from war resister to Green New Deal revolutionary: a memoir and manifesto

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My book is a memoir and a manifesto: it tells of my experiences during the Vietnam years, when I refused to fight and went to Canada instead. I became a leader of the movement for unconditional amnesty. Then it covers my struggles from 1975 to the present, focusing on anti-imperialism, and on the Green New Deal - a program to save the planet.I describe the challenges of forging a new life in Canada, explaining the differing challenges faced by middle class draft resisters, and working class military resisters. I describe the long campaign for universal, unconditional amnesty, culminating in the nomination of a war resister for vice president at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York - reaching about 60 million people on live TV.Part 2 begins with a bottle of champagne I bought on April 30, 1975, when Vietnam's liberation forces marched triumphantly into Saigon. I explain how I figured it would stimulate more revolutions across the globe. I tell about my visit to witness Portugal's 1975 revolution, and of my three-year sojourn with the Sandinistas, personalizing it with my own experiences and perceptions.I relate my experience with the South Bronx Community Congress during the Obama years: a coalition that held annual People's Assemblies and mounted struggles against workplace racism, poverty and violence. I tell how these campaigns in 2011 became part of a citywide movement against budget cuts in New York, with large labor marches downtown and an occupation of the state capitol in Albany, leading to the "Bloombergville" encampment near NYC City Hall, which in turn stimulated Occupy Wall Street: a mass outpouring of "the 99%" that spread across the country. Part 3 is a celebration of the Green New Deal: an answer to the threat of extinction posed by the climate change emergency. The beauty of the Green New Deal is its resolution to change everything. To transform our economy to renewable energy we must harness and mobilize people power, determined to transform government itself. Working people will need to take over.