Co-edited by: Trettien, Palecek, & Annis
Cost of Freedom vividly documents the actions of citizens challenging corporate government. It leaves readers with the hope that citizens will get organized and take back their government from officialdom's criminality and brutality against the powerless and defenseless, against children, mothers and fathers, against our constitution and other laws of the land. Looking at these pages, one is reminded of the persistence and the hope in movements to build a better world. This collection of passionate and rational prose, poetry, photographs and quotes from our courageous forebears is something we clearly aren't going to get from corporate media outlets.
Pre-order Cost of Freedom!
Advance praise from Noam Chomsky, Thom Hartmann, Ralph Nader, Harry Belafonte, and more.
"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
"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
To pre-order Cost of Freedom, send your name, address, and $21.95 to Howling Dog Press, c/o Michael Annis, P.O. Box 853, Berthoud, CO 80513-0853; add $2.50 per copy for shipping/handling. For more information, email Howling Dog Press. Online ordering of retail copies ($25.95), coming soon!
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Hi Michael,
I got my copy of COF today - I cried the second I opened it. You were right, I'm soooooo proud.... I can't believe that my contribution is so BIG and I LOVE THE PICTURE of the girl with the peace sign on her face - she even looks a little bit like me....
WOW - Oh Holy God that book is wonderful.
Thank you for letting me be a part of this - I will be sending my order to you soon.
Re: New Book, "Cost of Freedom"
http://www.costoffreedombook.blogspot.com Published by Howling Dog Press http://www.howlingdogpress.com/OMEGA
Publisher & Designer: Michael Annis writingdangerously@msn.com.
Editors: Whitney Trettien, Mike Palecek wtrettien@yahoo.com
HELLO
COF, Cost of Freedom, is an anthology of stories about people in the current American peace movement — a work of socially and politically conscious literature long overdue.
IN FACT, until Right Now, never done — not even during the protests against the war in Vietnam.
It has been called a literary and cultural landmark, and is certain to be added as an important milestone to the history of protest and dissent.
You will love it, guaranteed. How can we get this book into your hands and into the hands of your customers? Please let us know.
Into the hands of your readers, of your group members.
Into the ears of your listeners.
Into the hearts of your family, friends, neighbors.
COF has been endorsed by Ralph Nader, Harry Belafonte, Thom Hartmann, Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark.
It is a coffee-table style book with lots of photos and great stories.
Don't take our word for it.
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Here is a response from a Colorado book dealer, just this past week.
This narrative is publisher Michael Annis talking about his trip to his neighborhood book store in northern Colorado.
Today I took a sample trade copy to Anthology Books, an independent bookstore in town. I thought we should find out what the response would be attempting to sell COFs here. Claire, the manager, is also the avid reviewer who is writing the review for BookSense, the trade publication for independent booksellers nationally.
The finished COF just knocked her out; prior, she had only seen a review copy. As I was leaving, I asked her to call me after that one sold, and I'd bring her more copies.
My next stop, 5 minutes away, was the post office. I had just pulled into a parking place when my cell phone rang, and I answered it and Claire said, "The book is sold already; bring us a few more copies." I brought her three more; asked her to take names and phone numbers, and let customers know the next batch would be ready on Thursday.
She said, "COF isn't just a book; it's an entire movement."
Claire is also planning on having a publication party for COF and some of the staff members at Anthology will read excerpts from it, along with myself reading some of the poems. We also talked about doing "virtual publication parties" and putting them up on YouTube. I think we could advertise for other COF contributors to (voluntarily) do the same.
MA
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Here is another response from a COF contributor upon receiving her copy:
Dear Mike,
Wow! In the mail today were my copies of Cost of
Freedom!! What a blockbuster piece of work!! I'm
taking it with to my Peacelink's Meeting tomorrow
afternoon. I never imagined such a coffee table epic!
Another response from a contributor:
Excellent!! Outstanding!!, it arrive yesterday and I am admiring the book with all the contributors. This book is history in the making. Long after we are gone someone will look into this book and know that someone stood up against the war/occupation of Iraq.
William
And another:
"Michael, Holy poop! Cost of Freedom is absolutely gorgeous!"
"In all my 30 years of publishing and writing, I've never encountered anything so necessary, so incredible. You've really done it with this one."
More:
"This has to be the most important thing Howling Dog Press has ever done."
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Challenging this suspiciously heinous conception of patriotism, novelist Mike Palecek started asking many hard questions, but he wasn't getting straight answers, so he began to contact peace groups and to gather stories from activists across the United States who had a different perspective on what the cost of freedom might be. He found accomplices to his quest in Whitney Trettien, a student, and Michael Annis, an independent publishers, who became his co-editors. The three of them working together assembled more contributions from many others who knew that America was losing her Constitution to liars, murderers, and thieves.
"Freedom, they tell us, isn't free. The cost of freedom isn't cheap; it's shock and awe aggression, it's proud of it's country right or wrong, it's unquestioning -- it follows orders, from the president, to the governor, to the local cop, while giving orders to the rest of the world -- dominating, hard-bitten, hard-nosed, decisive . . . it's blood, sweat, tears, guts, and conquest, it's occupation of foreign soil for foreign oil, it's shrewd, brutal, unrelenting, merciless, and oh, so gloriously patriotic. Troop surges and civilian casualties are the cost of freedom; violence, bloodshed, death, destruction, genocide, torture, incarceration of evildoers . . .
Through 2005 to 2007, they gleaned letters, articles, sentencing statements, songs, poems, and images into Cost of Freedom. From a grandmother's stay at Camp Casey to a young man's counter-inauguration protest (and subsequent run-in with the FBI), the Cost of Freedom, an anthology of grassroots activism, documents the everyday revolutionary acts of over 75 courageous men and women -- common citizens with an uncommon resolve and mission in life for peace, truth, and liberty, oftentimes at their personal expense.
To stand as one against tyranny . . . Cost of Freedom celebrates that.
Who I'd like to meet:
The real patriots -- those who don't do the unthinkable to follow orders, act according to their conscience despite persecution. Those who hold signs in freezing weather on a freeway in Bangor, Maine; who write intrepid letters to the editor in South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia; who, clothed in black, vigil silently in Syracuse and Wyoming and pray aloud for peace in Bagdad, Arizona. I want to meet those who march defiantly in Des Moines, Seattle, Batavia, Denver, Omaha, Portland, DC, calling the official White House hyper-rationale nothing more than the corporate propaganda of the aristocratic kleptocracy. I want to meet those who assemble at the 49 gates of hell in Northern Colorado, demanding the dismantling of Minuteman III missiles, screaming out that the use of WMDs will never be in their names. Sign scribblers, those who paint banners in kitchens and garages from San Diego to Boston; who read anti-war, anti-government poems on community radio stations and NPR; who publish tracts, newsletters, and pamphlets out of garages and shed. Anyone who writes their Senators and US Representatives and let them know that if they continue to support an illegal war, and an administration contemptuous of the Constitution, they will lose their jobs. Anyone who's been clubbed in demonstrations, thrown into jails and military compounds, and hid away in prisons by the State for living out the phrase, "speak truth to power." Those who raise high the fist of defiance, sheltering in their cupped palms the flame of peace. I want to meet anyone who stood against American hegemony as the newest war tanked up and drove on; who threw themselves under the treads of imperialism run amok; who stood their ground, not for glory, but for integrity, for the cause of uniting nations, not dividing them.
Pre-order Cost of Freedom!
