Muhammad Ali's Years of Exile: Boxing Champ's Refusal to Serve in Vietnam Was The Fight of His Life

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Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 8, 2016 at 2:12pm

It is awe-inspiring that, when facing five years in prison, Ali said: “I strongly object to the fact that so many newspapers have given the American public and the world the impression that I have only two alternatives in this stand — either I go to jail or go to the Army. There is another alternative, and that alternative is justice. If justice prevails, if my constitutional rights are upheld, I will be forced to go neither to the Army nor jail. In the end, I am confident that justice will come my way, for the truth must eventually prevail.”

In 1967, long before it was obvious to most, Ali connected the black freedom struggle to the injustices of the war in Vietnam, 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 and denied simple human rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again: The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.... If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years.”

To this day it is awe-inspiring that he once bellowed “God damn the white man’s money”.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-zirin-muhammad-ali-legac...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 5, 2016 at 10:51pm

Muhammad Ali's most famous act of social activism -- one that would strip him of his best fighting years, cost him millions of dollars, forever alter his image and eventually send him into debt -- began with one off-hand quote: "Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

It was March 1966, and the U.S. military was escalating its fight in Vietnam. It began substantially lowering its standards for the draft so it could conscript more men, and call up men with lower IQs for 1-A service. This meant that Ali, whose Army-tested IQ score of 78 had been too low for the draft in 1962, was now eligible for unrestricted military service. 

The boxer, who died Friday night at the age of 74, happened to hear this news while surrounded by reporters, and in a classic, boisterous knee-jerk reaction — I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong — he set off a years-long cultural revolution.

Ali wasn't alone for long in his anti-war stance. While his legal case continued, he kept up his anti-war rhetoric, based on arguments against the systematic classism and racism decried by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. His stump speech was simple, but powerful and impassioned: I won't be used by powerful white men as a tool to kill other people who are fighting for their own beliefs and freedoms, and neither should you, especially if you're poor and/or black.

To earn money in lieu of the millions he could've been making boxing, he began giving hundreds of speeches at college campuses, to young audiences that would make up the vehement anti-war movement. Ali solidified himself as a peace-maker and the counter-culture icon young Americans yearned for. His view of the war became America's view of the war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muhammad-ali-risked-it-all-when...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on May 31, 2013 at 5:00pm

“Gitmo is 100 percent antithetical to the basis of our legal system,” he said. “That’s not the America I signed up to defend.”

Guantanamo guard converts to Islam, demands release of detainees 
Terry Holdbrooks was deployed to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to guard detainees. The Phoenix, Ariz., resident has become a devout Muslim and an unlikely advocate for the prisoners’ rights.

May 29, 2013

http://www.nydailynews.com/gitmo-guard-converts-islam-demands-relea...