Published on April 1, 2006, by The Lyons Press. 336 pages.
BOOK SUMMARY: Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out is a collection of interviews with twenty Americans who, knowingly and often unknowingly, dissented meaningfully with the US government. Many interviewees are accidental activists, and most had substantial run-ins with the Bush Administration. All recount intriguing and infuriating tales.
Among the twenty voices of patriotic dissent are:
-- Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia and former head of the Veterans Administration who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. Cleland lost his reelection bid for the Senate via a shameful smear campaign by the opposition.
-- Nicole and Jeff Rank, a young couple whose unexpected journey to jail and the US court system began with wearing anti-Bush shirts to a 2004 Independence Day speech by President Bush.
-- Teenage Syrian immigrant Nadin Hamoui and her mother, Hanan, who were arrested at their Seattle home and taken into detention by gun-toting federal agents in 2002. The two were kept in unexplained lockdown detention for nine months, and then released.
-- Bogdan Dzakovic, a 14-year member of the Federal Aviation Administration's Security division and head of the FAA's elite Red Team. For years prior to 9/11, Dzakovic warned the FAA of poor, risky airport security. Days after 9/11, the Red Team was grounded and silenced by the Bush Administration. Dzakovic filed a federal whistle-blower disclosure suit in October 2001.
-- Army National Guard Sergeant Lorenzo Dominguez, who was stripped of his command and weapon after speaking with a reporter investigating training and equipment problems associated with Iraq deployment.
The book includes thoughts from media mavens, including New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman, war correspondent turned Yahoo journalist-blogger Kevin Sites, Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio, and Nixon-era political satirist Mort Sahl.
Three interviewees are liberals who've dedicated their lives and livelihoods to activism, including Kathy Kelly, a Jesuit-trained humanitarian devoted to peace and social justice, and John Sellers, the director of the Ruckus Society, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubs "the graduate school for the protest movement."
US LIBERALS "411" BOOK REVIEW: This book is an energizing and interesting, but not fast, read for everyone already irritated by the Bush Administration and its control-freak policies of gagging any word or deed that might contradict its worldview.
Conservatives and those not prone to activism could learn a great deal from this valuable compendium of patriotism by dissent, an honored American tradition established by our country's founders.
I found particularly fascinating and educational the stories of individuals who unwittingly suffered the sting of anti-democratic government actions: the young couple who naively wore homemade protest t-shirts to a Bush speech; Syrian immigrants seized at gunpoint in their home and incarcerated for months before being mysteriously set free; and more.
The book also profiles public servants, often former conservatives, who demonstrate honesty and/or competence beyond that tolerated by the Bush Administration: two disillusioned Iraq War soldiers; a former presidential assistant for combating terrorism; a member of the FAA's elite airport security team; the Minneapolis FBI official who brought to public light FBI fumblings that enabled the September 11 attacks.
A few of the interviewees who relied less on facts and events, and more on their personal views, occasionally veered near the self-righteous territory of partisan hackery. And a couple of those trod firmly, and irritatingly, into the terra firma of aggrandizing victimhood. Their tales are important, though, and comprise a small portion of the book.
Stonewalling, misleading and silencing the American public by the Bush Administration is now common knowledge, so few readers will be shocked by the concept.
It's vital, though, that all US citizens understand these stories of everyday Americans....citizens, legal immigrants, soldiers, public employees, small business owners, writers....who sought to exercise their Constitutional rights and freedoms, and paid a steep personal price for their efforts.
Author Bill Katovsky sums it well when he writes in his Introduction, "The nation grows weaker, not stronger, when dissident voices are silenced. Benjamin Franklin said it best: 'Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.' "
