Heavy Weather. Viet Nam. How did it affect

woodstock.27: Heavy Weather. Viet Nam. How did it affect you?

woodstock.27.0: Texas Chainsaw Jazz and Blues (cooljazz) Fri 12 Aug 94 09:27

What if anything did Woodstock have to Do with Viet Nam or Viet Nam
with Woodstock?

Did you dodge the Draft? Know anybody who did?

woodstock.27.1: Jennifer Powell (jnfr) Fri 12 Aug 94 11:47

Oh yes... or at least were resisters. They didn't go to Canada, they were
Quakers and stayed in Philly and throughout hte 80s the FBI were still
coming by regularly to check on them. Still unsure whether or how far to
prosecute, was the FBI.

When I worked for New Society Publishers (I was in the Santa Cruz office,
but visited in Philly some), they still had the directions posted to the
front door of how to deal with the FBI when they inevitably came looking for
Matt.

woodstock.27.2: perfection is the scourge of psychological health (paris) Fri 12 Aug 94 12:07

i remember doing some stuff over those years to help draft resisters
pull together the funds to make it over the border into canada.

god, that was a long time ago..

woodstock.27.3: Texas Chainsaw Jazz and Blues (cooljazz) Fri 12 Aug 94 14:27

Time for another question.

What was your number in the Draft? Or were you pre-lottery and 4f.

And where Oh Where is your draft card today?

woodstock.27.4: David Gans (tnf) Fri 12 Aug 94 14:35

My number was in the mid-300s. What a relief!
I have no idea where my draft card is. Good question!

woodstock.27.5: Steve Silberman (digaman) Fri 12 Aug 94 14:39

My parents were arrested in front of me and led away in handcuffs.
For demonstrating & organizing against the war.

woodstock.27.6: Old Fart Rock and Roll (mikejs) Fri 12 Aug 94 15:08

320 something was mine....guy sittin gnext to me in my dorm room had number
11

woodstock.27.7: John Cavanagh (jcav) Fri 12 Aug 94 16:22

My number was 186...but I had the old college deferrment to save my ass

woodstock.27.8: Texas Chainsaw Jazz and Blues (cooljazz) Fri 12 Aug 94 17:33

We had a dormitory pool on who would have the lowest number in the lottery.

My number was 300 something. Another guy had a 1 or 2. Amazing how quickly
her developed numerous childhood diseases. One wonders if/how they
survived.

woodstock.27.9: Venus de Tofu (pamela) Fri 12 Aug 94 21:38

My father wanted my brother to burn his draft card.

Are you crazy? my brother said. He joined the National Guard instead.
In a maintenance battalion. Where he was a cook. :-)

woodstock.27.10: Fuzzy Logic (phred) Fri 12 Aug 94 22:46

I turned 18 in 1973. Any earlier and it would have been a big problem.

woodstock.27.11: well's cargo (dlee) Fri 12 Aug 94 22:55

My number was 3. I had a pacifist CO deferment, and later I had a student
deferment. I was doing stuff for the Resistance in my high school before
that, with not much success--I was the only one in the whole school who
would even question the recruiters when they had a big presentation in the
gym for all the boys. The school board wouldn't even allow me to provide
copies of the SSS memo "Channeling", about using deferments only for
students who were in "useful" fields of study and so on. Anybody remember
that document? I was, of course, a complete commie for having the gall to
question anything at all.

woodstock.27.12: perfection is the scourge of psychological health (paris) Sat 13 Aug 94 08:14

whew! talk about strange juxtapositions of events..

i was in this topic when my husband walked into my office...he's been
cleaning out his desk, and he found the letter the lyndon johnson sent
his mother when his father was killed in vietnam... form letter, of course,
but...

his father was 38 years old, a career soldier - 82nd airborne, special
forces, master paratrooper. it was his fourth tour of 'nam.

bizarre. sad. sigh.

woodstock.27.13: gimme an "F"! (reva) Sat 13 Aug 94 12:29

Wow. Cosmic coincidence there, Lib...

woodstock.27.14: losefast, (winslow) Sat 13 Aug 94 13:54

My # was 20, and I was motivated by that to apply for CO status, which I
got. Was never asked to do alternative duty.
I still have the card, mostly because getting my CO was a big step for me.
It made me inspect my feelings and learn to articulate them. I asked for
statements from a lot of people I knew and they pulled behind me. It was a
rite of passage.

Woodstock was lots of different kinds of meetings, but one of them was
formed around solidarity on the war issue. To have half a million people
singing along with Country Joe, "what are we fighting for? Don't ask me I
don't give a damn next stop is Viet Nam" made it real for a lot of people
that the level of skepticism was way high.

woodstock.27.15: editorial comment (green) Sat 13 Aug 94 16:23

[speaking of "solidarity," did anyone else notice that the logo for ws94
seems to be a regular WOODSTOCK then with the word written again over it in
red in the form of "soloidarity" (however you spell it) the Polish political
party?

Note: this conference page was created as part of the historic WELL Woodstock Internet booth, in 1994, by the community at The WELL and on site at Woodstock II. All posts were used with express consent of their authors, and some were also published in a Woodstock II book. The design is intentionally left at its primitive original state.
See the main Woodstock project page for more of the backstory.

Italic footnote comments made February 2001.