Where Are They Now - The
Vietnam Draft Dodgers
Mark Satin Fled To Canada
There Were Three Jewish
Communities In Canada
Days Of Glory
Just Distant Memories For Most
Preparations For A New Wave Is
Underway
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If There Is A Draft Today
If Israel strikes Iran will Jewish kids flee to Canada as they did in
1964 Vietnam era. The important question is 'Should these kids get
Amnesty' like the draft dodgers of the last war?
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Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada
By Mark Satin
In 1967, as lead draft counselor for the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme
(TADP), I conceived and wrote a book that became an immediate
“underground bestseller”: Manual for Draft Age Immigrants to Canada
I was 21 years old, had been “bred in at least modest comfort” in
Moorhead MN and Wichita Falls TX, and was wanted in the U.S. for draft
evasion.
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Feldman, Steiner, Jacobs, And Gold
I wasn't thrilled about becoming a draft dodger. I'd planned on
doing something really constructive with my life in the country I
loved, the USA: I'd planned on becoming an American historian in the
tradition of Charles and Mary Beard and V.L. Parrington. But it was
inconceivable to me -- I mean, not even an option -- that I would
answer my country's call to go off and try to kill, maim, and
intimidate Vietnamese for no good reason.
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Even in 1965-66, it was obvious to anyone who made some sincere
effort to look into the situation that the Vietnam war was
flagrantly unjust and not in America's true interests, and it was
also obvious what the stand-up alternatives were: jail or Canada.
I chose Canada because I thought I could do more good working
against the war machine from Toronto than I could rotting in the
federal penitentiary in Texarkana. And work against the war
machine is exactly what I did!
[Note to those who've e-mailed me through this website calling
me a Jew coward or worse: In 1965, as a civil rights worker in
Holly Springs, Mississippi, I'd already been shot at and been in
two other life-threatening situations -- and hardly gave any of
those situations a second thought. The great tension between me
and the members of my civil rights group was I wanted to try
organizing students at the segregated white high school in Holly
Springs! Like many naive young Jewish males from places like
Moorhead and Wichita Falls, I basically felt invulnerable, which
is why we're such great Army fodder.]
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From A Draft Dodger To An Ivy League Professor
I wrote the Manual in consultation with many other draft counselors
across North America -- to this day the bravest, most generous, and
altogether most wonderful karass I’ve ever known. (The best argument
for cloning is it could bring back some facsimile of fabled Los
Angeles civil rights and military draft lawyer William G. Smith, who
traveled to Toronto with his girlfriend in 1967 to look over the
manuscript and buck up my spirits a couple of weeks after my parents
attacked me in the pages of the Ladies' Home Journal. He died August
2, 1999, and it’s to him I dedicate this web page.)
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I recently discovered two delightful Manual-related photos on the web.
Prominent photographer John Phillips (one of my first Toronto counselees!)
has posted a photo of volunteers assembling the Manual HERE. It perfectly
captures the feel of The Movement circa 1968 . . . made even me miss it.
And Yale-trained artist Gareth Long, born in 1979 -- four years after the
Vietnam War ended -- has created a multimedia artwork replacing certain
subtitles in Oliver Stone's film Platoon with text from the Manual; see it
in living color HERE.
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Preparations For Today's Deserters
Lee Zaslofsky, a deserter from the Vietnam war and a primary
organizer of the War Resisters Support campaign in Canada. Shown in
the campaign office in Toronto.
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The Toronto dodgers found their
geographical focus, by a process no one remembers, on a downtrodden
street which was the old Jewish
community. Hundreds of Jewish dodgers
settled around Baldwin, then scores, then a few hundred. Many
newcomers went there to find their feet and quickly moved on. Over
five years, one house contained roughly 100 different
dodgers for brief periods. Baldwin
Street acquired co-operative craft stores (the Yellow Ford Truck and
Ragnarokr), a cheap clothing store (the Cosmic Egg), the Whole Earth
Natural Foods Store, and the Baldwin Street Gallery, a pioneering
photography centre. One of the gallery's owners, John Phillips, turned
out to be an especially enthusiastic new Canadian. Many years later he
recalled the day he drove into Canada
as a moment of ecstasy, one of the happiest times of his life.
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