Publisher's Synopsis
A quest to turn the tide after decades of storms.
Both a memoir and manifesto, My Whirlwind Lives describes my personal-political odyssey, first as a Vietnam era war resister, then as an anti-imperialist activist and "Green New Deal revolutionary." Following is a summary:
Part 1: My stormy dawn of awareness about the war and racism, my departure to Canada, the "transition life" of American war exiles and expatriates in Canada, and the dramatic story of our long campaign for universal, unconditional amnesty - culminating in an intensive and victorious showdown at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.
Part 2: The post-Vietnam War decades, with "close-ups" on the Portuguese and Nicaraguan revolutions, and their impact on me: the "whiplash" of optimism following the Vietnamese victory, then grim realization of Reaganite reaction and endless war.
Part 3: The Green New Deal - a revolutionary program to save the planet. I suggest the rightist view that it's a "watermelon - green on the outside but red on the inside" - is essentially true. It's not really a "socialist plot," but it indicts capitalism as the source of the problem, and then provides a road map to save the planet and help people end the capitalist never-never land.
There's an Afterword essay on the current moment: "Up From the Ashes: A New and Stronger Whirlwind." I argue that we are living in a breakthrough moment.
The appendices are reports I wrote about key events and themes in the book: the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam, a 1969 soldiers' sanctuary rebellion in Honolulu, the 1972 Amex->Canada editorial "Amnesty and the War," a review of several books by veterans of U.S. wars, details of GI and veteran suicides, the changing faces of military resistance.
