Fwd: Great draft dodger article with video of Mark Satin
Ernest Prabhakar
Begin forwarded message:
From: Mark Satin
Dear correspondent or former reader of my newsletters, -
It's been 50 years since the end of the War on Vietnam. If you were ever wondering what happened to the 50,000 of us who immigrated - legally - to Canada, rather than participate in the pointless killing,and terrorizing of millions of Vietnamese, then you have got to read "Resisterville," see HERE or https://nationalpost.com/feature/resisterville-50000-evaders-fled-the-u-s-and-changed-canada , Annushka Agarwal's just-published article in the National Post, one of Canada's two national newspapers. Although the Post is conservative, "Resisterville" is the best article about us I've ever seen. We come across not as Heroes or Cowards, but as the caring, complicated, vulnerable people that we were (and are).
The writer interviewed dozens of us for the piece, and I show up in it briefly three times, once as part of the draft counseling group in Toronto (and author of its notorious Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada), once as founder and proprietor of "The Last Resort," a giant hostel for draft dodgers and military deserters in Vancouver, and finally in the fourth-to-last paragraph.
In addition, the newspaper staff edited Agarwal's hour-long Zoom interview of me into a 24-minute video that is attached to the article and is also available on YouTube, go HERE . After taking one peek, I couldn't bear to watch or listen - once again, I was looking down at my interviewer rather than directly into the Zoom cam, and I appear to be ancient, agitated, and blind, imagine that! But they're running it anyway, so hopefully it has some merit.
Alas, Agarwal didn't mention my recent book, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics (Bombardier Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2023), even though it includes a 10,000-word chapter providing the most honest and compelling account of the draft dodger operation in Toronto that has been or can ever be written. She received the book, and said she'd try to mention it; perhaps her conservative editors said no. But I am happy to give you a link for it HERE .
All best, - Mark Satin / Oakland CA