Draft resistance and the Vietnam era

I never did like that Vietnam-era slogan: "Girls say yes to boys who say NO!" As an emerging lesbian and not-quite conscious feminist, boys who thought their draft resistance entitled them to score with girls repulsed me.

But the nonviolent anti-draft movement was a huge part of the youth uprising that made mass overseas U.S. imperial wars impossible for a generation. The echoes of that time still constrain our government; we fight with a professional military and various hired hands these days, not citizen soldiers. Some speculate that if there had been a draft, we could never have lingered in the Iraq quagmire for nine years ... nor would we be going back now.

San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers are making a documentary about those times and that movement riffing off that unfortunate slogan.

They redeem themselves somewhat in my eyes by interviewing one of my favorite figures from that era who is still fighting the good fight, lesbian political activist Mandy Carter.

Boys Who Said No! - Film Clip #4 (Mandy Carter) from Boys Who Said NO! on Vimeo.

Everyone tries to stop you when they see how close you are to making change ... I am proud of what the hell we have done to make us get here this far and I want to see it as we go farther.

The film will be a valuable contribution to the history of peoples' movements in these dis-United States. Learn more at the website.