Who here watched LIVE for their birthday to be drawn for the Vietnam draft.

[BamaRefugee]

24. Me. I had already lost my beloved cousin and 2 high school buddies in Vietnam.

If my number came up I would have gone in, but luckily mine was pretty high. I DID NOT want to have anything to do with killing innocent people.

Later, I organized the first, as far as I know, Vietnam War protest in Birmingham, Alabama, where I was going to college. I got all the permits, learned all the applicable laws, used the mimeograph machine to make flyers (remember those days???) and then we began to peacefully march in downtown Birmingham, singing, holding signs, just being naive 1969 young folks who cared about the world.
The Birmingham cops began to surround us, and within about 10 minutes the beatings began, all of us brutally attacked with billy clubs. Our permit allowed 30 minutes of peaceful protest. But those proto-MAGAts were running on redneck time. I still have permanent lumps on the base of my skull to remind me of that day.

I still hate Birmingham cops to this day, fuck 'em.

Another reason why: Driving across town one morning, I stopped at a stop sign, all clear, then continued when a car coming from my right ran the stop sign at about 45 miles per hour, sending my car across the intersection, almost totaled. 2 good ole boys were in that car. The cops came, and the guys in the car knew the cops on a first name basis, glad handing them, then saying that I had run MY stop sign, which would clearly be impossible, no way can you send a car 30 feet sideways and bash it in, if you were just beginning to accelerate from a full stop.

But after a few jokes and catching up on everyone's families, the cops wrote me a ticket for running a stop sign, reckless driving, other stuff. I was fighting this in court. No way was I guilty of anything. I told my uncle about it. He said he would talk to his friend Albert, a lawyer.

I showed up in court. The 2 cops were there, smiling. Then Albert arrived. They stopped smiling. The judge showed a look of total shock on his face. The trial began and little by little Albert shredded the 2 cops' story. At the end, the judge dismissed my charges, but Albert asked the judge what he was going to do about the cops. The judge said he would reprimand them.
Albert didn't like that. He demanded they be brought up on perjury charges and fired from Birmingham P.D. That stuff just didn't happen in Birmingham, Alabama in 1970. Cops were bulletproof.

But not this time. It took a while but Albert got exactly what he wanted.

Oh, by the way, my lawyer Albert was Albert Boutwell, a former state Senator, mayor of Birmingham and the Lieutenant Governor of Alabama. He was a family friend. I still have to this day his wedding gift to me, in 1974, a gorgeous huge silver serving spoon engraved originally to a Confederate General. And to be honest, he played a big role in the "massive resistance" to civil rights in that era too.

But in Alabama, in those days, if you had shoulder length hair like I did, you were automatically guilty of EVERYTHING. He fixed that for me, and got me justice.

Alabama is a complicated place. I love it for many reasons, born and raised there, lots of great people, but lots of dark Southern Gothic stuff going on endlessly. There is one thing I know, and I haven't lived there for decades, I fled to NYC when I was 20 years old with $400 in my pocket and never looked back. Thus my screen name here. But Alabama is basically a paradise for white folks with means, you don't have to be rich, but just make some good money, get a nice house, blah blah blah, and that is why folks there fight against ANYTHING that they see as a threat to that paradise. I get it. But I got out.

SORRY TO GO OFF TOPIC! but the caffeine was kicking in and I just kept going.