page_title: Draft evasion
section_title: Avoidance and resistance at home
hierarchical_section_title: Draft evasion / By country / United States / Vietnam War / Avoidance and resistance at home
caption_attribution_description: English: The photograph depicts a legion of police officers deploying at the 14th and Clay streets to greet the arrival of anti-draft demonstrators on a march from the University of California, Berkeley campus during Stop the Draft Week, Oct. 1967. Negative number in the Oakland History Room: F-2970.
context_page_description: 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. Such evasion is generally considered to be a criminal offense, and laws against it go back thousands of years.
  There are many draft evasion practices. Those that manage to adhere to or circumvent the law, and those that do not involve taking a public stand, are sometimes referred to as draft avoidance. Those that involve overt lawbreaking or taking a public stand are sometimes referred to as draft resistance. Draft evaders are sometimes pejoratively referred to as draft dodgers, although in certain contexts that term has also been used non-judgmentally or as an honorific.
  Draft evasion has been a significant phenomenon in nations as different as Colombia, Eritrea, France, Russia, South Korea, Syria, and the United States.
context_section_description: Significant draft avoidance was taking place even before the U.S. became heavily involved in the Vietnam War. The large cohort of Baby Boomers allowed for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students.  According to peace studies scholar David Cortright, more than half of the 27 million men eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War were deferred, exempted, or disqualified.
  The number of draft resisters was also significant.  According to Cortright, "Distinct from the millions who [avoided] the draft were the many thousands who resisted the conscription system and actively opposed the war".  The head of U.S. President Richard Nixon's task force on the all-volunteer military reported in 1970 that the number of resisters was "expanding at an alarming rate" and that the government was "almost powerless to apprehend and prosecute them".  It is now known that, during the Vietnam era, approximately 570,000 young men were classified as draft offenders, and approximately 210,000 were formally accused of draft violations; however, only 8,750 were convicted and only 3,250 were jailed.  Some draft eligible men publicly burned their draft cards, but the Justice Department brought charges against only 50, of whom 40 were convicted.
  As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, some young men sought to evade the draft by pro-actively enlisting in military forces that were unlikely to see combat in Vietnam. For example, conscription scholars Lawrence Baskir and William Strauss say that the Coast Guard may have served that purpose for some, though they also point out that Coast Guardsmen had to maintain readiness for combat in Vietnam, and that some Coast Guardsmen eventually served and were killed there.  Similarly, the Vietnam-era National Guard was seen by some as an avenue for avoiding combat in Vietnam, although that too was less than foolproof: about 15,000 National Guardsmen were sent to Vietnam before the war began winding down.
  Other young men sought to evade the draft by avoiding or resisting any military commitment.  In this they were bolstered by certain countercultural figures.  "Draft Dodger Rag", a 1965 song by Phil Ochs, circumvented laws against counseling evasion by employing satire to provide a how-to list of available deferments: ruptured spleen, poor eyesight, flat feet, asthma, and many more.  Folksinger Arlo Guthrie lampooned the paradox of seeking a deferment by acting crazy in his song "Alice's Restaurant": "I said, 'I wanna kill! Kill! Eat dead burnt bodies!' and the Sergeant said, 'You're our boy'!" The book 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft was co-authored by Tuli Kupferberg, a member of the band The Fugs. It espoused such methods as arriving at the draft board in diapers.  Another text pertinent to draft-age men was Jules Feiffer's cartoon novella from the 1950s, Munro, later a short film, in which a four-year-old boy is drafted by mistake.
  Draft counseling groups were another source of support for potential draft evaders.  Many such groups were active during the war.  Some were connected to national groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee and Students for a Democratic Society; others were ad hoc campus or community groups.  Many specially trained individuals worked as counselors for such groups.
  Alongside the draft counseling groups, a substantial draft resistance movement emerged.  Students for a Democratic Society sought to play a major role in it, as did the War Resisters League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's "National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union" and other groups.  Many say that the draft resistance movement was spearheaded by an organization called The Resistance.  It was founded by David Harris and others in the San Francisco Bay Area in March 1967, and quickly spread nationally.  The insignia of the organization was the Greek letter omega, Ω, the symbol for ohms—the unit of electrical resistance. Members of The Resistance publicly burned their draft cards or refused to register for the draft. Other members de
caption: David Harris and "The Resistance" helped organize Stop the Draft Week in Oakland, California, October 1967.[100][101]
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