My Whirlwind Lives

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.

This book tells Dee Knight's story of "waking up" to the truth about the US war in Vietnam, then refusing the draft and going to Canada where he lived for six years. It relates the years-long campaign for amnesty, in which Knight was a leader. After war resisters won a partial amnesty, Knight continued campaigning against US wars up to the present day.

There are chapters on:

The political storms of 1968

Exile life in Canada

The years-long campaign for universal unconditional amnesty

Antiwar veterans and active duty soldiers and sailors, including the sanctuary movement

Witnessing Portugal's "Carnation Revolution" of 1975

Living and working in Sandinista Nicaragua

Socialism and the Green New Deal

"Messages from the Future"

Reflections on the Pandemic

The Battle to Expand and Protect Democracy

Appendices on Vietnam's victory in 1975, and on the reality of life and politics in China