Lindsay-Poland, John 1960-

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LINDSAY-POLAND, John 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born April 7, 1960, in New York, NY; son of Robert (a university professor) and Helen (an activist) Lindsay; partner of James Groleau. Ethnicity: "European-American." Education: Attended Harvard College, 1980-82; New College of California, B.A. (U.S. history), 2003. Politics: Independent. Religion: Humanist.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Fellowship of Reconciliation, 2017 Mission St., No. 305, San Francisco, CA 94110.

CAREER:

Fellowship of Reconciliation, San Francisco, CA, director of task force on Latin America and the Caribbean. Panama Update, editor and staff writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

United Nations Association Human Rights Award.

WRITINGS:

(With Tom Barry, Marco Gandásequi, and Peter Simonson) Inside Panama: The Essential Guide to Its Politics, Economy, Society, and Environment, Resource Center Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1995.

Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including San Francisco Chronicle, NACLA Report on the Americas, Progressive, Covert Action Quarterly, and Fellowship.

SIDELIGHTS:

John Lindsay-Poland is a journalist and human rights activist who published Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama in 2003. In his book Lindsay-Poland "discloses decades of hidden history, clandestine environmental activities, and covert chemical weapons tests," observed Library Journal critic Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis. Reviewing Emperors in the Jungle for Perspectives on Political Science, Margaret E. Scranton remarked that Lindsay-Poland "sheds new light on such familiar topics as military intervention and brings to light some relatively esoteric ones." Scranton added, "The book is a well-researched and documented survey of U.S. policy on these issues, interpreted in terms of key events and socioeconomic forces in both countries: the psychological images of Panama held by U.S. policymakers and officials and the broader pattern of hemispheric relations." A Kirkus Reviews critic found Emperors in the Jungle to be an "eye-opening history of the tangled, racially freighted dealings of the American government with its sometime client state of Panama over a hundred years," while Panama News contributor Eric Jackson stated that the work "adds a new dimension to the study of U.S.-Panamanian relations."

Lindsay-Poland told CA: "I am most drawn to research that serves some purpose besides the increase of knowledge for its own sake, but that helps us to understand how to act, to respond to history and what is before us. As a pacifist descending from both American warriors and pacifists, I am interested in understanding how U.S. military forces have affected us and others, and in the people's movements that have envisioned and practiced unarmed means for resolving conflicts and for resisting illegitimate power."