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At The Nation, Dave Zirin writes, This Day in History: When Muhammad Ali Took the Weight:
In an era defined by endless war, we should recognize a day in history that won’t be celebrated on Capitol Hill or in the White House. On June 20, 1967, the great Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston for refusing induction in the US armed forces.Image may be NSFW.Ali saw the war in Vietnam as an exercise in genocide. He also used his platform as boxing champion to connect the war abroad with the war at home, saying, "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?”
Clik here to view.Muhammad Ali signs an autograph for
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)For these statements, as much as the act itself, Judge Joe Ingraham handed down the maximum sentence to Cassius Clay (as they insisted upon calling him in court): five years in a Federal penitentary and a $10,000 fine. The next day, this was the top-flap story for The New York Times with the headline, “Clay Guilty in Draft Case; Gets Five Years in Prison.”
The sentence was unusually harsh, and deeply tied to a Beltway, bipartisan consensus to crush Ali and ensure that he not develop into a symbol of anti-war resistance. The day of Ali's conviction the US Congress voted 337-29 to extend the draft four more years. They also voted 385-19 to make it a federal crime to desecrate the flag. Their fears of a rising movement against the war were well-founded.
The summer of 1967 marked a tipping point for public support of the Vietnam “police action.” While the Tet Offensive, which exposed the lie that the United States was winning the war, was still six months away, the news out of Southeast Asia was increasingly grim. At the time of Ali’s conviction, 1,000 Vietnamese noncombatants were being killed each week by U.S. forces. One hundred US soldiers were dying every day, and the war was costing $2 billion a month.
Anti-war sentiment was growing and it was thought that a stern rebuke of Ali would help put out the fire. In fact, the opposite took place. Ali’s brave stance fanned the flames. As Julian Bond said, "[It] reverberated through the whole society…[Y]ou could hear people talking about it on street corners. It was on everyone's lips. People who had never thought about the war before began to think it through because of Ali. The ripples were enormous.” ...
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:
Breaking out his veto pen for only the third time in six years, George Bush once again chose to spit in the face of the American people.Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.
It must be pointed out that Bush didn't push back against the Democratic-led Congress, he pushed back against the overwhelming majority of Americans who favor embryonic stem cell research.
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