Tuesday

SANDER HICKS — THE rebel entrepreneur

Sander Hicks

In 1996, he founded Soft Skull Press, Inc.




In 2003, Hicks was star of "Horns and Halos" (HBO/Cinemax)
the independent publishing documentary that recorded Hicks’s attempts
to get unpopular truths out about G.W. Bush,
through the biography Fortunate Son (Soft Skull, 1999).






Hicks has reported for Alternet, GNN, Long Island Press, New York Press,
and INN World Report Television (FSTV, Dish Network).






He has worked on Wall Street, as a playwright for Playwrights Horizons
and New Dramatists,
and as a shift manager at Kinko’s.

____________

In 2006, he was elected to lead the Cortelyou Road Merchants Association,
in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

That same year he was a US Senate candidate from the Green Party.







His own book, The Big Wedding (Vox Pop, 2005) broke
new ground on the working-class intelligence assets and
whistle-blowers who tried to stop 9/11 from happening.







Sander Hicks is one of the most colorful media activists of his generation. He runs the Drench Kiss Media Corporation's retail dynamo, "Vox Pop." The place for "Books, Coffee, Democracy," Vox Pop is a vibrant, fair-trade, community-empowering, consciousness-raising space, on Cortelyou Road, in Flatbush, Brooklyn. In three years, Vox Pop has spawned new activist groups, redefined "community development", and published a muck-raking tabloid, The New York Megaphone.

In 1996, he founded Soft Skull Press, Inc. (acquired in 2007 by Winton & Shoemaker). In 2003, Hicks was star of "Horns and Halos" (HBO/Cinemax) the independent publishing documentary that recorded Hicks’s attempts to get unpopular truths out about G.W. Bush, through the biography Fortunate Son (Soft Skull, 1999). His own book, The Big Wedding (Vox Pop, 2005) broke new ground on the working-class intelligence assets and whistle-blowers who tried to stop 9/11 from happening. Hicks has reported for Alternet, GNN, Long Island Press, New York Press, and INN World Report Television (FSTV, Dish Network).

His website is www.sanderhicks.com/. He has worked on Wall Street, as a playwright for Playwrights Horizons and New Dramatists, and as a shift manager at Kinko’s. In 2006, he was elected to lead the Cortelyou Road Merchants Association, in Flatbush, Brooklyn. That same year he was a US Senate candidate from the Green Party.

He was on tour this February, and and he will be speaking in detail about the strange death of 9/11 Truth Researcher Dr. Graham. He posted 9/11 Researcher Sander Hicks Files Complaint with DOJ which details his trip to Louisiana and Texas and the strange behavior of the FBI regarding Graham before and after his death.

____________

Friday, February 6, 2009

Sander Hicks Leaving Vox Pop


From Sander's blog:

Why I Resigned From Vox Pop


I’m moving on from Vox Pop to take a job in alternative energy financing, building the winder water and waves systems of tomorrow.

Vox Pop’s total sales last year were $414K. I feel really good about where I’m leaving the company’s valuation.

Debi Ryan will be the new CEO. She’s been training with us to take over. She’s brilliant and nurturing, a true Queen Mother who it is delightful to work with. I’ve personally worked alongside her all week doing rehab on Vox Pop Cortelyou. She’s a hard worker and has a great track record of growing companies, and leaving them profitable at $17 MM a year.

I just want to say that the game has changed in this country, now that Obama is in office, I think certain hybrid systems of capitalism/social consciousness could be tried. It’s time to grab bigger “guns,” in a nonviolent way. I need a bigger platform on which to work. I’m projected to be managing a Bond Fund that is going to put $100 MM into alternative energy. Compare that to running a coffeehouse company that just pulled in $414K in sales. Sort of pales in comparison.

Vox Pop Inc. I love ya, but I just gave you five years of my life, I poured my sweat and blood and splinters of my own flesh in your wood, gutting and building that place with Ross and the help in 2004. Vox Pop Inc. I held you close in the divorce, I took care of you, I wouldn’t let you die, I was the keeper of the torch for you, our little bastard child. I made you profitable and robust, you can go off with Debi now.

I’m off.

I’m into creating the systems that will destory Exxon/Mobil.

Not through violence, but a divine nonviolent form of warfare: financial. Competition. Energy delivery that is cheaper than oil. We’ll create those companies, we will birth them, put them together, fund them, incubate them, and let the hatchlings go. We will put $100MM into the marketplace and be funding all kinds of alternative energy research and conventions. The time is now.

Sincerely,

Sander Hicks

PS: this is NOT effective immediately, I will continue to help with the direct work of rehabilitating Vox Pop Cortelyou, and tomorrow I will be back at work grouting the new bit of granite I laid today in the entrance way! Vox Pop is still in my blood, but a period of transition is indeed upon us. May God have mercy on our souls






THE New
American
Dream Interview




OK, here I am ahead of schedule.

My answers are kind of short, I'm sleepy,
ask me more questions if you need too
....we should talk about Dr. David Graham's death.

____________

I read your book "Guests...." and finished it today.
It was GREAT.

Solid. Literary, unravelled and a little non linear and free,
unlike any other 9/11 writing I've seen.

I really enjoyed it.


I got it from Betsy Metz in Philly.





SANDER HICKS,
37, lives in Brooklyn.

He is the founder and former editor of Soft Skull Press.

He is the author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistleblowers and the Cover-up.

He formerly operated Vox Pop, a Brooklyn coffee house, bookstore and publishing company.

Sander is also a playwright and songwriter. He was lead singer for White Collar Crime from 1996-2003.

More about Sander Hicks:
http://www.sanderhicks.com/index.html
http://www.sanderhicks.com/wcc.html



____________

The New American Dream Trivia Question:

To win a round button that says, "Bush Is Lying About What He Knew,"
be the first one to correctly answer the following.



Sander Hicks would rather be ....


a. Bill Hicks ... no, he's dead, but it would be cool to be that funny, and not be dead, yet

b. On the barricades, in Brooklyn, a Victor Hugo novel in one hand and a Michael Moore DVD in the other

c. President Nader's First Press Secretary

d. Lead singer for the Statler Brothers

e. A Barnes & Noble magnate, in a big office on Fifth Avenue, with a distant view of Brooklyn

f. Watching a game in the old Yankee Stadium

g. Guiding a tractor down an icy dirt road in Iowa, just get me away from all this culture crap.


____________



NAD: Sander, hello, thank you for taking the time for this.

Where are you from?

SANDER HICKS:

Falls Church, Virginia.




NAD: What did you start out wanting to be?

SANDER HICKS:

"An FBI agent, or a truck driver." I remember writing that in like 5th grade.




NAD: Is there still time?

SANDER HICKS:

Time is running out.




NAD: Where do you think your internal fire comes from?

SANDER HICKS:

Being raised by working class people who had struggled to make a better life for me, being raised by Catholics who had a lot of edge and will-power, and also problems communicating.




NAD: You are an entrepreneur, a risk taker, an innovator, and a rebel.

How does that all fit together?

SANDER HICKS:

Well no one wants to work a job they hate.

An entrepreneur tries to use that and make a better way to make a living.

So an entrepreneur is a rebel, but a rebel with a business plan.




NAD: Would you like to choose one of these to answer, elaborate on?

I don't ask this to make fun. I ask because I really seek the answers.

Are UFOs real?
Did we land on the moon in 1968?
Did Bush knock down the towers?
Was Paul Wellstone's death an accident?
The Oklahoma City bombing? Wasn't that just another U.S. government terrorist exercise?
Or not.
Waco. We burned kids, right? You can see flames shooting out of the tanks. Or not.
Is Bigfoot real?
Is there a God?


SANDER HICKS:

I'm very interested in the Wellstone death and I do think it was a hit.

I published the book "American Assassination" to make that case.

OK City was a kind of dry run for 9/11, the Federal Government got away with a lot and learned how much they could get away with.

Waco was just brutal, genocidal, and those people were radical Christians, too.




NAD: Do you have hope in Obama?

SANDER HICKS:

Despite my admiration for him personally, his cabinet appointments make him look like he's going to be a huge disappointment for a lot of people.

Gates? Clinton at State?




NAD: What happened to Kucinich, Nader, McKinney, Paul — and why did they not have a chance?

SANDER HICKS:

Money.




NAD: Who decided our candidates would be Obama and McCain anyway?

SANDER HICKS:

Party hacks, brown-nosers and aparatchiks.




NAD: You run a bookstore.

Do you have hope that people will start reading? Or, maybe that's not how you see it.

Is the novel dead?

SANDER HICKS:

No, I just finished a good novel today, it was called Guests of the Nation.




NAD: The social novel, like Grapes of Wrath? The Jungle, like that.

Does it matter?

SANDER HICKS:

You bet it does.

But the web changes everything, it changes what we expect and demand from print.




NAD: Does your favorite coffee cup have words on it? What are they?

What did you absolutely have to get done by noon today?

SANDER HICKS:

I slept in.

It's still the Christmas season, sort of.


____________

About

THE New American Dream Feature Interviews

If you search the archives below, you will find, in a sort of order [last to first], interviews with:

Joe Bageant, America's blue-collar author

Frida Berrigan, a lifetime of faith, hope and love

Denise Diaz, brewing up a revolution, at The Ritual Cafe in Des Moines

Deanna Taylor, Green Party activist, teacher, in Salt Lake City

Rossie Indira-Vltchek, writer, filmmaker in Jarkarta, Indonesia

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Pacifica reporter in Gaza

Delaney Bruce, Friends of Peltier

Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs

Michael Sprong, South Dakota Catholic Worker


Brian Terrell, Des Moines Catholic Worker

Bob Graf
, One of the Milwaukee 14

Loren Coleman, Bigfoot researcher

Monty Borror, Sci-Fi artist from Virginia

David Ray, Great American Poet

Jack Blood, radio show host, in Austin, Texas

Danny Schechter, A Real Reporter

Bob Kincaid, host, Head-On Radio Show

Tony Packes, Animal Farm Radio Host, Keeping An Eye on Big Brother

Richard Flamer, Working With the Poor in Chiapas

David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Truth activist author

Barry Crimmins, U.S. comedian, author, social activist

Bret Hayworth, political reporter for the Sioux City [IA] Journal

Lisa Casey, publisher of website All Hat No Cattle

Joe & Elaine Mayer, activist couple in Rochester, Minnesota

Fr. Darrell Rupiper, U.S. priest revolutionary

Whitney Trettien, MIT student, Green Party activist

Meria Heller, radio show host

Phil Hey, professor, poet

John Crawford, book publisher

Steve Moon, Iowa Bigfoot researcher

Carol Brouillet, California social activist, 9/11 Truth

Russell Brutsche, Santa Cruz artist

Kevin Barrett, professor, radio show host, 9/11 Truth activist

A'Jamal Rashad Byndon, social activist in Omaha

Chris Rooney, Vancouver, Canada Catholic Worker, website publisher

Marc Estrin, political novelist, from the left

Peter Dale Scott, poet, professor, author, activist

Anthony Rayson, anarchist zine publisher, works with prisoners

Alice Cherbonnier, editor of The Baltimore Chronicle, an independent newspaper

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