Judy Collins: No Longer a Folksinger
W$t Uufee Cfjromtle Volume 64, Number 64 Duke University, Durham, N.C. Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1968 X-mas amnesty asked for draft dodgers By Richard Smurthwaite A moral concern you to declare a Christmas amnesty The cabinet of the YMCA today In urging the president to take on your last Christmas in the White passed unanimously a resolution to such actions, the letter claims, House." write a letter to President Johnson, "Their (those refusing induction) asking that he declare a Christmas offense arose not from hostility to While the suggested resolution amnesty for those who have gone their country, but from a moral was being discussed, several fact.' to jail or fled the country in order concern about the war in Vietnam were mentioned concerning the to evade the draft. , or about consrciption itself." number of American men of draft Reed Kramer, president of the The letter cites examples of age who have refused or resisted YMCA, joined with the cabinet in times when other presidents induction: at the present time, 729 urging support for this resolution, granted amnesty to those who had men are serving sentences for saying, "We feel that we have a taken up arms against the United Selective Service violations—this responsibility in our position, to States—a crime, the letter points was thought to be a low estimate: write this letter, we being young out, of which those refusing 120 are living in Sweden, and men of draft age." He suggested induction are not guilty. After 15,000 in Canada, to escape the that other campus organizations mentioning the acts of amnesty draft, protected by thost write similar letters calling for pronounced by Washington, governments' lack of conscription amnesty.
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