An From Macedonia

Man from Macedonia

In telling his life story, Rev. Aaron Johnson takes us to the front lines of the fight for civil and human rights in our country over the last fifty years. Whether being beaten and dragged from a dime store lunch counter, standing blindfolded before a Ku Klux Klan meeting, or praying arm-in-arm with a death-row inmate, Johnson shows us how human hatred and fear smells, sounds and feelsand how it feels to empower others with hope and trust. Told with humility and humor, Johnsons story reminds us that one individualwith focus and faithcan effect great change despite repeated hurdles. Readers will come to know Aaron Johnson as a friend and inspiring hero who suspects that God still has a few projects waiting for him on his to-do list.

The History of Greece: Macedonia and Greece

The Macedonian Conflict

Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians. The Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and insists that all Macedonians are Greeks, while Macedonians vehemently assert their existence as a unique people. Here Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in the process of building a nation. The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and in the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. Danforth focuses on the transnational dimension of the "global cultural war" taking place between Greeks and Macedonians both in the Balkans and in the diaspora. He analyzes two issues in particular: the struggle for human rights of the Macedonian minority in northern Greece and the campaign for international recognition of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia. The book concludes with a detailed analysis of the construction of identity at an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy. People from the same villages, members of the same families, living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne have adopted different national identities.