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| Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Katovsky
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $12.94 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 796493
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1.00
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1592288162
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.650973
EAN: 9781592288168
ASIN: 1592288162
Publication Date: April 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
BookSense Notable Pick "Powerful" ---Booklist What is the relationship between patriotism and dissent? Why is political protest often maligned as disloyal and un-American? And what are the risks for speaking out and taking a principled stand? These questions form the backbone of PATRIOTS ACT: VOICES OF DISSENT AND THE RISK OF SPEAKING OUT. Here are interviews with federal whistle-blowers, peace activists, military veterans, members of the media, practioners of nonviolent civil disobedience, and former high-ranking government officials. They represent the many types of protest found in this country. These individuals have exercised their rights, resisting censorship and the restriction of free expression-often with surprising results. Some were publicly vilified as a result of their defiance and outspokenness. Others jeopardized their careers. Several went to jail. They have diverse backgrounds and political views-liberal and conservative, young and old, secular and religious-but they all share a common commitment to speaking the truth, regardless of the Among the voices heard in PATRIOTS ACT. Each interview in PATRIOTS ACT traces its own narrative arc. The cumulative effect of these oral histories embodies what is best about our national character. It also shows why it?s important to stand vigilant against those who wrap themselves so tightly in our nation?s flag that they can neither see nor hear what others are actually saying. Dissent is our birthright. It should not be silenced. Here are some of the patriots who speak out in the book: "You can?t chalk this all up to `failure to imagine, when in mid-August an agent in my office was on the phone and saying to FBI headquarters, This is a guy who could fly into the World Trade Center!" -Coleen Rowley, FBI 9/11 whistle-blower and Time person of the year "When I write a column that really bothers people, even something about Bush?s personal character or, oddly, something that says that the economy isn?t doing too great, I can get up to 1,500 hostile e-mails." -Paul Krugman, New York Times op-ed columnist "The Republicans will take someone and tear them to shreds. They will question their patriotism. They call me Osama bin Randi. Randi Hussein. Tokyo Rhodes." -Randi Rhodes, Air America Radio talk-show host "We have a White House now that is extremely dangerous. They don?t believe in democracy. Now is the time for people to show courage. I would like to see a lot more whistle-blowing." -Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of Pentagon Papers and peace activist "I have known both military and political battles. I have been traumatically wounded by both. Winston Churchill said that politics is a lot like war, except in war, you get killed once. In politics you get killed many times." -Max Cleland, former U.S. Senator and war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam "Large numbers of the crowd began chanting against us. ?America the Beautiful? was playing on the loudspeakers while we were being walked out in handcuffs by the cops. -Jeff and Nicole Rank, arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts during the president?s Independence Day speech "Nonviolent civil disobedience has really been maligned. Oftentimes the violence done to people of nonviolent means is then turned around and projected back onto them, so it looks like they deserve what they got. Then it?s easier for protests to be dismissed or marginalized by the media." -John Sellers, the Ruckus Society Other interviews in PATRIOTS ACT include: former FAA Red Team Leader Bogdan Dzakovic who criticizes aviation security and tells why it's still unsafe to fly; Rand Beers, special assistant to the president for combating terrorism, explains why he quit the White House five days before the start of the Iraq War; Nadin Hamoui, a young Syrian-American woman, relives her arrest and detention during the post-9/11 roundup of foreign nationals; war correspondent Kevin Sites recounts the cost of reporting from the battlefield; Marine reservist Paul Hackett discusses coming back from Iraq and running for Congress as a fighting Democrat; civil liberties advocate and expert John Dempsey looks at domestic spying; Max Mecklenburg talks about being arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention---a 30-hour ordeal; and political satirist Mort Sahl riffs about the importance of humor to keep the opposition alive. The author, Bill Katovsky, is the co-author of Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, which won Harvard University?s Goldsmith Book Prize.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Dissenting Review September 17, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Dissent" ranges from simply disagreeing with the status quo, to running an opposition campaign, to actually facing up to the Man physically. Since we're dealing with such a wide-ranging and crucial form of expression, this book showcases an interesting variety of dissenters, from politicians to provocateurs to just folks, and it's hardly necessary for the reader to agree with all of them. With that being said, the book does little to advance the American ideals of free speech and dissent, due to its unfocused nature and reliance on autobiographies rather than in-depth analysis. On the good side, we get tales of Nicole and Jeff Rank, Nadin Hamoui, and Max Mecklenberg, who were all badly harassed by the authorities for merely having an unacceptable opinion or even for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We learn of the unfair struggles of courageous whistle-blowers like Bogdan Dzakovic, Colleen Rowley, and Jay Stroup, who yearned to protect the public but were eliminated by inflexible bureaucracies. These are several moving examples of American dissent and government harassment, but these great and humble tales are surrounded by cases of self-aggrandizement and soapbox sermonizing.
The book gets off to a horrendous start, as eco-provocateur John Sellers rambles on and on for 37 pages about hanging cheesy banners off of tall buildings and how you should join his organization. Tweeti Blancett, who has stood up to energy companies and their pocketed politicians, spends most of her article talking about her right-wing Southern and Texas ancestors, with the implication that this makes her a unique or politically acceptable dissident. This is actually a recurring problem throughout this book, as the respondents (probably egged on by the editor Katovsky) feel the need to give a long and questionably useful autobiography and talk about how they're not your "typical" dissident, before rattling off their particular episode of interest right at the end of their essay. Meanwhile, you can dismiss Mort Sahl's useless rants about the modern political comics that have made him obsolete; while even the eminent and hugely respectable Daniel Ellsberg eventually rambles off into dystopian visions and a confused political agenda. This book has many great stories of citizens and leaders who have bucked the system or spoken their minds, then unfairly suffered the consequences, and they are worth reading. But many of them deserve to be surrounded by better material. [~doomsdayer520~]
 Explosive, Inspiring Reading August 11, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Maybe this book got buried in the rising slag-heap mountain of titles exposing the bald-faced lies of George Bush and his puppeteers. Or perhaps somebody thought that Patriots Act was just some un-ironic, dry policy look at the crazy, paranoid post-9/11 government policy that started ripping out the Constitution like so much stained green shag carpet in a North Las Vegas motel. Not at all! This collection of personal stories -- an oral history in the mode of the legendary Studs Terkel, where the interviewer gets the key subjects talking straight from the soul -- is like a heat-seeking missile, right on target with the issues tearing our nation and the world apart.
Don't be fooled by the quiet decency of the book's subjects, some of them famous, some of them unknown, but all of them willing to stick their necks out for principle. It's bracing to read the words of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who risked all to leak the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War; or of triple amputee, Vietnam war vet and former Veterans Administration director and U.S. Senator from Georgia Max Cleland who talks about how our power-mad leaders led our young soldiers into Iraq and toward the same misguided charnel house that consumed his generation in Vietnam. Or why former FBI agent Colleen Rowley risked her long career to reveal how internecine federal agency warfare and career caution at the FBI made the U.S. vulnerable to the tragic Al Qaeda attacks of 2001.
More subtle in the book are the gray men and women, loyal to government service and principle, like Rand Beers, who took over from Richard Clarke as White House counter-terror advisor. Beers later resigned in protest five days before the nation went to war in Iraq on false pretenses. More moving yet in the book are the smallest and most vulnerable of our residents and citizens, like the Syrian-American teenager who was thrown into INS prison with her mother for nine months in a mass sweep of our Arabic populace in the wake of 9/11. Convince me that she is not a more patriotic adherent of democracy than most of us.
But tucked away in the book's center of these portraits of high character in low times is a shocker right in synch with today's headlines. And I mean today!-- when the British MI-5 and other security agencies stopped a plot by suicidal jihadis aiming to blow up a dozen airliners traveling from Great Britain to the America. Smack in the middle of Patriots Act is an incendiary interview with former FAA counter-terrorist Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic. As part of the Red Team, Dzakovic zealously tested airport and airplane security measures. He and team members simulated terrorist attacks. They posed as hijackers. They snuck bombs and weapons onto aircraft. Dzakovic 's Red Team succeeded and found aviation security lacking nearly nine times out of ten, but the politically compromised FAA reacted not with proper alarm and concern, but with apathy, embarrassment and cover-ups. When Dkakovic went public with his findings as a whistleblower, the FAA punished him. It buried him and his career in a bureaucratic closet. Read his chapter and you will be horrified to know that America is not safer today even though billions have been wasted by Homeland Security. But, airline passengers are much more miserable. I wish there were more patriots in this country like this Red Team member. Or like Ellsberg, Cleland, Rowley....
Get it. Give it. Live it. April 11, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Patriots Act reveals a unseen world of political experience, guiding you through the lives of people who've made their dissent the functional center of their life. John Sellers' Ruckus stunts (actually brilliantly executed media events), Randi Rhodes' fearless denunciations of George Bush, a TSA security manager's frustration with airport inadequacies and illogicalities, a next-door-neighbor couple's confrontation with anti-First Amendment goons at a July Fourth event with the prez, and 16 other "oral histories" gave me an in-depth - and occasionally shocking - view of protest as patriotism.
What Katovsky has done here - as in his previous book, "Embedded: The Media in Iraq "(buy it!)- is to let the people on the forefront of our culture, media, and society tell their stories in their own words. I'm always amazed at how articulate and erudite people can be when they speak with passion about the issues they care most about. But Patriots Act is not a compilation of transcribed complaints. Each of the interviewees brings another piece of the puzzle to light. How is it that the most American trait of all - the right and ability to dissent - is often looked upon as anti-American? Why does a whistle-blower have to lose his or her job when attempting to bring problems to the public's attention and solve endemic problems? Why do Americans put personal comfort behind the need for honesty, truth, and accountability?
The first copy of this book I bought, I sent directly to a politically active friend who experiences chronic bouts of "what's the use?" When we spoke on the phone days later she sounded as invigorated as she was when I first met her, twenty-some years ago.
Get it. Give it. Live it.
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