Young men burn their draft cards in New York City on April 15, 1967, at Sheep Meadow, Central Park. Source Wikipedia.

The passing of Jimmy Carter has been duly noted in ubiquitous remembrances and commentaries on his four-year presidency, 1977-1981. Carter is lauded more for his post-presidential humanitarian projects, while his presidency is deemed a mixed bag by left and right alike. For many Vietnam War resisters – myself included, it is more personal. Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He then established a program for military deserters like me, who were able to return from exile or up from “underground” without going to prison.

President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, and for that we remember him fondly. To say that “Jimmy Carter pardoned war resisters,” however, is a bit like saying that “Abe Lincoln freed the slaves.” Both presidential decrees were the culmination of years of determined resistance and organizing – by the war resisters and the slaves – and by their many valuable allies. Grassroots people’s movements laid the table.

Over One Million People Needed Amnesty

Resistance to the US war on Vietnam was widespread throughout the late sixties and early seventies. Over a million young men found themselves in legal jeopardy – an estimated 300,000 draft resisters, as many as 500,000 deserters, and another 500,000 veterans who were discharged from the military with “less-than-honorable” discharges – life sentences of discrimination, particularly by employers. There were also thousands of women and men who had been prosecuted for their antiwar protests.

Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 Vietnam War resisters emigrated to Canada – the majority being draft resisters, often accompanied by girlfriends and spouses. Thirty thousand became Canadian citizens. Another 800 US war resisters – mostly deserters – fled to Sweden, the only country to officially grant asylum to Vietnam War resisters. (Canada’s immigration policy was wide open at the time, unlike today, and did not care about the military obligations of other countries).

In 1972, AMEX-Canada, a Toronto-based collective of US deserters and draft resisters, of which I was part, took the lead in calling for unconditional amnesty for all war resisters and veterans with less-than-honorable discharges. (AMEX = American Exile.) We fought hard for this position within the broad-based National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty (NCUUA), which included the National Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), War Resisters League (WRL), Women Strike for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and many local peace groups. The initial instinct of some of the church groups was to call for amnesty only for draft resisters, who were mostly white and middle-class, and not for deserters, who were largely working class, and were wanted by the military.

It was a bigger struggle yet to include veterans with less-than-honorable discharges, who were often people-of-color who had resisted racism within the military. But AMEX-Canada, the only organized group of war resisters within the amnesty coalition, along with WRL and VVAW, prevailed, as evidenced by the awkward but specific name, National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty.

AMEX-Canada always called for the US to end its “illegal, immoral” war in Vietnam, which killed over 3 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians. AMEX’s Jack Colhoun, an Army deserter and historian, chronicled the progress of the Vietnam war in the pages of AMEX-Canada magazine. By demanding amnesty, war resisters had opened an antiwar front........

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