Cost of Freedom: "Books, not bombs": Norman MacAfee on Huffington Post

Cost of Freedom available in bookstores!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

"Books, not bombs": Norman MacAfee on Huffington Post

I'm sorry I'm so late with this post. COF contributor and poet Norman MacAfee recently published an article on Huffington Post. You can access it here. A snippet:

"Together we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft."

Forty years ago, Robert Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are doing this week.

RFK's base was the poor and working class, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, blacks, and working-class whites. Campaigning in Indiana, he was "wildly cheered by angry blacks, then cheered with equal enthusiasm by blue-collar whites who professed to hate blacks," wrote Evan Thomas wrote in Robert Kennedy: His Life.

As we watch Clinton and Obama campaign in Indiana, I would like us to think of that coalition that Robert Kennedy forged between the poor and the working class, including all the races. Is such a thing possible today?

His latest book, The Gospel Accoring to RFK, is available through bookstores and Amazon.

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"This varied and exciting collection graphically reveals the vitality and expanse of the popular movements opposing violence and criminal ventures abroad. It should inspire many more to join in these efforts to create a powerful force of concerned citizens that cannot be ignored, and that will help shape a much more hopeful and decent future." --Noam Chomsky

"Cost of Freedom is a beautiful, accessible, and meaningful history of recent American anti-war movements that should be on the coffee tables of every American home." -- Thom Hartmann, Air America

"Cost of Freedom is a powerful cry for peace—the only state in which freedom is possible. War, its threat and preparation, together with the further impoverishment of the people they promise, are the greatest enemies of freedom.

"Even more, this anthology proves that people and poets across America have, like Thoreau, refused to be outfaced by irrational things. Here is a chorus of the American people, matching the prophets of the past, whose voices are also present, singing peace will come through universal love and respect for the precious rights and dignity of every child, woman and man but only when the factually informed participation and perseverance of the people make war unthinkable.

"Your poets will then be the acknowledged legislators of peace on earth." -Ramsey Clark

"Are you civically indifferent to officialdom’s criminality and brutality against the powerless and defenseless, against children, mothers and fathers, against our constitution and other laws of the land? If this collection of passionate and rational prose, poetry, photographs and quotes from our courageous forebears does not stir you to join with other patriots for democractic actions and restorations, you are indeed civically inactive. And that’s no way to be self-respectful!" --Ralph Nader

“There is good reason to have at your disposal things that remind you of things as they are. Cost of Freedom is a perfect candidate; it does more than remind: it also informs.” -– Harry Belafonte

"Cost of Freedom vividly documents the actions of citizens challenging corporate government. It leaves readers with hope—the hope that citizens will get organized and take back their government. For too long, corporations have dominated government, and when it comes to issues of war and peace the military-industrial complex, big oil and international corporations have used the U.S. military to enforce their form of corporate globalization—trade that puts corporate profits ahead of the basic necessities of the people, saving the environment and a fair economy where wealth is distributed equitably. Read this book, get excited and get active. We need active participants in U.S. democracy if we are going to ever really have a government of, by, and for the people. You are not alone.” --Kevin Zeese, Director of Democracy Rising, and Chair of Voters For Peace

"Looking at these pages, one is reminded of the persistence and the hope in movements to build a better world. This is something we clearly aren't going to get from corporate media outlets. We can all learn a lesson from the contributors in this anthology, that we need to tell our own stories, remind each other why struggle is important, that we can be creative, have more fun, and that it's possible to build the kind of power necessary to stop the madness." --Eric Galatas, Program Director, FreeSpeech Television