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Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006
Plans for US draft dodger sculpture revived


VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Peace activists have revived plans for a sculpture to commemorate Vietnam War draft resisters who fled to Canada, a proposal that had drawn the ire of U.S. veterans groups and conservatives.

The activists, who are also organizing a reunion for "draft dodgers" in July, said Tuesday the proposed monument is still needed to warn Americans and Canadians about the dangers of militarism.

"It is very important educationally that we have specific peace monuments," said Isaac Romano, an American who immigrated to Canada and now lives in British Columbia's Kootenay region where many U.S. war resisters settled.

The plan for a monument in Nelson, British Columbia, was originally announced in 2004, but quickly dropped after it was denounced by the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars and conservative media commentators.

Nelson city officials withdrew support for the sculpture to avoid a threatened U.S. boycott of the area's important tourism industry.

Romano said the activists have not decided on a location for the planned sculpture, and welcomed proposals from both Canadian and U.S. communities.

"It could be that there is a group in the States that sees it as an opportunity to remind Americans that they are not locked into the militarism. That there is an escape valve," Romano said.

The proposal calls for a sculpture of two Americans, a male and a female, crossing an imaginary border where a Canadian figure is waiting to welcome them.

It has been estimated that 125,000 draft-age Americans fled to Canada to avoid Vietnam and prosecution under U.S. law, although about half returned home after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty in 1977.

Organizers of the Our Way Home reunion planned for Castlegar, British Columbia, in July say the event and sculpture are to honor both the Americans who resisted the war and the Canadians who helped them build lives in a new country.

Speakers at the four-day event are expected to include former U.S. Senator George McGovern, who campaigned to get the United States out of Vietnam in his unsuccessful 1972 bid for the White House.

Romano said the event will also provide an opportunity for draft dodgers and Vietnam War veterans to discuss their differences on the decision to go to war.

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Words..............Fail me.

Where else?

If that thing goes up, please contact me regarding the car pool to piss on it.

Monument, REUNIONS. What the hell are they gonna talk abot at REUNIONS.

Im sure Bill Clinton will be there


+1 on the car pool. I can bring my truck, it has Tow chains...uh in case we get stuck...yeah thats it

I thought this was proposed a few months ago and was voted down.

Quoted: The activists, who are also organizing a reunion for "draft dodgers" in July...

Terminate......with extreme prejudice.

A jail would be a fitting monument.

Or a French flag, if budgetary monies are tight.

I thought the Conservatives beat out the Liberal scumbags who proposed this after the scandal in the latest elections?

that is just retarded (and a waste of money)

Quoted: Im sure Bill Clinton will be there

He and Dick Cheney can discuss the Vice-Presidents six deferments....


CO

ETA: Crap, did I type that out loud.

A female draft dodger????

I have the perfect design for the monument, imagine this…

It would be of three men lying face down on the ground, with a blanket covering their heads. Underneath the statue would be the slogan, “Is it safe to come out yet?”

(Incidentally, my father was a proud draft dodger back in WWII. He managed to find a loophole in the law where they couldn’t draft you if you joined this thing called the Marine Corps.)

Folks, its NELSON  BC, they are weird there. The stoned macrame making hippy count there is very high...

B.C., Canada's Kommiefornia. I did 12 months of naval training in British Kolumbia. BEAUTIFUL country, great hunting and fishing. I hunted and fished in places I'm sure no white man ever trod on, IF anybody else. The forests are different, disconcerting for an east woodsman. There are ferns and moss on EVERYTHING, and in those woods you really feel primeival, (like your at the bottom of the food chain)

Near the coasts and especially Vancouver (or Hung Couver, capital of Japanada as locals call it) it's full of leftist hippies. The further inland you go the more conservative and sensable it gets. I'll have to write my buddies out there and get them to piss on that statue if it goes up.

A monument to cowards. Amazing. Simply amazing...........


If they believed in their cause so much, why didn't they stay here and face the consequences?

Because they are cowards joker

Quoted: A jail would be a fitting monument. Or a French flag, if budgetary monies are tight.

This French flag should be appropriate....