A Facebook friend posted this statement by the boxer Muhammad Ali, who in 1967 risked his career & championship title to resist the draft for the Vietnam War. Now that he has Parkinson’s, they are trying to morph him into a whipped puppy & an icon of patriotism. But he was a fearless & outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War & they can never take that away from him.
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”