Author | Robert Bashlow and Tuli Kupferberg |
---|---|
Genre | political protest, satire |
Publication date | 1966 |
"1001 Ways to Beat the Draft" is a satirical Vietnam War protest pamphlet written in 1966 by Robert Bashlow and Tuli Kupferberg. It was also published in book format.
The text reels through dozens of ways that young men facing conscription during the Vietnam War could avoid service. Kupferberg leaves no societal more unscathed in this anti-war pamphlet, which is considered one of the most notable antiwar publications. [1] Donald L. Simons, in his autobiography I Refuse: Memories of a Vietnam War Objector, wrote "It is not possible to determine how many men successfully fooled the system, but stories of attempts, and how to do it, became part of the Sixties culture. The most famous examples were Arlo Guthrie's classic folk song, 'Alice's Restaurant', and the book, '1001 Ways to Beat the Draft'." [2]
The pamphlet was published originally by Oliver Layton Press, New York; Kupferberg also printed it under his publishing label, Birth Press, and an illustrated version from Grove Press came out in 1967. [3] Kupferberg published other humorous lists in the same format, including 1001 Ways to Live Without Working and 1001 Ways to Make Love.
An excerpt was included in Viking Press' Portable Beat Reader. [4]
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
Lewis Barrett Welch Jr. was an American poet associated with the Beat generation literary movement.
Conscription evasion or draft evasion is any successful attempt to elude a government-imposed obligation to serve in the military forces of one's nation. Sometimes draft evasion involves refusing to comply with the military draft laws of one's nation. Illegal draft evasion is said to have characterized every military conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries, in which at least one party of such conflict has enforced conscription. Such evasion is generally considered to be a criminal offense, and laws against it go back thousands of years.
Flower power was a slogan used during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and nonviolence. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965 as a means to transform war protests into peaceful affirmative spectacles. Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children. The term later became generalized as a modern reference to the hippie movement and the so-called counterculture of drugs, psychedelic music, psychedelic art and social permissiveness.
Edward Sanders is an American poet, singer, activist, author, publisher and longtime member of the rock band the Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and hippie generations. Sanders is considered to have been active and "present at the counterculture's creation."
Philip Lamantia was an American poet, writer and lecturer. His poetry incorporated stylistic experimentation and transgressive themes, and has been regarded as surrealist and visionary, contributing to the literature of the Beat Generation.
A conscription crisis is a public dispute about a policy of conscription, or mandatory service in the military, known in US English as a "draft". A dispute can become a crisis when submission to military service becomes highly controversial and popular revolt ensues. From the point of view of military officials, the crisis is one of supply; where they may claim to lack enough troops to accomplish a military objective, and have, to some degree, lost control of their political ability to enforce existing conscription law.
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History is a nonfiction novel recounting the October 1967 March on the Pentagon written by Norman Mailer and published by New American Library in 1968. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the National Book Award in category Arts and Letters. Mailer's unique rendition of the nonfiction novel was perhaps his most successful example of new journalism, and received the most critical attention. The book originated as an essay published in Harper's Magazine titled "The Steps of the Pentagon," at the time the longest magazine article ever published, surpassing John Hersey's "Hiroshima" in The New Yorker.
Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, publisher, and co-founder of the rock band The Fugs.
The Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine. Its publisher is John Oakes and its editor-in-chief is Dale Peck. The Evergreen Review was founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 until 1984, and was re-launched online in 1998, and again in 2017. Its lasting impact can be seen in the March–April 1960 issue, which included work by Albert Camus, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bertolt Brecht and Amiri Baraka, as well as Edward Albee's first play, The Zoo Story (1958). The Camus piece was a reprint of "Reflections on the Guillotine", first published in English in the Review in 1957 and reprinted on this occasion as the magazine's "contribution to the worldwide debate on the problem of capital punishment and, more specifically, the case of Caryl Whittier Chessman." The magazinne's commitment to the progressive side of the political spectrum has been consistent, with early stance for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. The image of Che Guevara that first appeared on the cover of its February 1968 issue, designed by Paul Davis and based on a photograph by Alberto Korda, became a popular symbol of resistance.
Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts was a literary magazine founded in 1962 by the poet Ed Sanders on the Lower East Side of New York City. Sanders later co-founded the musical group the Fugs. Sanders produced thirteen issues of Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts from 1962 to 1965.
Ann Charters is Professor Emerita of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She is a Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation scholar.
Clay v. United States, 403 U.S. 698 (1971), was Muhammad Ali's appeal of his conviction in 1967 for refusing to report for induction into the United States military forces during the Vietnam War. His local draft board had rejected his application for conscientious objector classification. In a unanimous 8–0 ruling, the United States Supreme Court reversed the conviction that had been upheld by the Fifth Circuit.
Jeff Sharlet (1942–1969), a Vietnam veteran, was a leader of the GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War and the founding editor of Vietnam GI. David Cortright, a major chronicler of the Vietnam GI protest movement wrote, "Vietnam GI, the most influential early paper, surfaced at the end of 1967, distributed to tens of thousands of GIs, many in Vietnam, closed down after the death of founder Jeff Sharlet in June, 1969."
Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. Kerouac used the name "Duluoz Legend" to refer to his collected autobiographical works.
Frances May Witherspoon was an American writer and activist, co-founder with Tracy Dickinson Mygatt of the War Resisters League, and executive secretary of the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, a forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Conscientious objection in the United States is based on the Military Selective Service Act, which delegates its implementation to the Selective Service System. Conscientious objection is also recognized by the Department of Defense.
Draft evasion in the Vietnam War was a common practice in the United States and in Australia. Significant draft avoidance was taking place even before the United States became heavily involved in the Vietnam War. The large cohort of Baby Boomers and late Silent Generationers allowed for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. More than half of the 27 million men eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War were deferred, exempted or disqualified.
The Pacific Counseling Service (PCS) was a G.I. counseling service organization created by antiwar activists during the Vietnam War. PCS saw itself as trying to make the U.S. Armed Forces "adhere more closely to regulations concerning conscientious objector discharges and G.I. rights." The Armed Forces Journal, on the other hand, said PCS was involved in "antimilitary activities", including "legal help and incitement to dissident GIs." PCS evolved out of a small GI Help office started by a freshly discharged Air Force Sergeant in San Francisco, California in January 1969. The idea rapidly caught on among antiwar forces and within a year PCS had offices in Monterey, Oakland, and San Diego in California, plus Tacoma, Washington. By 1971 it had spread around the Pacific with additional offices in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Okinawa, the Philippines, as well as Tokyo and Iwakuni in Japan. Each location was established near a major U.S. military base. At its peak, PCS was counseling hundreds of disgruntled soldiers a week, helping many with legal advice, conscientious objector discharges and more. As the war wound down, ending in 1975, the offices closed with the last office in San Francisco printing its final underground newspaper in 1976.