Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times

Standing Up to the Madness not only is a timely, inspiring, and even revolutionary look at who wields the greatest power in America — everyday people who take a chance and stand up for what they believe in — but also offers advice on what you can do to help.

Where are the millions marching in the streets to defend human rights, civil liberties, and racial justice? Where is the mass revulsion against the killing and torture being carried out in our name? Where are the environmentalists? Where is the peace movement?

The answer: They are everywhere.

The award-winning sister-brother team of Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and investigative journalist David Goodman traveled the country to detail the ways in which grassroots activists have taken politics out of the hands of politicians. Standing Up to the Madness tells the stories of everyday citizens who have challenged the government and prevailed.

As the Bush administration has waged war abroad and at home, it has catalyzed a vast groundswell of political action. From African-American residents of deluged New Orleans who are fighting racism and City Hall to regain their homes; to four Connecticut librarians who refused to spy on their patrons, challenged the USA PATRIOT Act, and won; to a group of high school students who were barred from performing a play they wrote on the Iraq War based on letters from soldiers; to the first U.S. Army officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq, charging that his duty as an officer is to refuse to fight in an illegal and immoral war, Standing Up to the Madness profiles citizens rising to extraordinary challenges. And, in the process, they are changing the way that politics is done, both now and in the future.

In communities around the United States, courageous individuals have taken leaps of faith to stop the madness. They could only hope that if they led, others would follow. That is how movements are born. What begins as one, eventually becomes many. In that tradition, the authors have included the ways in which any individual can take action and effect change.

The award-winning journalists and authors of The Exception to the Rulers and Static return with this revolutionary work that celebrates the ordinary heroes who have stood up, often at great risk, to defend democracy and change America for the better.

Amy Goodman is an internationally acclaimed journalist and host of the daily grassroots global news hour Democracy Now!, which airs on more than 600 radio and TV stations around the world and on Democracynow.org. Democracy Now! is the largest media collaboration in North American public broadcasting. She has won many of the most prestigious awards in journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting.

David Goodman is an award-winning independent journalist, the author of seven books, and a contributing writer to Mother Jones. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Outside, The Nation, and numerous other publications. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa. He lives with his wife and two children in Vermont.