About this item
Based on unprecedented access to both Cuban and American officials, a book that offers fresh insight into one of history's most enigmatic relationships between nation-states - from one of America's best-known voices of political and social activism.Listen, Yankee! offers an account of Cuban politics from Tom Hayden's unique position as an observer of Cuba and as a US revolutionary student leader whose efforts to mobilize political change in the US mirrored the radical transformation simultaneously going on in Cuba.Chapters are devoted to the writings of Che Guevara, Rgis Debray, and C. Wright Mills; the Cuban missile crisis; the Weather Underground; the assassination of JFK; the strong historical links between Cuba and Africa; the Carter era; the Clinton era; the Cuban Five; Elin Gonzlez; and the December 17, 2014 declaration of normalization by presidents Obama and Castro.
About the Author
After over 50 years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden (1939-2016) was a leading voice for ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, for erasing sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through a more participatory democracy. He was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s, and went on to serve 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees.
In addition to being a member of the editorial board and a columnist for The Nation magazine, Hayden was regularly published in the New York Times, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Denver Post, Harvard International Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffington Post and other weekly alternatives. As Director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California, he organized, traveled and spoke constantly against the current wars. He also recently drafted and lobbied successfully for Los Angeles and San Francisco ordinances to end all taxpayer subsidies for sweatshops.
The author and editor of twenty books, including the recently published "Inspiring Participatory Democracy: Student Movements from Port Huron to Today," Hayden described himself as "an archeological dig." He taught most recently at UCLA, Scripps College, Pitzer College, Occidental College, and the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Hayden, the batting champion of the Los Angeles Dodgers fantasy baseball camp in the 1980s, lived in the Los Angeles area since 1971. He is survived by his wife, the Canadian actress, singer and author Barbara Williams with whom he shares a son, Liam. Tom has two other children, now thriving adults, from an earlier marriage to the actress-activist Jane Fonda.
