From War Resister to Green New Deal Revolutionary: A Book Review

I possess Dee Knight’s memoir, From War Resister to Green New Deal Revolutionary, honestly. I wrote an article that Dee found overly pessimistic, so he chastised me and sent a review copy of his book (so no Verified Purchase) as a response. He signed it “With hope and optimism for the future.”

The book is divided into three parts, “Resisting the U.S. War in Vietnam,” “Transitioning to Anti-Imperialism,” and “Socialism and the Green New Deal.” Part I is history, but of a valuable kind: it’s a first-hand report of what is possible. Part II contains some history, as when Dee describes his experiences in Nicaragua during the Reagan years, but the fight against anti-imperialism is far from over. Part III is about acting now so that humanity has a future.

While all three parts are interesting, I found Part I to be especially fascinating, because Dee describes his gradual awakening to the murderous nature of American imperialism. It’s a journey of disenchantment that every activist travels despite the disapproval of family, the propaganda of our education system, and the relentless boosterism of the media in times of war. Sometimes it’s a lonely journey, especially early on, but if you persist, you’ll meet comrades who’ve not only made the journey themselves, but who are glad to welcome you into the fight. I know that I have gained much from many in-person and online collaborators, and now I’ll add Dee to the list of people who have helped me.

Dee has been involved in the anti-war, anti-draft, and anti-imperialism movements since the mid-1960s, and he has personally experienced many of its ups and downs. We met each other online because we’re members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Anti-Imperialism Network, which I co-founded and of which Dee was an early and active member. I posted an article, An Open Letter to Us to the discussion group, the first few sentences of which are a summary of my concerns:

“I’m making a plea for action now. We — our republic — are in a very dangerous place. We must step up and step out and align ourselves with family, friends, and action groups and decide how to resist. There is no time left to wait more information, for additional confirmation, to wait and see, to hope for the normal.”

Dee’s response to the letter was, “A bit bleak, Mark. I would counsel more revolutionary optimism.” And he sent me a copy of his book.

In Part I, “Resisting the U.S. War in Vietnam,” Dee describes his journey from a conservative family and worldview in Oregon to a lifelong commitment to radical politics. It wasn’t an all-at-once conversion; it took time for him first to become aware of the war, then of racism (there were few Black people in rural Oregon), then of his own privilege. The need for anti-imperialist activism flowed from his anti-war activities. But once he became aware, he acted.

After a mercifully brief excursion in a seminary, Dee I-don’t-have-a-calling-to-be-priest-despite-what-my-teachers-said, enrolled in the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit school. A priest-professor there extolled the “holy war in Vietnam.” But his friends gradually made him aware of the less than holy aspects of the war in Vietnam. One day, as the 1967 Spring anti-war mobilization wound its way past his apartment, he made a choice.

“I literally sat on the fence in front of the building, watching until a classmate waved me into the flow. I jumped off the fence — literally and figuratively — and marched with the throng that jammed Kesar Stadium.”

It would be the last time that he sat on the fence. At that moment, Dee made a commitment that would last a lifetime.

Not too long after the march, he sold his books and bought a plane ticket to travel to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, to participate in anti-war actions. He informed his parents only after he landed in Madison; his mother, plaintively replying to his abrupt, even shocking, decision, said, “I just hope you don’t get in trouble with the government.”

Dee soon began crisscrossing the country, working for Eugene McCarthy’s doomed presidential campaign. He’d come a long way already, because as a high school senior he had proudly supported Barry Goldwater.

For Dee, as for many people, 1968 was a watershed year. The McCarthy campaign ended in disaster. The Tet Offensive confirmed the futility of the Vietnam War. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were moments of agonizing grief.

As I mentioned above, I received a copy of Dee’s book because of a pessimistic article that I wrote. In 1968, Dee could have gone beyond pessimism and into despair. The Tet Offensive proved LBJ and his generals liars, because the war was obviously not turning some “corner” towards it’s end, as they so often assured Americans. Body bags in ever greater numbers were returning to the U.S. from Vietnam, while young American men traveled in the opposite direct to die. At home, a great leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was murdered. Another man, who inspired hope among the young, Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in a restaurant kitchen. It was a terrible year. But on page 22 of his book, Dee steadfastly refuses despair — or even to indulge in pessimism. “I have never ceased to be optimistic,” he writes, “and I stubbornly continue to believe that the force of solidarity and struggle is the force of life itself, and that it will prevail.”

He briefly participated in the events at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, but Dee had something more in mind. He was frustrated by his small-town draft board’s failure to act on his conscientious objector status, so he decided to force the issue. A friend, on his way to New York, agreed to drive Dee to Canada. He would become a draft resister, living in exile from the empire.

In Canada, Dee quickly made contact with the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, found a job and a place to live, and then reached out to the Union of American Exiles. He began writing for The American Exile in Canada, a magazine devoted to the war and war resisters in Canada. He joined a community of activists working with the Canadian government to ensure American draft resisters could legally remain in the country. Sadly, not everyone qualified, and some resisters, in despair, committed suicide.

One day Dee received a letter from his Oregon draft board. Due to technicality, the case against him was dropped. He was free to return to the U.S.! What Dee did next speaks volumes about his character and commitment. He did not drop everything and return “home,” even though he was legally able to do so. He did make a brief visit to see his parents, and he traveled Reno, Nevada to marry Carol, a Canadian woman he met in resistance circles. After that, he remained an exile, continuing to fight for draft resisters and amnesty. If anything, since he could travel without fear of arrest in the U.S., he became more useful to the amnesty movement. And that leads up to one of the more spectacular moments of protest and resistance that I’ve ever encountered.

Dee was part of a small team of draft resisters who worked at the 1976 Democratic National Convention to gain attention to the demand for amnesty for draft resisters in Canada and elsewhere, soldiers Absent Without Leave (AWOL), and soldiers in military prisons for refusing orders to fight in Vietnam. And amnesty was a demand, not a request: the government of the U.S. was committing war crimes, forcing men of conscience to refuse to serve. These men had done nothing wrong; rather, the actions of the government had forced them into exile and jail.

The goal of the protesters at the convention was to pressure Jimmy Carter into granting amnesty if he was elected president. One draft resister, Fritz Efaw, was an alternate delegate to the convention. A Gold Star mother, Louise Ransom, who was also active in the draft resister movement, was present, as was Ron Kovic, the now-famous Vietnam War veteran (Born on the Fourth of July) and anti-war activist. I’ll let you read the book for the details, but at the Democratic National Convention, Dee and a small group worked together to garner 15 minutes of television time for a Gold Star mother and a wounded Vietnam veteran to speak about the war and the need for amnesty. And speak they did, before an audience of 60 million television viewers. The activist group even managed to gather enough delegate signatures to nominate Fritz Efaw, the draft resister, to be Vice President of the United States! He wasn’t old enough, so he graciously informed Jimmy Carter that he must decline.

Dee’s description of what a small group of determined people accomplished at the convention is worth the price of the book, because it’s a good reminder to activists that sometimes you can achieve the impossible. It’s no wonder that Dee is optimistic.

In Part II, “Transition to Anti-Imperialism,” Dee’s narrative continues. Dee and his wife Carol traveled to Portugal in 1974 to witness that nation’s anti-fascist revolution. Dee’s intense focus on resistance activities took a toll on his marriage, though, and he and his wife divorced — a real and painful sacrifice.

Dee spent several years in Nicaragua, working for the Sandinistas as a media specialist while the Reagan Administration supported the contras in their efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas. Dee enjoyed the people, the food, and the police officers, who called themselves “the sentinels of the people’s happiness.” He also found a bit of humor, albeit with himself as the object. Like everyone else, Dee participated mandatory defense training, preparing to fight the contras.

“The closet I ever came to ‘armed struggle,’ he writes, “was jamming an antique M1 rifle during an evening militia practice. We were on guard duty when we heard a noise that turned out to be a mix of family feud and drunken brawl. My other main direct ‘war-like’ experience,” he continues, “was the loud BANG! of mangoes falling on our zinc roof: the first time I heard it I thought the war had finally landed in Managua.” Later he notes, ruefully, “I wasn’t exactly Che Guevara.”

I don’t want to make Dee’s book seem like an action novel, because it’s not. There are important sections in which he reflects on socialist history and thought, U.S. imperialism, what works and what doesn’t for activists, and what’s needed for the future. He writes, for example:

“Revolutionary leadership is needed. We need to combine forces and tactics [with the environmental movement], to sustain and multiply the popular forces in motion, and move beyond the ‘politics of the possible’ [Think back to what he and a small group achieved at the 1976 Democratic National Convention]. This emphatically does not mean we should never run candidates for office or build a mass socialist party. We definitely should, and thus win as many people as possible to understand and support socialism. But we must be clear that to actually achieve socialism, there must be more.”

But, of course, the world doesn’t stop and wait for us to be ready, and in 1991 Dee is re-engaged in anti-war activities during run-up to the First Gulf War, known to me as Operation Desert Storm. I was on active duty in England at the time, and I provided support to nervous soldiers as they flew to the war zone and to quietly relieved soldiers making their way home from the war zone (I would go to Riyadh after the war a representative of the Red Cross). War for oil disgusted me, and that, combined with 11.5 years of frustration with government bureaucracy, caused me to leave the Air Force later that same year. That decision set me on my own path to anti-war resistance.

Part III, “Socialism and the Green New Deal,” begins with a warning from Noam Chomsky:

“It is impossible to exaggerate the awesome nature of the challenge we face: to determine, within the next few years, whether organized human society can survive in anything like its present form. Global warning is already a prime factor in destroying species at a rate not seen for 65 million years. There is no time to delay changing course radically to avert major catastrophe.”

This section is the most didactic of the three, but it is still very readable. Dee describes the dangers we face as a species, the failures of capitalism to address them, and how the Green New Deal and socialism can help us rise to the challenge of survival. He also surveys the state of the resistance: The Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, the anti-war and anti-imperialism movements, and others, who must coalesce into a broad and insistent movement for change.

As always, the American penchant for imperialist war, this time George Bush Jr.’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attracts Dee’s attention and comment. The wars are responsible not only for the immediate deaths of Iraqis and Afghanis and the destruction of the farms, villages, and cities on which they depend, but also for the immense quantities of air, land, and water pollution (chemical and radioactive) military operations emit. The U.S. military is responsible for more pollution than many nations. Once again, Dee acts.

“As socialists in the homeland of imperialism, we don’t just look on anxiously — we mobilize. We do it so often we can be considered a permanent anti-war movement. Whether it’s a picket line of a dozen people or a thundering march and rally, we view it as our internationalist duty — and our patriotic duty — to mobilize to stop the warmakers. Yes, patriotic! Over time, more and more people will get it: the warmakers are not patriotic — we are!”

I can think of no better way to end this review than as I — and Dee — began: with an admonition for optimism.

“In my own case, the experience [of amnesty work] not only radicalized me but provided an opportunity to develop skills and knowledge as a revolutionary organizer, which ultimately determined the direction for the rest of my life. It’s true there were sacrifices. I was over thirty when our amnesty campaign ended. It took most of another decade for me to ‘settle down’ to a more or less normal lifestyle. ‘More or less,’ for me, meant dedicating myself to the endless task of stopping the U.S. war machine and fighting for a better world. Forty years later I haven’t stopped, and I hope I can continue indefinitely. But now I see the task is larger. Now it’s clear we need a revolution. And while the odds seem long at the moment — after roughly four decades of reaction — I remain optimistic and confident.

Buy the book. Read it. Bolster your sense of optimism. It certainly helped mine.