a267  1655  10 Feb 80
AM-Draft Protest,750
Echoes of 1960s in Weekend Anti-Draft Protests
With AM-Draft-Women
By DAVID L. LANGFORD
Associated Press Writer
    Anti-draft demonstrators in Lawrence, Kan., substituted
''Afghanistan'' for ''Vietnam'' in an old war protest song called, ''I
Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag.''
    About 2,500 chanting and singing protesters marched on President
Carter's campaign headquarters in Manhattan. A rock smashed one window
and three men were arrested, two for burning a Carter poster and a
small American flag.
    Young women, speaking into the microphones of reporters on several
campuses, said they would take a cue from their older brothers and
flee to Canada if conscripted for war.
    Speakers at a ''Draft Teach-in'' at the University of Wisconsin
attacked the president's ''Cold War mentality.''
    Thus echoes of the 1960s reverberated in the nation's heartland and
big cities over the weekend in reaction to Carter's call to register
young men and women ages 19 and 20 for the draft.
    But there are some big differences in today's debate. Never before
has this country considered drafting women. And Afghanistan is not
Vietnam.
    The New York Times, hardly hawkish during the war in Southeast Asia,
said in an editorial Sunday, ''President Carter is right to fear that
Americans are perceived abroad as flabby, unwilling to bear the
burden of their policies.''
    While questioning the need and mechanics for reviving the draft any
time soon, the newspaper said, ''The registration of draftable youth
can help to challenge that impression.''
    While supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment have generally agreed
women should be included in any draft, ERA opponents are outraged.
    Phyllis Schlafly, one of the most vocal women in the anti-ERA camp,
told a meeting of the North Carolina Conservative Society in
Greensboro, N.C., on Saturday that drafting women would make America
the ''laughing stock of the world.''
    ''It would reduce the combat-readiness of our armed forces to the
physical strength of the average woman - about 60 percent of men - and
it would severely handicap troops because 15 percent of Army women at
any one time are pregnant and another 6 percent are single parents
who have their babies in the post nursery.''
    But Bella Abzug, a former congresswoman, got a big ovation from the
2,500 demonstrators in Manhattan on Saturday when she said, ''The
issue is not whether women should be registered but whether anyone
should be registered.''
    That was the message proferred on the placards of about 60
demonstrators who stomped about in the snow of Lawrence, Kan., on
Saturday while listening to five speakers attacking ''the tyranny of
involuntary servitude.''
    It was the theme in Boston where about 70 supporters of the Boston
Alliance Against Registration turned out as a warmup for an anti-draft
rally at Boston University on Thursday and a protest scheduled in
Washington, D.C., on March 22.
    In Columbia, Mo., the home of the University of Missouri, about a
dozen persons who said they were members of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation and the War Resisters League, collected about 85
signatures on an anti-draft petition. Some carried signs reading,
''Not My Daughter, Not My Son.''
    Sam Day, managing editor of The Progressive Magazine, told about 100
young men and women at a ''Draft Teach-in'' at the University of
Wisconsin in Madison that since the Americans were taken hostage in
Iran and the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan, there has been a
''national reorientation'' brought about in part by alarms raised by
Carter, politicians and the news media.
    ''A national security button has been pushed,'' he said. ''A
national security pill has been pushed on the American people.''
    With ''Afghanistan'' substituted for ''Vietnam,'' the group of
protesters in Lawrence ended their rally singing:
    ''It's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I
don't give a damn. Next stop's Afghanistan.''
    But some among the hundreds of men and women who gathered in frigid
weather outside Philadelphia's City Hall said there is a big
difference in the issues today.
    ''It's a different ball game,'' said Betsy Sweet, 23, of the
International League for Peace and Freedom. ''We're talking about
nuclear war.''
    Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun and antiwar activist acquitted
with her husband Philip Berrigan in 1972 on charges of plotting to
kidnap Henry Kissinger, drew cheers from the demonstrators when she
said:
    ''I have an awful lot of trouble with 'Hell No, We Won't Go' as a
slogan. It is self-centered. We should be saying, 'We will not
contribute further to the oppression of sisters and brothers who are
already sufficiently oppressed.' ''
    
ap-ny-02-10 2001EST
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a294  1912  10 Feb 80
AM-Draft Protest, Insert, a267,70
UNDATED: To update with Maine demonstration, INSERT after 4th graf,
Speakers at . . . war mentality.''
    In Lewiston, Maine, about 200 Bates College students held a peaceful
anti-draft march to a Maine caucus Sunday and presented White House
Press Secretary Jody Powell with a petition protesting draft
registration.
    ''I'm sure he (President Carter) will take a look at it,'' Powell
later told a reporter at the Democratic caucus in Maine's second
largest city. About 500 names were on the petition.
    Thus echoes, 5th graf
    
ap-ny-02-10 2218EST
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