As a leading antiwar figure in the 1960s, Tom Hayden wrote extensively on Vietnam and was one of the small number of Americans engaged in dialogue with both sides during the Paris peace talks. As an Irish American, he spent ten years supporting and writing about the peace process leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. As a California legislator for eighteen years, he devoted himself to writing about and trying to prevent inner-city violence. Hayden remains a stalwart antiwar activist, is credited with initiating the 2005 Congressional exit strategy hearings, and has interviewed Iraqi exiles in the Middle East and London. His urgent book comes from a patient understanding of how conflicts end.
Hayden argues that the Iraq war will end by the application of people pressure against the pillars of the policy. A new kind of antiwar movement, delineated in this groundbreaking original work, can overturn those pillars. For the first time in American history, he writes, an American majority voted against a war in progress in November 2006. This is a book for millions of peace activists, for the undecided public, and for the 2008 presidential candidates as well.
Tom Hayden was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society and author of its visionary call, the Port Huron Statement, described by Howard Zinn as “one of those historic documents which represents an era.” Hayden was also one of the famous “Chicago Seven” protesters during the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was elected to the California State Assembly in 1982, and to the state Senate ten years later, serving eighteen years in all.