Recent Events
Brian Willson, author, Blood On the Tracks
2PM, Wednesday, October 19th, Chancellor's Conference Room, Quinn, 3rd Floor.
In 1987, Willson, a former intelligence officer in Vietnam, was deliberately run over by a locomotive as he sat on the tracks at the U.S. Navy Munitions Arsenal in Concord, California. He was there trying to stop shipments of arms to Central America. Willson lost both legs. As he recounts in his book, his personal experiences in Vietnam led him to peace activism and his subsequent bloody amputations did nothing to slow him down. As Daniel Ellsberg recounts in his forward to the book, Willson’s story of personal courage and determination can and should be an inspiration to us all.
Tom Weiner, author, Called To Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted By the Vietnam War Draft
4PM, Tuesday, November 8th, Chancellor’s Conference Room, Quinn, 3rd Floor.
The last time military conscription occurred in the U.S. was the Vietnam War. As is well known, it was unfairly administered and fell heavily on the bottom half of American society. The public response to the unpopular and controversial Draft ultimately resulted in the modern “all-volunteer” military, though most members of the armed forces still come from the same social backgrounds that characterized the Vietnam era. Weiner has compiled numerous narratives from those conscripted here in Massachusetts and allows them to tell us how the Draft affected their lives, then and now. The author will be accompanied by some of those he interviewed.
