storms didn’t start in 2020 or 2016. They started decades ago in the 1960s – a whirlwind of threatened nuclear catastrophe, then police dogs and rednecks terrorizing civil rights marchers down south, then Vietnamese children fleeing from napalm flames. Then draft notices to go to Vietnam to ‘fight commies.’ A small town boy started by supporting rightist Goldwater against the ‘peace candidate’ Johnson, but rapidly changed in the face of the civil rights and anti-war movements, and started a quest that hasn’t ended yet.
When I phoned home from Madison, Wisconsin, in January 1968 to say I had left college to try and end the war, my mother said she hoped I would not get in trouble with the government. I told her the government had already gotten in trouble with me. In August 1968, I participated in the ‘battle of Chicago’ at the Democratic National Convention. The cops’ message was clear: standing against the war would get your head beat.
After the Chicago mayhem I caught a ride to Toronto, Canada – aware it would take a long time to stop the war machine. I wrote home to tell my parents I was in Canada. Four years later I wrote again, to say charges against me for refusing the draft had been dismissed on a technicality. I returned to the U.S. briefly that year, to build support for a true amnesty for war resisters of all kinds. Then I went back to Canada, to continue working with Amex-Canada, the American exile/expatriate war resister group and magazine that led the amnesty movement from 1972-’77.
All this was a prelude for me. During the most intense anti-war protests, from 1969 to ’71, I was out of the country. But after the draft refusal charges against me were dismissed in early 1972, I became a leader of the fight for amnesty. It was a years-long slog, with intensive organizing among exiled war resisters in Canada, Sweden, France and England; alliance development with anti-war Vietnam veterans; constant media work, as well as national speaking tours and meetings to develop a winning coalition for amnesty.
There were some ‘magic moments, ‘ like the live national TV nomination of a war resister for vice president at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, and ‘surfacing’ military resister Gerry Condon at a Washington, DC conference despite the fact he had been court-martialed and carried a ten-year prison sentence. Over those years we won much of what we had demanded, and the experiences of that time helped shape my commitment to change.
Visiting countries where revolutions were actually happening – Portugal during the ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 1974-75, and Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s – gave me insight into real revolutions, and the fact that the U.S. government would always put them down, whatever it took.
Now there’s the battle for a Green New Deal to save the planet. In 2020 street protests raged in cities across the country and the world, to say Black Lives Matter. The official U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and brought on the worst depression since the 1930s.
What’s the connection among all these things? They’re all part of reclaiming a peaceful, just and sustainable planet, and our lives. I jumped into the whirlwind more than 50 years ago, hoping and expecting change to come quickly and easily. Now I know better. But the change is coming. There’s a hurricane outside. It’s early to say how long it will last, or what it will bring. I hope it will bring about a world we can believe in.
Tabela de Conteúdo
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Whirlwind Begins
1 – Fake News and Fake Protests
2 – Looking Back to 1968: My Resistance Begins
3 – New Life in Canada
4 – Amnesty for the Future, Not Just the Past!
5 – 1972: An International Campaign
6 – 1973: A Weird Way of Making Peace
7 – Winter Soldiering
8 – Fighting for Deserters and Vets
9 – Supporting Revolutions Abroad and at Home
10 – Nicaragüita
11 – ‘Democracy’ as a Weapon
12 – Socialism and the Green New Deal
13 – Messages from the Future
14 – The Stakes and the Odds
15 – Up From the Ashes: Reflections on the Pandemic
16 – Coming: A Battle to Protect and Expand Democracy
Appendix 1. The Power of People’s War and
Global Anti-imperialist Solidarity
Appendix 2. Sanctuary Movement Supports Surge
in GI Resistance
Appendix 3. Amnesty and the War (Amex Editorial)
Appendix 4. Refusing to Commit War Crimes
and Testifying (A review of 5 books)
Appendix 5. Calls for Unconditional Amnesty for
Military Resisters to Current U.S. Wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Appendix 6. Pentagon Downplays GI Suicides
Appendix 7. Changing Faces of Military Resistance
Appendix 8. Oppose Escalating U.S./NATO Cold War Against China
Appendix 9. Democracy and Human Rights: China vs. USA
Appendix 10. Asian Americans & Allies Mobilize vs. Anti-China Aggression
Appendix 11. Opposition Grows to U.S. Bases Poised Against China
About the Author
Sobre o autor
During some of the years of the U.S. war in Vietnam (1968 – 1974), Dee Knight was an editor of Amex-Canada, the newsletter of American exiles and expatriates who went to Canada in resistance to that war. He lived in Toronto, Canada, during those years. Amex-Canada helped organize American war resisters and their allies, including antiwar veterans, to sustain the resistance. In 1973 Knight helped to launch the National Council for Universal Unconditional Amnesty, which waged a campaign to end government repression of war resisters and active-duty U.S. soldiers. In January 1977 the campaign scored a partial victory when President Jimmy Carter granted a limited amnesty. Efforts to end punishment for antiwar veterans, active duty soldiers, and militant anti-imperialist activists have continued since those years to the present day. Throughout those years, Knight’s writing has been part of ongoing organizing efforts and publications, including Veterans For Peace News, Courage To Resist, Workers World, Covert Action Magazine, LA Progressive, Hollywood Progressive, and Counter Punch. In 1975 Knight witnessed the ‘Carnation Revolution’ led by Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement and People’s Power organizations. His reports appeared in New York’s Guardian newspaper. He helped found the American Portuguese Overseas Information Organization (APOIO), a group of journalists in defense of the Portuguese revolution. For three years in the 1980s, Knight worked as a technical consultant to the Sandinista newspaper Barricada, as well as other publishing efforts in Nicaragua. For five years in the 1990s, he was a publishing consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in New York. During the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s, Knight was part of national organizing efforts to oppose that war. Those efforts resulted in protest actions of millions of people in the United States. It also established an ongoing anti-imperialist movement. From 1965 to ’68 Knight studied at University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. While in Canada he completed a Bachelor’s Degree in English at York University. In 1996 he completed a Master’s Degree in Public Administration at New York University. He worked as a teacher of English and Social Studies in South Bronx alternative high schools for several years. Knight was born in Idaho, and grew up in eastern Oregon. In 1969 he received the Oregon Peace Educators award.
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