00:00:10.009 --> 00:00:13.680
[helicopter blades spinning]

00:00:15.382 --> 00:00:16.750
[machine gun fire]

00:00:20.253 --> 00:00:22.288
Make no mistake about it

00:00:22.522 --> 00:00:24.657
we are going to win.

00:00:25.992 --> 00:00:27.260
And we don't plan

00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:31.164
to let people pressure
and force us to divide our nation

00:00:31.264 --> 00:00:33.533
in a time of national peril.

00:00:33.967 --> 00:00:35.135
The hour is here.

00:00:35.535 --> 00:00:36.936
[applause]

00:00:37.504 --> 00:00:39.472
[explosion]

00:00:41.674 --> 00:00:45.178
I pray to God that America
will hear this before it's too late

00:00:45.245 --> 00:00:48.581
because today we are fighting a war.

00:00:51.017 --> 00:00:53.853
I'm convinced that it is one
of the most unjust wars

00:00:53.953 --> 00:00:55.221
that has ever been fought

00:00:56.056 --> 00:00:57.590
in the history of the world.

00:00:57.991 --> 00:01:13.106
[somber music playing]

00:01:28.688 --> 00:01:30.757
[applause]

00:01:30.824 --> 00:01:33.626
You may announce your name
to the mic if you wish.

00:01:34.227 --> 00:01:35.395
Joe Stuart, New York.

00:01:37.997 --> 00:01:39.399
Ron, New York.

00:01:40.366 --> 00:01:42.502
Geryl Hutchins, New York City.

00:01:43.570 --> 00:01:45.672
Brian Western from Glen Harris,
New Jersey.

00:01:47.207 --> 00:01:48.875
Phil Murphy, New York.

00:01:50.176 --> 00:01:52.445
Patrick Cunningham, New York City.

00:01:54.447 --> 00:01:56.916
I'd like to try and understand
the act

00:01:57.117 --> 00:01:59.719
and understand what it means today

00:02:00.954 --> 00:02:04.123
to take the position
of non-cooperation with the draft.

00:02:04.424 --> 00:02:06.426
[applause]

00:02:06.693 --> 00:02:08.394
That moment where they decide to go

00:02:08.461 --> 00:02:12.765
and turn in their draft card
and invite prosecution,

00:02:13.466 --> 00:02:15.535
putting themselves
in individual jeopardy

00:02:15.602 --> 00:02:22.475
requires a certain amount of courage,
and poise, and grace.

00:02:23.710 --> 00:02:26.012
I grew up in Fresno, California,
Fresno High School,

00:02:26.146 --> 00:02:27.947
boy of the year 1963.

00:02:28.581 --> 00:02:30.517
I came to Stanford on a scholarship.

00:02:32.185 --> 00:02:34.020
My ancestors fought in the revolution

00:02:34.087 --> 00:02:35.822
and every other war
in American history.

00:02:35.889 --> 00:02:39.092
My father was 20 years
a captain in the army reserves

00:02:39.158 --> 00:02:41.561
and we grew up on our father stories
of World War II.

00:02:41.628 --> 00:02:43.730
We registered for the draft
when we turned 18

00:02:43.796 --> 00:02:46.132
and I did that
without a second thought, really.

00:02:46.466 --> 00:02:50.436
I had my army physical
and was totally clear

00:02:50.537 --> 00:02:52.505
that I wanted to go
into the military,

00:02:52.572 --> 00:02:56.709
I had no anti-military background
or even thought.

00:02:56.976 --> 00:02:58.778
We were all spawned
of the Second World War

00:02:58.878 --> 00:03:00.780
where America was so great

00:03:01.147 --> 00:03:04.751
and so victorious
and made us all so very proud,

00:03:04.951 --> 00:03:08.321
but this in Vietnam seemed
to be a betrayal of all of that.

00:03:09.489 --> 00:03:10.823
It was a full evolution

00:03:10.924 --> 00:03:16.129
from patriotism to a stance
of resistance

00:03:16.229 --> 00:03:19.832
against a very ugly, vicious,
an amoral war.

00:03:20.433 --> 00:03:23.469
I felt really good
about returning my draft card

00:03:23.570 --> 00:03:26.573
and making the decision
to resist it no matter what.

00:03:27.340 --> 00:03:29.342
And so at that point in time

00:03:29.442 --> 00:03:32.278
I knew I was going to go to prison,
I mean, I knew it.

00:03:34.013 --> 00:03:36.349
I'm there, I'm 20 years old.

00:03:36.916 --> 00:03:38.985
And it's me nose to nose

00:03:39.052 --> 00:03:41.154
with the American government
for Christ's sake.

00:03:42.021 --> 00:03:43.523
There's lots of fear.

00:03:44.123 --> 00:03:46.826
The issue isn't whether
you get scared,

00:03:47.093 --> 00:03:48.828
the issue's what you do
after you're scared.

00:03:49.495 --> 00:04:07.347
[Study War No More playing]

00:04:14.387 --> 00:04:17.357
I grew up largely in Orange County.

00:04:17.790 --> 00:04:20.393
I was an all-American kid,
I love the country,

00:04:20.927 --> 00:04:22.929
I played left field
for Garden Grove

00:04:23.029 --> 00:04:24.163
little league baseball team

00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:26.366
but other than that
I was never lefty.

00:04:28.101 --> 00:04:30.870
It's hard to really know
what motivates us

00:04:30.937 --> 00:04:32.405
at any one time, I mean,

00:04:32.772 --> 00:04:33.773
I was a frat boy.

00:04:34.407 --> 00:04:35.675
I was a ball player.

00:04:36.442 --> 00:04:37.610
You play USC,

00:04:37.677 --> 00:04:39.479
you run out on the field
there's 100,000 people

00:04:39.545 --> 00:04:41.281
in the stands in the stadium.

00:04:41.381 --> 00:04:44.651
The energy is just,
you're not even touching the ground,

00:04:44.717 --> 00:04:47.987
you're flying,
it's just quite a moment.

00:04:49.288 --> 00:04:51.991
At the same time, the same moment,
50,000 marines

00:04:52.091 --> 00:04:54.360
were hitting the beach
at Cam Ranh Bay.

00:04:55.895 --> 00:04:59.832
I mean, if we're really at war
and I'm an American and a patriot,

00:04:59.899 --> 00:05:03.036
and it challenged me,
it called into question

00:05:03.102 --> 00:05:04.737
where I belong,
what I should be doing.

00:05:08.641 --> 00:05:10.209
Daily the war was brought

00:05:10.310 --> 00:05:12.111
to our front rooms
on the television

00:05:12.178 --> 00:05:13.746
so there was no excuse.

00:05:13.880 --> 00:05:15.248
TV was very instrumental

00:05:15.314 --> 00:05:19.552
in influencing how I felt
about the war

00:05:19.819 --> 00:05:23.656
documenting horrendous footage
of Buddhist monks

00:05:23.723 --> 00:05:25.491
burning themselves in protest.

00:05:26.626 --> 00:05:29.796
This guy lit himself on fire
because of this,

00:05:29.896 --> 00:05:31.230
what's going on here?

00:05:32.031 --> 00:05:33.299
And that famous picture

00:05:33.366 --> 00:05:36.402
of where the police chief
was shooting the guy in the head.

00:05:39.739 --> 00:05:40.973
And...

00:05:44.010 --> 00:05:47.080
Napalm bombs obliterating villages,

00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:50.183
the young girl with the napalm
on her back

00:05:50.249 --> 00:05:53.753
screaming running down the road,
it's like...

00:05:54.053 --> 00:05:56.089
I mean, geopolitics aside,

00:05:56.155 --> 00:05:59.358
I don't care what the plan is,
who rules the world

00:05:59.425 --> 00:06:01.294
and all that, but don't practice
that kind of violence

00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:02.762
against innocent people.

00:06:02.995 --> 00:06:04.464
And there was a connection

00:06:04.530 --> 00:06:07.700
that I started making,
these are American boys

00:06:07.800 --> 00:06:10.069
and I'm going to be asked
to do this too.

00:06:11.738 --> 00:06:15.274
The day's operation,
burned down 150 houses,

00:06:15.408 --> 00:06:17.910
wounded three women,
killed one baby.

00:06:18.111 --> 00:06:20.947
We put ourselves really
on the wrong side of history.

00:06:23.649 --> 00:06:26.919
I mean it was a betrayal
of our great love for our country

00:06:26.986 --> 00:06:30.022
and our patriotism
to be out there torching villages

00:06:30.089 --> 00:06:31.391
and to carpet-bomb.

00:06:31.491 --> 00:06:33.926
We dropped more bombs on Vietnam
than were dropped

00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:36.729
in all theaters of World War II.

00:06:37.063 --> 00:06:42.301
It was a carnage
of unbelievable scope and savagery.

00:06:42.401 --> 00:06:43.770
The question I think we all faced

00:06:43.870 --> 00:06:46.406
is our moral responsibility
to confront

00:06:46.506 --> 00:06:47.740
what was happening over there.

00:06:48.775 --> 00:06:50.743
This was not going to be my war.

00:06:52.879 --> 00:06:55.081
The issue was how do we go about
stopping it,

00:06:55.148 --> 00:06:57.517
not how do I save my ass.

00:06:58.117 --> 00:07:02.655
[crowd noise]

00:07:02.789 --> 00:07:03.556
I'll never forget it,

00:07:03.656 --> 00:07:06.292
when I was a Cub Scout before
I got thrown out,

00:07:06.359 --> 00:07:10.930
this was in '53 maybe,
World War II was still a fresh memory

00:07:11.330 --> 00:07:12.665
for all the adults.

00:07:13.599 --> 00:07:15.802
They had the 16 millimeter film

00:07:15.902 --> 00:07:20.339
of the kamikaze attacks
on the battleships in World War II

00:07:20.406 --> 00:07:23.242
and my father was sitting there
and he's a very conservative guy,

00:07:23.309 --> 00:07:25.311
not a Quaker, he's not a pacifist.

00:07:25.444 --> 00:07:30.082
He designed missiles during World War II,
and every time that one of these planes

00:07:30.183 --> 00:07:32.518
would burst into flames
and go spiraling down

00:07:32.585 --> 00:07:34.687
into the ocean a chair would go up,

00:07:40.359 --> 00:07:42.428
and my father, he said to me...

00:07:48.568 --> 00:07:49.268
He said to me,

00:07:49.368 --> 00:07:52.572
don't they understand human beings
are being burned alive?

00:07:54.273 --> 00:07:59.612
Just a simple sentence,
and the romance and the valor of war

00:07:59.712 --> 00:08:01.314
was just sort of stripped away.

00:08:07.086 --> 00:08:08.621
My fellow Americans,

00:08:09.856 --> 00:08:12.792
I have today ordered to Vietnam
the air mobile division

00:08:13.793 --> 00:08:17.196
and certain other forces
which will raise our fighting strength

00:08:17.296 --> 00:08:22.335
from 75,000 to 125,000 men
almost immediately.

00:08:23.669 --> 00:08:27.340
This will make it necessary
to increase our active fighting forces

00:08:27.406 --> 00:08:31.444
by raising the monthly draft call
from 17,000

00:08:31.544 --> 00:08:36.048
over a period of time
to 35,000 per month.

00:08:36.649 --> 00:08:42.822
[acoustic guitar playing]

00:08:42.922 --> 00:08:45.458
For those who aren't familiar
with what the draft law was

00:08:45.524 --> 00:08:47.660
you were required
to keep on your possession

00:08:47.727 --> 00:08:49.929
at all times,
proof that you had registered

00:08:50.029 --> 00:08:51.664
with the Selective Service System.

00:08:51.764 --> 00:08:53.332
Not being in possession

00:08:53.399 --> 00:08:57.370
of that proof was punishable
by up to five years in prison.

00:08:57.670 --> 00:09:05.611
[Eve of Destruction playing]

00:09:05.845 --> 00:09:09.682
The effect of conscription was to give
the government a blank check.

00:09:09.815 --> 00:09:13.219
They never had to go to the people
and ask for permission,

00:09:13.319 --> 00:09:15.755
they already had it,
they had the law in place.

00:09:16.188 --> 00:09:18.925
It was not an easy thing to do
for a man, a young man,

00:09:18.991 --> 00:09:20.226
to turn in the draft card.

00:09:20.760 --> 00:09:22.562
Yeah there were just
little slips of paper.

00:09:23.129 --> 00:09:26.098
But you knew that
federal law required you

00:09:26.198 --> 00:09:27.433
to carry one at all times.

00:09:27.934 --> 00:09:31.103
People had been burning draft cards,
tearing them up as a protest

00:09:31.203 --> 00:09:35.107
against the war, and it's so intense,
the Congress, that they passed the law

00:09:35.174 --> 00:09:38.778
with administration's full support
to make it illegal to tear up

00:09:38.878 --> 00:09:40.212
or destroy your draft card.

00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:43.416
So naturally a form of protest

00:09:43.516 --> 00:09:45.718
against that was to destroy
your draft card.

00:09:46.285 --> 00:09:49.221
[applause]

00:09:49.388 --> 00:09:52.758
The first person to challenge
the new law is David Miller,

00:09:53.059 --> 00:09:56.796
a 22-year-old pacifist
who publicly burns his draft card

00:09:56.896 --> 00:09:59.498
outside an army induction center
in Manhattan.

00:10:00.833 --> 00:10:03.769
So the draft card became
a symbol of whether

00:10:03.869 --> 00:10:06.739
you were on board
or whether you weren't on board.

00:10:07.239 --> 00:10:08.274
I took my draft card,

00:10:08.374 --> 00:10:11.110
I put them in an envelope,
sealed it up, put a stamp on it,

00:10:11.210 --> 00:10:15.581
walked down to the corner mailbox,
put it in and walked back

00:10:15.648 --> 00:10:17.516
about 12 feet off the ground.

00:10:18.117 --> 00:10:21.721
Civil disobedience in some form
or another will always be there

00:10:21.821 --> 00:10:25.891
as an incredibly important tool,
it's where it all starts.

00:10:27.259 --> 00:10:29.929
I mean, the eye-opener for me
was Mississippi.

00:10:30.129 --> 00:10:34.600
[acoustic guitar playing]

00:10:34.900 --> 00:10:38.671
I was a civil rights worker
in Quitman County, Mississippi in 1964

00:10:38.838 --> 00:10:43.476
and the experience of seeing what
was under the covers in America

00:10:43.542 --> 00:10:45.444
suddenly gave you
a whole new perspective.

00:10:46.278 --> 00:10:48.047
There are five counties in Mississippi

00:10:48.114 --> 00:10:53.452
each at least 57% Negro in which
no Negroes at all are registered.

00:10:53.586 --> 00:10:55.287
Quitman County where I was

00:10:55.388 --> 00:10:59.058
there was a 70-year-old woman,
walked into the Registrar of Voters,

00:10:59.125 --> 00:11:01.360
said, "I'm going to register to vote."
They arrested her

00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:04.797
threw her in jail, tortured her
with an electric cattle prod,

00:11:04.864 --> 00:11:07.266
finally let her out of jail
and she walked out the front door

00:11:07.333 --> 00:11:10.069
of the jail, walked down the block
to the Registrar of Voters office,

00:11:10.136 --> 00:11:12.371
walked in and said,
"I'm going to register to vote."

00:11:13.773 --> 00:11:18.844
There's an enormous power in that,
and transformative power.

00:11:18.911 --> 00:11:21.414
This courthouse belongs
to the people of Dallas county

00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:23.649
and these are the people
of Dallas County

00:11:23.716 --> 00:11:26.185
and they have come to register,
and you know this

00:11:26.285 --> 00:11:27.953
within your own heart, Sheriff.

00:11:28.621 --> 00:11:31.490
Experiences inside,
it's always in there,

00:11:31.557 --> 00:11:34.927
it's just waiting to come out,
and what you have to do

00:11:35.027 --> 00:11:39.699
is you have to make a commitment
to some principles

00:11:39.799 --> 00:11:41.267
much larger than yourself.

00:11:41.767 --> 00:11:44.870
The ideals of justice and freedom
and peace,

00:11:44.937 --> 00:11:47.707
and faith, and courage is contagious.

00:11:52.878 --> 00:11:54.513
Just the incredible impact

00:11:54.580 --> 00:11:57.983
that single people taking their lives
into their own hands

00:11:58.084 --> 00:12:00.119
and refusing to accept
the conditions

00:12:00.219 --> 00:12:03.389
that have been enforced on them
just how powerful that was.

00:12:03.456 --> 00:12:05.958
No lie can live forever.

00:12:06.759 --> 00:12:10.096
Not long, because the arc
of the moral universe is long,

00:12:10.329 --> 00:12:12.398
but it bends toward justice.

00:12:12.598 --> 00:12:17.136
The sit-ins were full of young people
and then it got to be weighed ins

00:12:17.236 --> 00:12:20.206
and anything that
was a public facility,

00:12:20.306 --> 00:12:22.608
young people
took those things on.

00:12:23.375 --> 00:12:29.348
When the sit-ins were
at their largest point, 50,000 students

00:12:29.448 --> 00:12:32.618
across the nation had been sitting in.

00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:36.222
And so those principles

00:12:36.288 --> 00:12:40.793
and values are the kinds of principles
and values that went into SNCC,

00:12:41.127 --> 00:12:42.628
and I felt a part of that.

00:12:42.962 --> 00:12:45.931
We were on the road
to making a change

00:12:46.031 --> 00:12:47.032
and making a difference.

00:12:47.566 --> 00:12:48.801
Many of the draft resisters

00:12:48.901 --> 00:12:52.605
had been involved in SNCC,
they had gone south to Mississippi

00:12:52.671 --> 00:12:56.308
or Alabama or Louisiana
in the early '60s

00:12:56.408 --> 00:13:01.547
and so that's incredibly important
as they plan their strategies

00:13:01.614 --> 00:13:02.615
and tactics.

00:13:03.349 --> 00:13:05.885
After suddenly experiencing America

00:13:05.951 --> 00:13:08.754
in the wrong as one did
in Mississippi

00:13:08.854 --> 00:13:12.224
it was possible to evaluate
the war they were asking us to fight

00:13:12.291 --> 00:13:15.027
and it bore no resemblance
to what I thought Americans

00:13:15.094 --> 00:13:16.095
were supposed to do.

00:13:16.262 --> 00:13:19.632
I thought this is wrong
and why cooperate with it?

00:13:19.698 --> 00:13:20.900
I'm not going to do that.

00:13:21.367 --> 00:13:24.737
And you're young
and you're optimistic, and you're naive

00:13:24.837 --> 00:13:26.539
and that's probably what it takes
to see

00:13:26.605 --> 00:13:28.140
what right and wrong is.

00:13:28.474 --> 00:13:31.110
I needed to find a way

00:13:31.210 --> 00:13:34.146
of following my conscience
and this is just

00:13:34.213 --> 00:13:38.250
my own personal decision
that I would not kill people.

00:13:38.751 --> 00:13:42.254
So I cut up my draft card,
put it in an envelope,

00:13:43.589 --> 00:13:46.091
with a note saying that
I was no longer going to cooperate

00:13:46.192 --> 00:13:47.526
with Selective Service.

00:13:47.626 --> 00:13:49.361
And I can remember to this day

00:13:49.461 --> 00:13:51.263
going up to one
of those big mail boxes,

00:13:51.363 --> 00:13:53.065
opening it, sticking my hand in

00:13:53.432 --> 00:13:55.901
and not letting it go
for a few moments thinking

00:13:56.902 --> 00:13:58.837
is this what you really want to do?

00:14:00.039 --> 00:14:02.241
Deep breath, there it went.

00:14:02.942 --> 00:14:05.344
Any moment
I'll be hauled off to prison.

00:14:09.915 --> 00:14:11.550
And I went down
and I took the physical

00:14:11.650 --> 00:14:14.987
and I flunked it because I had
rheumatoid spondylitis

00:14:15.054 --> 00:14:17.756
which means I could flunk it
every time

00:14:17.823 --> 00:14:22.328
but I had moved to a different point
at that time

00:14:22.661 --> 00:14:26.565
and so I took my 1-Y
that they sent me and turned it in.

00:14:26.765 --> 00:14:29.835
They called me for another
physical I refused to take it

00:14:30.035 --> 00:14:32.371
and then they called me
for induction

00:14:32.471 --> 00:14:35.174
and I refused induction,
all publicly.

00:14:35.407 --> 00:14:37.810
And all of these are indictable
offenses.

00:14:42.948 --> 00:14:44.984
For most people to this day

00:14:45.251 --> 00:14:47.019
they call us draft dodgers.

00:14:47.620 --> 00:14:50.589
I want to make it clear
that were not draft dodgers.

00:14:51.023 --> 00:14:55.494
We were walking straight towards
and refusing to participate,

00:14:55.561 --> 00:14:58.831
and we were handing our documents
in publicly.

00:15:00.733 --> 00:15:05.938
In 1965 there are
250 draft-related convictions.

00:15:06.005 --> 00:15:11.777
In 1966, there are 450,
and by '67 over 750,

00:15:11.877 --> 00:15:14.046
with thousands of cases pending.

00:15:15.581 --> 00:15:18.751
Whether it's burning cards
or turning them in

00:15:19.318 --> 00:15:22.454
or refusing induction,
those opposed to the war

00:15:22.521 --> 00:15:25.858
begin to see draft protests
as the ideal link

00:15:25.958 --> 00:15:29.194
between personal commitment
and political action.

00:15:29.695 --> 00:15:32.498
[applause]

00:15:33.165 --> 00:15:37.202
I think that young people today
don't understand what it was like

00:15:37.937 --> 00:15:41.507
to live through an era where you
and your friends, and family

00:15:41.573 --> 00:15:44.710
and others, neighbors,
were subject to being taken off

00:15:44.777 --> 00:15:48.480
to a foreign land, to fight a war
which made no sense.

00:15:48.580 --> 00:15:51.417
It was a system which drafted
young people

00:15:51.483 --> 00:15:54.887
and they became cannon fodder
in a bad, bad situation.

00:15:55.688 --> 00:15:58.958
You wind up in the rice paddies
and you're shooting poor peasants

00:15:59.024 --> 00:16:01.560
I mean, the whole thing
was just intolerable.

00:16:02.561 --> 00:16:07.433
Evil is a participatory phenomenon
and it counts on participation

00:16:07.499 --> 00:16:10.336
in order to be successful,
and the first option

00:16:10.402 --> 00:16:12.538
you have is withdrawing
your participation.

00:16:14.807 --> 00:16:18.811
I was not going to cooperate
period, nada,

00:16:18.944 --> 00:16:19.945
it was over.

00:16:22.748 --> 00:16:25.818
Bring the troops home.
End the war in Vietnam.

00:16:25.985 --> 00:16:27.286
Bring the troops home.

00:16:27.753 --> 00:16:29.588
This was not a popular position

00:16:29.755 --> 00:16:31.256
in Greater America.

00:16:31.623 --> 00:16:35.961
[chanting]

00:16:36.428 --> 00:16:38.097
To the American public

00:16:38.564 --> 00:16:40.566
particularly the pro-war
American public

00:16:40.632 --> 00:16:43.469
anybody who's a draft law violator
is a draft dodger

00:16:43.535 --> 00:16:45.838
and a coward and unpatriotic.

00:16:46.405 --> 00:16:48.273
And there from the crowd comes...

00:16:51.677 --> 00:16:53.345
In South Boston they announced

00:16:53.445 --> 00:16:56.515
in advance they were going to
burn their draft cards.

00:16:57.216 --> 00:17:02.454
A mob, and this rush of 75
or so high school students

00:17:02.521 --> 00:17:05.858
storms the steps and just starts
pounding on them.

00:17:06.258 --> 00:17:11.163
[shouting]

00:17:12.231 --> 00:17:13.665
And those guys all go to prison.

00:17:15.501 --> 00:17:16.235
You have to remember

00:17:16.301 --> 00:17:18.470
when looking back at this time
we were still playing

00:17:18.537 --> 00:17:22.040
by World War II rules,
which means you can't criticize

00:17:22.141 --> 00:17:23.742
the government in a time of war.

00:17:25.077 --> 00:17:26.612
How could you do this!?

00:17:26.779 --> 00:17:30.682
[shouting]

00:17:35.120 --> 00:17:39.291
[applause]

00:17:39.458 --> 00:17:40.726
What do you think of draft dodgers?

00:17:40.793 --> 00:17:43.295
Is that an alternative
to going to Vietnam?

00:17:43.362 --> 00:17:47.366
I think for we pacifists,
all seven of us...

00:17:48.734 --> 00:17:51.670
the most encouraging thing
is when a young man

00:17:51.737 --> 00:17:55.541
says no to Uncle Sam
and will take the jail sentence.

00:17:55.607 --> 00:17:57.709
Sorry old man,
you don't get my body

00:17:57.810 --> 00:18:00.579
you don't get my mind,
you don't get me. I've decided.

00:18:00.712 --> 00:18:04.683
You're vice president of a school,
the school for non-violence,

00:18:04.750 --> 00:18:06.018
what are you trying to do there?

00:18:08.487 --> 00:18:10.088
The reason I started the school

00:18:10.189 --> 00:18:13.592
is that we try to make available
literature and things

00:18:13.659 --> 00:18:16.261
that give you an idea
of what's really going on

00:18:16.328 --> 00:18:21.567
and then read Gandhi, Huxley,
and things that give us ideas,

00:18:21.667 --> 00:18:23.135
of alternatives to violence.

00:18:24.736 --> 00:18:25.838
We don't have a graduation

00:18:25.904 --> 00:18:28.674
and tests and all that,
but when they leave the school

00:18:28.774 --> 00:18:29.775
they go to jail.

00:18:30.008 --> 00:18:32.878
[laughter]

00:18:33.212 --> 00:18:47.326
[Oh Freedom playing]

00:18:47.726 --> 00:18:50.796
Well the first that we're talking about
Kings influence on me which started

00:18:50.863 --> 00:18:54.032
when I was 16 and I was at
an Asilomar conference

00:18:54.133 --> 00:18:57.202
which was a big conference of kids
from all over the country

00:18:57.269 --> 00:19:01.907
and we talked about political issues,
social issues, and that year Dr. King

00:19:01.974 --> 00:19:07.679
was the guest speaker
and I was dissolved in tears

00:19:08.547 --> 00:19:10.883
for the whole speech
because I had read about

00:19:10.949 --> 00:19:12.784
non-violence and I knew about
non-violence

00:19:12.885 --> 00:19:15.988
and they were doing it,
they were walking in the streets

00:19:16.054 --> 00:19:19.224
and they were walking
to their freedom basically.

00:19:19.324 --> 00:19:21.827
And I was a mess.

00:19:23.061 --> 00:19:24.263
More than 200,000

00:19:24.329 --> 00:19:27.399
came to Washington this morning
in the struggle for equal rights.

00:19:28.100 --> 00:19:29.968
I have a dream

00:19:30.702 --> 00:19:32.471
that one day

00:19:32.604 --> 00:19:35.374
that this nation will rise up,

00:19:35.507 --> 00:19:38.110
live out the true meaning of its creed.

00:19:38.544 --> 00:19:41.280
We hold these truths
to be self-evident:

00:19:41.847 --> 00:19:44.116
that all men are created equal.

00:19:44.516 --> 00:19:48.987
[applause]

00:19:49.254 --> 00:19:56.695
[Keep Your Eyes on the Prize playing]

00:19:58.530 --> 00:20:02.134
During the Christmas period
of 1965

00:20:02.367 --> 00:20:04.836
women in Macon in Mississippi

00:20:04.937 --> 00:20:09.007
began to talk about the war.
They wanted to know why

00:20:09.074 --> 00:20:12.744
it is that their sons were
in Vietnam fighting

00:20:12.811 --> 00:20:17.449
for allegedly democracy
but you don't have democracy

00:20:17.516 --> 00:20:18.684
when you get back home.

00:20:24.323 --> 00:20:25.757
At the beginning of 1965

00:20:25.857 --> 00:20:28.894
there were 23,000 American service men
in Vietnam,

00:20:28.961 --> 00:20:33.532
currently, there are around 267,000
US fighting men in Vietnam.

00:20:33.699 --> 00:20:38.070
We knew that the war was escalating
and for SNCC the draft

00:20:38.170 --> 00:20:43.041
became and the wall became
a significant issue.

00:20:46.178 --> 00:20:48.313
The situation and the system
that the United States has

00:20:48.380 --> 00:20:51.550
allows for black people no
alternative but to become hired killers

00:20:51.650 --> 00:20:53.919
the only way out of a society
is through death.

00:20:54.419 --> 00:20:56.488
They don't have jobs in the ghetto,
the only out

00:20:56.688 --> 00:20:59.958
is to try and make it in the Vietnam
that's the fault of the United States.

00:21:00.726 --> 00:21:03.629
And so at that point,
SNCC said it's time for us

00:21:03.695 --> 00:21:06.665
to go ahead and release
the statement that African Americans

00:21:06.732 --> 00:21:13.472
should not engage in the war
in Vietnam, period.

00:21:13.572 --> 00:21:16.108
We are not only opposed to the war
in Vietnam,

00:21:16.174 --> 00:21:18.710
we are opposed to compulsory conscription.

00:21:18.844 --> 00:21:21.947
Now we're against the draft for anybody,
black or white.

00:21:22.214 --> 00:21:23.682
It went on to say that

00:21:23.782 --> 00:21:28.053
for all African Americans
who are being drafted

00:21:28.120 --> 00:21:31.556
we encourage them to take the option
of saying

00:21:32.024 --> 00:21:34.493
hell no, we won't go.

00:21:34.793 --> 00:21:36.728
Hell no, I ain't going.

00:21:36.962 --> 00:21:39.564
Hell no! Hell no! Hell no! Hello no!

00:21:39.731 --> 00:21:42.601
Hell no! Hello no!

00:21:42.768 --> 00:21:49.675
[Hell No, I Ain't Gonna Go playing]

00:21:50.008 --> 00:21:52.110
Everybody came out
and condemned us.

00:21:52.210 --> 00:21:55.981
Every civil rights organization,
every single person

00:21:56.048 --> 00:21:58.950
that you could think of
for having a position

00:21:59.017 --> 00:22:00.485
against the war in Vietnam.

00:22:00.819 --> 00:22:03.188
[police sirens]

00:22:04.356 --> 00:22:05.957
Pardon me, Brother.
What's happening, man?

00:22:06.024 --> 00:22:07.826
Whassup man, how you doin'?

00:22:08.093 --> 00:22:10.395
- You're hip to the war, aren't you?
- Yeah, I'm hip to it.

00:22:10.462 --> 00:22:12.731
Let me give you a little insight
into what's happening, man.

00:22:12.798 --> 00:22:14.866
This is the Vietnam comic book.

00:22:15.167 --> 00:22:16.068
We had a printing press

00:22:16.168 --> 00:22:19.905
that was capable of doing books
and magazines

00:22:19.971 --> 00:22:24.142
and so we did a comic book
on the war

00:22:24.209 --> 00:22:27.045
and we took it out from
the minority communities.

00:22:27.179 --> 00:22:28.513
It's pretty hip, man, you know...

00:22:28.580 --> 00:22:32.784
And people could understand
very simply what you were doing,

00:22:32.884 --> 00:22:35.821
why you were doing it,
and how it impacts them,

00:22:35.887 --> 00:22:38.990
and why it is that they need to know
this information

00:22:39.291 --> 00:22:42.828
in order to empower themselves
and step out on faith

00:22:42.894 --> 00:22:47.065
and have that kind of courage to make
a stand against the war in Vietnam.

00:22:47.132 --> 00:22:55.107
[acoustic guitar playing]

00:22:56.942 --> 00:23:00.579
I was one of the people
who decided to file suit

00:23:00.679 --> 00:23:04.149
against the Selective Service
System offices in Georgia

00:23:04.216 --> 00:23:05.751
and South Carolina.

00:23:06.384 --> 00:23:09.454
We found none of the employees
African-American

00:23:09.521 --> 00:23:11.757
but there
was a disproportionate number

00:23:11.823 --> 00:23:14.226
of African-Americans
who were being drafted.

00:23:16.128 --> 00:23:19.030
We all, in SNCC, begin to feel
the pressure

00:23:19.097 --> 00:23:21.800
from the FBI and the military.

00:23:22.267 --> 00:23:24.136
I was then drafted,

00:23:24.236 --> 00:23:27.339
and I did what we had asked
other people to do

00:23:27.405 --> 00:23:30.308
and that was say,
hell no, I'm not going to go.

00:23:31.176 --> 00:23:33.945
They ended up sentencing me
to five years

00:23:34.045 --> 00:23:35.614
in the federal penitentiary.

00:23:36.181 --> 00:23:37.783
But we also began to

00:23:37.849 --> 00:23:40.886
in our communications
have more and more discussion

00:23:40.952 --> 00:23:44.856
and dialogue with Dr. King,
and began to ask

00:23:44.956 --> 00:23:48.794
when was he going to make
a statement against the war in Vietnam.

00:23:49.327 --> 00:23:52.130
He was not prepared to push it,
he had an organization,

00:23:52.197 --> 00:23:55.834
and that organization
had to be willing to accept

00:23:55.901 --> 00:23:57.169
the consequences.

00:23:57.569 --> 00:23:59.771
I mean, that was a tough issue
to take on,

00:24:00.071 --> 00:24:03.642
but when Dr. King
came out with the position

00:24:03.708 --> 00:24:07.145
on the war in Vietnam
he called Stokely

00:24:07.212 --> 00:24:10.816
and asked him to come
and bring me alone

00:24:10.882 --> 00:24:13.718
that he had a message
that he wanted us to hear.

00:24:13.952 --> 00:24:17.789
When Dr. King came properly
to see Vietnam

00:24:17.889 --> 00:24:20.225
he grabbed it,
and I'll never forget it,

00:24:20.325 --> 00:24:21.660
he gave his speech on Vietnam

00:24:21.726 --> 00:24:23.461
in his church in Atlanta
on a Sunday morning,

00:24:23.528 --> 00:24:24.763
I went that day.

00:24:24.863 --> 00:24:26.097
- You were there?
- I went.

00:24:26.631 --> 00:24:27.799
I sat right there.

00:24:28.266 --> 00:24:40.812
[gospel music playing]

00:24:41.246 --> 00:24:42.914
And we have been wrong

00:24:42.981 --> 00:24:46.218
from the beginning
of our intervention in Vietnam,

00:24:47.652 --> 00:24:53.992
and I don't know about you,
I ain't going to study war no more.

00:24:54.159 --> 00:24:58.563
[applause]

00:24:59.030 --> 00:25:01.600
I know from my time with King

00:25:01.700 --> 00:25:04.836
that he really didn't do anything
until he prayed on it

00:25:04.936 --> 00:25:05.937
for a long time.

00:25:07.138 --> 00:25:09.374
So this must have been
a long one for him.

00:25:10.408 --> 00:25:12.677
And in fact that cut the lines

00:25:12.777 --> 00:25:15.447
between him and the White House
overnight.

00:25:15.514 --> 00:25:16.648
As soon as he left

00:25:16.748 --> 00:25:19.951
this rather safe area
for the administration

00:25:20.051 --> 00:25:24.022
of civil rights and switch over
to the not-so-safe.

00:25:34.533 --> 00:25:37.903
The draft resistance movement
had picked up, the anti-war movement

00:25:38.003 --> 00:25:41.673
had picked up and all of a sudden
wasn't just a couple isolated pacifists

00:25:41.740 --> 00:25:44.809
with placards
holding silent village ills,

00:25:44.910 --> 00:25:49.781
it was beginning to meld
with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

00:25:49.848 --> 00:25:52.617
I mean it was just wild.

00:25:53.218 --> 00:25:59.357
[music playing]

00:25:59.724 --> 00:26:01.059
There's a moment

00:26:01.126 --> 00:26:05.030
where it's not clear
what's driving the whole movement.

00:26:05.096 --> 00:26:08.099
It's like a dance with all
these different groups

00:26:08.199 --> 00:26:10.468
doing the thing
that's most important to them

00:26:10.568 --> 00:26:13.171
and focused on the war
in different ways,

00:26:13.271 --> 00:26:15.974
and then it ends up being
draft resistance in a very,

00:26:16.041 --> 00:26:18.009
I think clear and obvious way.

00:26:18.343 --> 00:26:22.781
[applause]

00:26:23.081 --> 00:26:27.886
But very quickly then I got indicted
for my draft resistance.

00:26:27.953 --> 00:26:30.455
So now the question became
what to do,

00:26:30.555 --> 00:26:33.425
what to do, well, we knew
the church sanctuaries

00:26:33.491 --> 00:26:35.193
were pretty much a bust,
didn't work,

00:26:35.860 --> 00:26:36.761
so we thought

00:26:36.861 --> 00:26:40.231
we'd pioneer something new
and we try a coffee house sanctuary

00:26:40.298 --> 00:26:42.667
because that
was a holy place for us.

00:26:43.268 --> 00:26:47.172
So we had a coffee house sanctuary and
that didn't work out actually either.

00:26:52.010 --> 00:26:53.645
The point about draft resistance

00:26:53.712 --> 00:26:56.214
is we have to be prepared
and we can't just try

00:26:56.314 --> 00:27:00.552
to weasel out of it with legalisms
and so on, so I pled guilty

00:27:00.619 --> 00:27:04.756
and was sentenced to three years
in prison and packed off to jail.

00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:11.463
I was a young guy back then
and I really never talked

00:27:11.529 --> 00:27:13.098
to anybody about the war

00:27:14.866 --> 00:27:15.967
I didn't really know

00:27:16.067 --> 00:27:18.436
how to deal with having to go
into the army.

00:27:21.306 --> 00:27:25.510
I did get my induction notice
and I showed up at the induction center

00:27:25.577 --> 00:27:27.345
in downtown Los Angeles.

00:27:27.545 --> 00:27:30.148
Take your letter.
Report for induction

00:27:30.248 --> 00:27:31.616
and go right in this door here.

00:27:33.351 --> 00:27:34.686
Here you have right
into your city

00:27:34.753 --> 00:27:36.655
you have an office
that does nothing but

00:27:37.055 --> 00:27:40.325
pull young men in,
give them medical examinations,

00:27:40.392 --> 00:27:42.360
put them on a bus
and send him off to war.

00:27:42.661 --> 00:27:44.262
Do we really have to permit
that?

00:27:44.729 --> 00:27:47.866
[crowd noises]

00:27:47.999 --> 00:27:51.036
Well I became the one and only
staff person

00:27:51.269 --> 00:27:53.204
at the Los Angeles resistance office

00:27:53.304 --> 00:27:55.540
although that only lasted
a very short time

00:27:55.607 --> 00:28:00.378
because pretty soon people started
to come in and other organizers

00:28:00.445 --> 00:28:01.946
and men and women.

00:28:03.581 --> 00:28:07.018
Women did everything, everything.

00:28:07.252 --> 00:28:11.356
And we were not in back,
we were right there with

00:28:11.423 --> 00:28:14.726
and I felt these were my best friends

00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:17.395
and it was all for one
and one for all.

00:28:19.998 --> 00:28:22.267
We taught ourselves
how to print.

00:28:22.667 --> 00:28:25.970
I would go to the induction center
to pass out fliers

00:28:26.171 --> 00:28:27.605
just about every day of the week

00:28:27.672 --> 00:28:29.140
that they were doing inductions,

00:28:29.274 --> 00:28:31.209
at 6:00, 6:30 in the morning.

00:28:31.443 --> 00:28:34.145
We would all go down,
pass the leaflets out

00:28:34.245 --> 00:28:36.648
to all of the men getting off
the buses.

00:28:37.649 --> 00:28:40.618
I hadn't been called up yet
at the time, but I was one of

00:28:40.852 --> 00:28:43.354
the regular participants
down at the induction center

00:28:43.455 --> 00:28:44.989
on call-up days.

00:28:45.690 --> 00:28:46.925
So there would be those of us

00:28:46.991 --> 00:28:49.761
who would be there
with a little coffee table,

00:28:49.861 --> 00:28:51.629
donuts, coffee and an attorney.

00:28:51.996 --> 00:28:53.231
One of us would jump on the bus

00:28:53.298 --> 00:28:56.034
and explained that
you can just go home.

00:28:56.301 --> 00:28:58.436
Sometime soon you'll have
another shot at it

00:28:58.503 --> 00:29:00.939
but you don't have to make
the decision today,

00:29:01.005 --> 00:29:02.006
you can just go home.

00:29:02.173 --> 00:29:04.142
The military officer
came charging in,

00:29:04.209 --> 00:29:07.112
we get on the bus and explained
what was really going on here.

00:29:07.245 --> 00:29:09.881
They believed the guy in the uniform
for the most part.

00:29:11.349 --> 00:29:12.851
But what if you can change
one life.

00:29:14.953 --> 00:29:18.123
There was a large demonstration outside
the induction center,

00:29:18.223 --> 00:29:22.227
demonstrators were talking to draftees
and passing out flowers.

00:29:24.295 --> 00:29:28.800
Well typical of me, I didn't talk
to anybody, but I did take a flower

00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:32.170
and I stuck a flyer in my pocket
and went inside.

00:29:34.606 --> 00:29:37.876
Inside the induction center,
while I was going through

00:29:37.942 --> 00:29:43.081
processing I kept thinking
that I could not in good conscience

00:29:43.181 --> 00:29:46.417
go into the army and kill somebody
for a war I didn't believe in.

00:29:46.851 --> 00:29:50.188
I didn't really realize
that I could just say no.

00:29:50.955 --> 00:29:54.425
You're about to being inducted into
the armed forces of the United States.

00:29:55.059 --> 00:29:57.695
You will take one step forward
as your name is called

00:29:57.896 --> 00:29:59.197
and start...

00:29:59.264 --> 00:30:03.134
My pointed of decision actually came
when we were all brought into a room

00:30:03.301 --> 00:30:06.504
and asked to pledge allegiance
to the army,

00:30:07.105 --> 00:30:09.741
and we were instructed
to take a step forward

00:30:09.974 --> 00:30:12.544
and everyone stepped forward
except me.

00:30:13.578 --> 00:30:15.346
And I don't know
who was more surprised,

00:30:15.413 --> 00:30:17.115
me or the person giving the oath.

00:30:20.318 --> 00:30:22.053
But there's one person

00:30:22.153 --> 00:30:25.156
just from passing out fliers
and being at the induction center

00:30:25.223 --> 00:30:26.558
changed his entire life.

00:30:28.626 --> 00:30:30.228
This was really

00:30:30.328 --> 00:30:33.464
a both individual act
and a group act. being daring

00:30:34.265 --> 00:30:39.904
Being daring as individuals and with
others, and that's pretty powerful,

00:30:39.971 --> 00:30:42.674
I think, when those
are thought of together.

00:30:45.343 --> 00:30:48.246
My name is Marty Harris
and I refused induction.

00:30:49.948 --> 00:30:53.151
My name's Rich,
and I just refused induction.

00:30:53.418 --> 00:31:03.895
[orchestra music playing]

00:31:06.264 --> 00:31:09.867
So when I got home I remembered
about the leaflet

00:31:10.034 --> 00:31:11.936
and I pulled it out of my pocket
and looked at it

00:31:12.003 --> 00:31:14.005
and I read about the resistance
for the first time,

00:31:14.072 --> 00:31:15.573
the LA resistance.

00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:17.475
So I went to one of their meetings

00:31:17.542 --> 00:31:20.044
and I really liked the community

00:31:20.111 --> 00:31:23.615
and the determination to stop the war
and especially their commitment

00:31:23.715 --> 00:31:24.716
to non-violence.

00:31:24.983 --> 00:31:27.986
So I joined the resistance
and started

00:31:28.052 --> 00:31:29.854
working against the war
and the draft.

00:31:30.321 --> 00:31:38.563
America is committed to the defense
of South Vietnam.

00:31:40.098 --> 00:31:45.136
[applause]

00:31:47.071 --> 00:31:50.108
[plane engines roaring]

00:31:50.408 --> 00:31:53.044
Meanwhile, obviously, the war,
we weren't stopping the war.

00:31:53.144 --> 00:31:55.613
The war was escalating,
it was getting worse,

00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:57.682
the movement was getting bigger,
more and more people

00:31:57.749 --> 00:32:00.551
were turning against the war,
yet we seem to have no effect

00:32:00.618 --> 00:32:02.053
on government policy.

00:32:02.153 --> 00:32:03.621
And so to me it meant

00:32:03.721 --> 00:32:07.358
we had to take more dramatic actions,
and for me breaking

00:32:07.425 --> 00:32:09.794
with the draft was both
a moral decision

00:32:09.861 --> 00:32:13.364
saying no, I'm not going to fight in Vietnam,
I'm not going to kill Vietnamese people,

00:32:13.431 --> 00:32:16.067
I won't do it.
And we need to build

00:32:16.167 --> 00:32:17.702
a mass movement.

00:32:20.204 --> 00:32:22.006
By my sophomore year

00:32:22.106 --> 00:32:25.443
I decided that I was ready
to become a non-registrant

00:32:25.543 --> 00:32:29.180
and this draft card was figuratively
burning a hole in my pocket.

00:32:29.580 --> 00:32:31.582
I tore it up in four pieces

00:32:31.649 --> 00:32:35.053
and I put it in an envelope,
I licked the envelope, and I mailed it.

00:32:37.188 --> 00:32:38.990
We wanted to take it a step up,

00:32:39.457 --> 00:32:43.161
not just an act of solitary witness
against the war but a real movement

00:32:43.494 --> 00:32:45.330
that would make it hard
for the government

00:32:45.396 --> 00:32:47.699
to get enough troops to fight
in Vietnam.

00:32:48.599 --> 00:32:51.736
So we decided to organize
a mass draft card burning,

00:32:51.836 --> 00:32:54.505
and we settled on an event
around four months away

00:32:54.572 --> 00:32:56.574
that was going to be
the spring mobilization

00:32:56.674 --> 00:32:58.242
against the war Vietnam.

00:32:58.309 --> 00:33:00.678
This would be a massive rally
in New York City.

00:33:02.013 --> 00:33:04.215
Stokely Carmichael
from the Student Nonviolent

00:33:04.282 --> 00:33:06.050
Coordinating Committee
was speaking there.

00:33:08.019 --> 00:33:11.823
Dr. King was making one
of his first anti-war statements there.

00:33:11.889 --> 00:33:15.159
Stop the bombing and stop the war.

00:33:15.259 --> 00:33:17.395
It was the largest rally
against the war

00:33:17.462 --> 00:33:19.597
that I think the country
had ever seen at that time.

00:33:19.964 --> 00:33:21.933
To organize that,
I dropped out of school

00:33:22.133 --> 00:33:24.936
and I was the only
full-time organizer of this,

00:33:25.002 --> 00:33:26.237
and let me say, I was probably

00:33:26.304 --> 00:33:28.873
the worst full-time organizer
of a national action

00:33:28.973 --> 00:33:31.275
one could imagine.
I was eighteen years old,

00:33:31.376 --> 00:33:34.045
I didn't know very much
about organizing,

00:33:34.145 --> 00:33:35.213
we had no money

00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:36.547
then we just hoped for the best.

00:33:36.614 --> 00:33:38.916
Central Park is the starting point
for the parade

00:33:39.017 --> 00:33:43.087
to the UN building.
He estimated 125,000 Manhattan marchers

00:33:43.187 --> 00:33:44.022
includes...

00:33:44.122 --> 00:33:46.124
So somebody handed me,
I have who handed me

00:33:46.224 --> 00:33:49.360
a Maxwell House coffee can
which had in it

00:33:49.460 --> 00:33:52.397
either paraffin or lighter fluid
but it was burning

00:33:52.463 --> 00:33:54.899
and I held it up and I said
let's burn our draft cards

00:33:54.966 --> 00:33:58.002
and by our calculations
and the newspapers calculations

00:33:58.069 --> 00:34:02.240
we had around 175 to 185 people
burn their draft cards,

00:34:02.340 --> 00:34:05.476
which made this the largest act
of civil disobedience

00:34:05.543 --> 00:34:07.945
against the draft, I guess,
since the Civil War.

00:34:08.212 --> 00:34:11.449
It was a great first step to build
a mass movement against the draft.

00:34:12.083 --> 00:34:14.218
A companion peace
demonstration brings out

00:34:14.285 --> 00:34:17.488
50,000 marchers in downtown
San Francisco.

00:34:17.555 --> 00:34:21.159
It turned out on the very same day
in the San Francisco version

00:34:21.225 --> 00:34:23.895
of the mobilization
against the war, David Harris

00:34:23.995 --> 00:34:26.998
announced that they were organizing
a group called the resistance.

00:34:27.098 --> 00:34:29.867
If you want to make a statement,

00:34:30.668 --> 00:34:31.669
join us.

00:34:32.336 --> 00:34:34.372
That's a first coming out of this idea

00:34:34.439 --> 00:34:37.175
of the resistance being
a nation-wide movement.

00:34:37.575 --> 00:34:40.711
A draft card is a pledge,
it's a very simple pledge.

00:34:40.912 --> 00:34:44.515
It says when and where you decide
murder to be a fit international policy

00:34:44.582 --> 00:34:45.583
on your boy.

00:34:46.250 --> 00:34:47.351
And you and I must refuse

00:34:47.418 --> 00:34:48.619
to be the messengers of death.

00:34:48.953 --> 00:34:51.622
He talked about how being a CO
was not enough.

00:34:52.290 --> 00:34:53.524
That there was a whole system

00:34:53.591 --> 00:34:56.794
the Selective Service System
which should not be cooperated with

00:34:56.894 --> 00:35:00.164
because that was what
was funneling people into this war,

00:35:00.665 --> 00:35:03.468
and really challenged me
and the others in that audience

00:35:04.235 --> 00:35:06.003
that we had another
responsibility really.

00:35:06.137 --> 00:35:08.639
For you and I are the bricks
and the mortar of that system.

00:35:08.706 --> 00:35:11.843
It was so compelling
for me to hear him

00:35:11.909 --> 00:35:15.646
declare that we, ourselves,
actually could take

00:35:15.746 --> 00:35:19.584
the step that would bring this war
to an end by refusing to go,

00:35:19.650 --> 00:35:21.152
just refusing to cooperate.

00:35:21.986 --> 00:35:23.621
It's why I turned in my draft card.

00:35:34.599 --> 00:35:37.034
Hi, I just got this letter
from my local board

00:35:37.201 --> 00:35:39.137
so I felt the only thing
for me to do

00:35:39.203 --> 00:35:44.175
was to stand up and say no publicly
and to join help building a movement

00:35:44.242 --> 00:35:46.611
that is going to shut
this life of service down permanently.

00:35:48.513 --> 00:35:50.781
Draft resistance
was so attractive to me

00:35:50.848 --> 00:35:53.384
because it was nonviolent
and open and public

00:35:54.385 --> 00:35:57.421
but it was radical,
in the sense that it was illegal

00:35:57.622 --> 00:36:00.291
and pushing the envelope resistance.

00:36:00.725 --> 00:36:02.493
That the whole system of the draft

00:36:02.560 --> 00:36:04.529
we weren't sure how that
whole apparatus functioned

00:36:04.595 --> 00:36:08.299
by any means but it became clear
without people it didn't function

00:36:08.366 --> 00:36:12.270
I mean without acquiescence
it wasn't there, and without us

00:36:12.370 --> 00:36:14.872
to sign ourselves over
to it it couldn't operate.

00:36:16.307 --> 00:36:19.844
It has been said that I have
two alternatives

00:36:19.944 --> 00:36:23.181
either go to jail, or go to the army,

00:36:23.648 --> 00:36:24.882
but I would like to say

00:36:24.949 --> 00:36:29.387
that there is another alternative,
and that alternative

00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:30.821
is justice.

00:36:31.722 --> 00:36:36.761
Ladies and gentlemen Mr. Mohammed Ali
has just refused to be inducted

00:36:36.861 --> 00:36:38.529
into the United States Armed Forces.

00:36:38.896 --> 00:36:41.299
I just don't think
I should go 10,000 miles

00:36:41.365 --> 00:36:44.235
from here and shoot some black people
that never called me nigger,

00:36:44.335 --> 00:36:46.304
never lynched me,
never put dogs on me,

00:36:46.370 --> 00:36:49.006
never enslaved me and I just can't
go over there

00:36:49.073 --> 00:36:50.374
and shoot them people.

00:36:50.441 --> 00:36:52.109
You won't fight for your country,

00:36:52.243 --> 00:36:53.778
- you're refusing to go...
- I'm a minister,

00:36:53.844 --> 00:36:56.013
my religion, this country
has laws for ministers.

00:36:58.382 --> 00:37:00.985
Muhammad Ali
is really important in this

00:37:01.052 --> 00:37:05.656
because when Ali refuses
induction there's a famous column

00:37:05.723 --> 00:37:07.992
in The New York Times
written by Tom Wicker

00:37:08.059 --> 00:37:11.662
where he just wanders out loud
what would happen if you had

00:37:11.729 --> 00:37:13.731
100,000 Muhammad Ali's.

00:37:14.065 --> 00:37:15.633
You had 100,000 people

00:37:15.766 --> 00:37:18.202
who were prepared to do what
Muhammad all he just did.

00:37:18.269 --> 00:37:20.538
You would bring this war to a stop.

00:37:20.638 --> 00:37:21.539
So draft resisters

00:37:21.639 --> 00:37:23.808
set that as a goal.

00:37:24.542 --> 00:37:26.010
It took an all-white jury

00:37:26.077 --> 00:37:28.879
less than a half hour
to find Muhammad Ali guilty

00:37:28.946 --> 00:37:32.183
of all charges and specifications.
He was sentenced

00:37:32.283 --> 00:37:36.621
to the maximum five years in prison
and was fined $10,000.

00:37:37.021 --> 00:37:41.525
[Stand by Me playing]

00:37:41.726 --> 00:37:46.564
I find nothing amusing or interesting
or tolerable about this man.

00:37:47.431 --> 00:37:49.867
He's a disgrace to his country,
his race,

00:37:50.034 --> 00:37:52.670
and what he laughingly describes
as his profession.

00:37:52.770 --> 00:37:54.338
He has been found guilty.

00:37:54.805 --> 00:37:57.908
He is out on bail.
He will inevitably go to prison,

00:37:58.009 --> 00:37:59.010
as well he should.

00:37:59.644 --> 00:38:02.280
He's a simplistic fool
and a pawn.

00:38:02.880 --> 00:38:06.784
Do you share the same concern
that Muhammad has for his draft status?

00:38:07.218 --> 00:38:11.055
Oh I certainly do.
My views on the draft are very clear

00:38:11.122 --> 00:38:11.989
I'm against it.

00:38:12.123 --> 00:38:15.526
And I think the sooner country
does away

00:38:15.626 --> 00:38:18.529
with the draft, the better
it would be for everybody.

00:38:19.163 --> 00:38:25.069
[Ain't Gonna Let Nobody
Turn Me Around playing]

00:38:25.403 --> 00:38:31.275
Well, the week from October 16th 1967
to October 21st was extraordinary

00:38:31.375 --> 00:38:34.345
in both American political history
and the anti-war movement

00:38:34.412 --> 00:38:36.180
and the draft resistance movement.

00:38:36.247 --> 00:38:37.281
It was part of an event

00:38:37.381 --> 00:38:38.883
they called Stop the Draft Week.

00:38:39.583 --> 00:38:41.485
October 16th is the big day

00:38:41.786 --> 00:38:44.722
that organizers have agreed on
and it starts at dawn

00:38:44.789 --> 00:38:46.324
in Oakland, California.

00:38:46.524 --> 00:38:49.260
Stop the Draft,
the object to prevent

00:38:49.327 --> 00:38:51.228
the orderly induction of recruits.

00:38:53.197 --> 00:38:55.466
Passive resistance, in my opinion,

00:38:55.599 --> 00:38:59.203
it's nonviolent resistance,
a willingness to sacrifice,

00:38:59.270 --> 00:39:03.174
a willingness to take risks,
a willingness to go under

00:39:03.240 --> 00:39:04.975
our own style of battle.

00:39:06.944 --> 00:39:09.613
So we had separated ourselves

00:39:09.680 --> 00:39:11.415
in a way so that we knew
that this group

00:39:11.515 --> 00:39:13.651
is going to be nonviolent
no matter what,

00:39:13.751 --> 00:39:15.453
so we were probably having
more fun.

00:39:15.886 --> 00:39:24.395
[We Want Our Freedom Now playing]

00:39:24.829 --> 00:39:26.263
And then I'm aware that

00:39:26.364 --> 00:39:28.466
when I'm singing it's giving
other people courage

00:39:28.532 --> 00:39:29.700
and then they sing too

00:39:30.367 --> 00:39:33.371
and your example
is going to mean something.

00:39:33.671 --> 00:39:39.076
Na-Na Na-Naaa.
Na-Na-Na Na-Na-Na.

00:39:39.276 --> 00:39:42.012
There were these row after row
of people locking arms,

00:39:42.079 --> 00:39:45.449
singing songs peacefully
blocking the roads

00:39:45.549 --> 00:39:50.554
with these buses of inductees trying to
get to the induction center in Oakland.

00:39:50.721 --> 00:39:53.157
After a while
I just couldn't stand their watch

00:39:53.224 --> 00:39:56.260
I jumped into the lines
next thing I know I'm hauled off

00:39:56.327 --> 00:39:58.529
to jail for a 10-day sentence.

00:39:59.530 --> 00:40:04.568
[applause]

00:40:07.972 --> 00:40:10.307
I'm a stubborn, strict pacifist now.

00:40:10.374 --> 00:40:11.575
I don't know what I'm going to do

00:40:11.642 --> 00:40:13.577
when I get to that door
and they put me behind the bars,

00:40:13.611 --> 00:40:16.280
I may go into a dead faint
but yeah I have to be ready

00:40:16.380 --> 00:40:18.682
to go to jail or I can't do
the things I do.

00:40:19.049 --> 00:40:24.655
[police sirens]

00:40:24.989 --> 00:40:27.725
Buses with the new draftees arrived.

00:40:28.659 --> 00:40:32.296
Demonstrators tried to stop them
but the buses were brought in

00:40:32.396 --> 00:40:35.266
led by a flank of Oakland
police officers.

00:40:35.733 --> 00:40:38.936
Demonstrators protested the draft,
and some were arrested

00:40:39.036 --> 00:40:42.506
by police who kept order
and inductees went

00:40:42.573 --> 00:40:45.242
into the service, all very peacefully.

00:40:46.610 --> 00:40:48.612
So while protesters in Oakland

00:40:48.712 --> 00:40:50.614
are trying to shut down
the induction center

00:40:50.681 --> 00:40:53.017
using non-violent civil disobedience,

00:40:53.851 --> 00:40:55.920
that afternoon in San Francisco

00:40:56.353 --> 00:40:59.790
David Harris kicks off
the national draft card turn into day.

00:41:00.624 --> 00:41:02.326
October 16th had been the date

00:41:02.426 --> 00:41:04.628
we had set when we first started
the resistance

00:41:04.762 --> 00:41:07.298
for the first national draft card
return, during which

00:41:07.398 --> 00:41:08.866
all around the country
and as it turned out

00:41:08.933 --> 00:41:11.068
in 18 different cities there
would be demonstrations

00:41:11.168 --> 00:41:13.938
at which people would collect
draft cards and give them

00:41:14.004 --> 00:41:15.039
to the federal government.

00:41:15.439 --> 00:41:18.843
And if it takes our lives
to change this country

00:41:19.009 --> 00:41:21.345
then that's what's going to happen.

00:41:21.712 --> 00:41:24.048
Very simply open, public declarations

00:41:24.148 --> 00:41:27.017
that we would not cooperate
and if the government intended

00:41:27.084 --> 00:41:30.721
to enforce the Selective Service Act then
it was going to have to send us to jail.

00:41:30.955 --> 00:41:33.557
2,000 of us gathered
on the steps the Federal Building

00:41:33.624 --> 00:41:39.029
in San Francisco and it was a mob
scene, it had this air of expectation,

00:41:39.129 --> 00:41:42.633
we were about to engage
in this act, and okay the time had come

00:41:42.700 --> 00:41:46.170
and out goes the basket and as
the basket moves around the crowd

00:41:46.237 --> 00:41:48.339
all these hands
coming up holding draft cards

00:41:48.439 --> 00:41:50.774
dropping them into the basket
and the basket circulates

00:41:50.841 --> 00:41:53.510
through the crowd and comes back up
to the front, then all of a sudden

00:41:53.577 --> 00:41:55.846
from the back of the crowd
these shouts start coming more

00:41:55.913 --> 00:41:57.581
back here, back here, we want it.

00:41:57.681 --> 00:42:01.485
So the basket goes back out and
more draft cards start coming into it.

00:42:02.820 --> 00:42:06.690
And what we say to a society
of murder and racism

00:42:06.790 --> 00:42:08.392
is a very simple no.

00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:11.562
And what we say to our brothers
across this country

00:42:11.695 --> 00:42:14.865
and around the world
is a very simple word.

00:42:15.032 --> 00:42:16.634
That word is resist.

00:42:19.470 --> 00:42:24.208
On October 16th there are kind of
clear differences in tactics and tenor.

00:42:24.675 --> 00:42:27.645
In Boston it takes
on almost a kind of

00:42:27.711 --> 00:42:29.547
sacramental tone.

00:42:29.613 --> 00:42:32.316
We decided to do it in a church

00:42:32.416 --> 00:42:34.718
after all it's a solemn
and almost religious act

00:42:34.785 --> 00:42:38.122
to turn in your draft card
and vow to go to prison.

00:42:38.222 --> 00:42:41.558
We met the minister right away
and so we're not worried about it,

00:42:41.625 --> 00:42:45.095
after all he said
back in the 1850s

00:42:45.195 --> 00:42:50.067
this congregation used to arm itself
and break into the Boston City Jail

00:42:50.134 --> 00:42:53.504
to free the fugitive slaves
and get them up to Canada,

00:42:53.570 --> 00:42:55.673
so we're not worried about
a few draft cards.

00:42:56.974 --> 00:43:00.811
But we had 5000 come out
for a rally in the common

00:43:01.145 --> 00:43:03.547
and then we marched
to the Arlington Street Church.

00:43:04.248 --> 00:43:06.717
As we approached the church
that bells started playing

00:43:06.817 --> 00:43:10.387
we shall overcome, so I was like
already in tears.

00:43:10.921 --> 00:43:14.959
[church bells playing]

00:43:15.192 --> 00:43:19.763
I gave a short sermon on behalf
on the guys turning in the cards.

00:43:20.364 --> 00:43:22.967
We broke bread, almost as if it were
a mass.

00:43:23.300 --> 00:43:27.304
[gospel music playing]

00:43:27.538 --> 00:43:28.806
We did that

00:43:28.872 --> 00:43:30.641
to get the word out that
something remarkable

00:43:30.708 --> 00:43:33.143
was happening in both coasts
but it was rather

00:43:33.210 --> 00:43:34.979
I think an electrifying moment.

00:43:38.349 --> 00:43:39.450
And then at the end

00:43:39.550 --> 00:43:41.819
of that week I carried
the bag of draft cards

00:43:41.885 --> 00:43:44.822
to Washington DC,
which was part of the national plan

00:43:44.922 --> 00:43:48.425
to gather them all together
and then they were carried

00:43:48.492 --> 00:43:51.929
into the Justice Department building and
turned over to the Attorney General's office.

00:43:53.430 --> 00:43:55.566
Michael Server
from the Boston resistance

00:43:55.633 --> 00:43:59.203
I bring from the Ottogan Street Church
237 files.

00:44:03.207 --> 00:44:06.477
Lenny for the Berkeley Resistance,
Palo Alto Resistance,

00:44:06.543 --> 00:44:08.646
San Jose Resistant,
San Fransisco,

00:44:08.779 --> 00:44:13.784
David, California, Sacramento,
Santa Barbara, 296 cards.

00:44:16.420 --> 00:44:18.956
We thought we were
bringing the war home in a humane

00:44:19.056 --> 00:44:20.357
and democratic way.

00:44:20.457 --> 00:44:22.459
We were violating
the law, yes, but we prepare

00:44:22.559 --> 00:44:24.328
to go to prison and pay the price.

00:44:24.895 --> 00:44:26.497
We weren't dodging the draft,

00:44:26.597 --> 00:44:30.567
we were resisting it, confronting it,
and taking punishment

00:44:30.634 --> 00:44:33.470
we thought that would have
an invigorating

00:44:33.537 --> 00:44:35.406
and an electrifying effect
on the movement

00:44:35.506 --> 00:44:37.841
and I think it did in many parts
of the country.

00:44:38.375 --> 00:44:41.979
[applause]

00:44:46.417 --> 00:44:49.353
[applause]

00:44:52.322 --> 00:44:53.323
Peter Fifer.

00:44:56.627 --> 00:45:00.197
The President himself is bewildered
about draft resistance.

00:45:00.364 --> 00:45:02.199
He didn't understand
why his officials

00:45:02.299 --> 00:45:04.935
in his own administration
would accept those draft cards

00:45:05.002 --> 00:45:06.503
without arresting people
immediately.

00:45:06.737 --> 00:45:09.506
We found most of them
were mentally diseased.

00:45:09.606 --> 00:45:13.944
Hoover's taken 256 that
turned in supposedly their draft card,

00:45:14.044 --> 00:45:15.946
so you're dealing with
mental problems.

00:45:16.013 --> 00:45:20.050
But I think we are in more danger
from these left-wing influencers now

00:45:20.184 --> 00:45:22.886
than we have ever been in 37 years
I've been here.

00:45:23.420 --> 00:45:25.155
[screaming]

00:45:25.355 --> 00:45:27.091
Good evening.
Stop the Draft Week

00:45:27.157 --> 00:45:30.360
continue today across the land
along with the violence

00:45:30.461 --> 00:45:32.896
and the arrests that have
become part of the protests.

00:45:33.163 --> 00:45:34.698
Stop the draft now!

00:45:34.898 --> 00:45:37.568
It turned into a riot
by these young militants

00:45:37.634 --> 00:45:39.069
who want peace in Vietnam.

00:45:39.269 --> 00:45:40.637
They are the violent minority

00:45:40.737 --> 00:45:42.072
of the peace movement in the West

00:45:42.172 --> 00:45:45.008
And that was a turning point
for many in the movement.

00:45:45.342 --> 00:45:46.844
By the end of the week

00:45:46.944 --> 00:45:49.546
some people who were not part
of the resistance

00:45:49.613 --> 00:45:52.082
started to fight the cops,
running in the street,

00:45:52.149 --> 00:45:54.918
street actions
and this is a changing point

00:45:54.985 --> 00:45:57.121
for the movement because
there was a confrontation,

00:45:57.221 --> 00:45:59.323
and we had to think about
are we going to pursue

00:45:59.389 --> 00:46:01.892
a peaceful path of civil disobedience,

00:46:02.059 --> 00:46:04.528
or are we going to take
more militant actions.

00:46:04.628 --> 00:46:06.029
I disagreed with that tactic.

00:46:06.330 --> 00:46:09.199
It's now time for new tactics
in the anti-war movement.

00:46:09.333 --> 00:46:13.103
There's nothing else to do,
it just wasn't working.

00:46:13.303 --> 00:46:15.172
It's time for confrontation.

00:46:15.439 --> 00:46:19.243
The demonstrators began throwing things
at the all officers and at the press.

00:46:20.477 --> 00:46:22.779
[police sirens wailing]

00:46:23.013 --> 00:46:25.315
The conservatives
and the establishment like it

00:46:25.382 --> 00:46:28.051
when we go violent
because they know what to do about it

00:46:28.552 --> 00:46:30.320
and they know we lose support

00:46:30.387 --> 00:46:32.456
from the general public
when we do that.

00:46:33.056 --> 00:46:36.226
But in a political movement
it's got to be nonviolent

00:46:36.293 --> 00:46:38.896
or we're simply going to fail,
and deserve to fail.

00:46:39.563 --> 00:46:42.466
The lawmen got tougher and tougher
all week long.

00:46:43.100 --> 00:46:45.135
And the end result was the police
attacked the crowd

00:46:45.202 --> 00:46:47.604
beat the holy Jesus
out all kinds of people,

00:46:47.671 --> 00:46:50.274
including newsmen,
including high school students

00:46:50.340 --> 00:46:52.609
tear gas was used,
it was a mess.

00:46:55.679 --> 00:46:58.715
It was an extraordinary waste
of an opportunity.

00:47:05.589 --> 00:47:07.558
The name of the game
was changing minds.

00:47:08.959 --> 00:47:11.395
You don't change minds
with violence,

00:47:11.562 --> 00:47:13.764
at least nobody's succeeded
in doing it yet.

00:47:24.041 --> 00:47:26.410
And so it became
one of the real struggles

00:47:26.476 --> 00:47:29.046
in the nonviolent movement
was how to deal with

00:47:29.112 --> 00:47:33.083
the attraction and the charisma
of violent struggle.

00:47:33.417 --> 00:47:37.621
[crowd noises]

00:47:37.855 --> 00:47:39.990
And I'm looking at stuff
to draft week

00:47:40.090 --> 00:47:43.126
and I'm thinking wow
that was cool

00:47:43.193 --> 00:47:47.464
it was cool to be breaking windows
and blocking buses

00:47:47.497 --> 00:47:52.135
and doing a rampage,
it was so militant, fighting cops

00:47:52.202 --> 00:47:53.704
and I wanted to do that too.

00:47:54.071 --> 00:47:55.806
To me as an organizer

00:47:55.873 --> 00:47:57.975
precisely the people
who we were going to frighten

00:47:58.041 --> 00:48:00.477
with those kind of tactics
were the people we needed

00:48:00.544 --> 00:48:02.212
in order to stop the war.

00:48:02.479 --> 00:48:06.083
[crowd screaming]

00:48:06.350 --> 00:48:09.319
I don't know how you had
your head screwed on so right

00:48:09.853 --> 00:48:13.123
because I did succumb.

00:48:14.691 --> 00:48:16.193
I helped found

00:48:16.293 --> 00:48:18.595
an organization called
The Weather Underground.

00:48:19.162 --> 00:48:22.132
The goal of that organization
was the violent overthrow

00:48:22.232 --> 00:48:24.301
of the government
of the United States.

00:48:25.235 --> 00:48:27.838
And I was a fugitive
for seven-and-a-half years

00:48:28.772 --> 00:48:31.241
Do you think America
was going to rise up behind...

00:48:31.341 --> 00:48:33.877
Yeah, I did believe that actually,
the revolution...

00:48:33.944 --> 00:48:35.746
I thought you meant Boston,
which is why...

00:48:35.812 --> 00:48:37.381
- I'm very gullible.
- I couldn't make sense

00:48:37.447 --> 00:48:39.516
of what you guys are doing.

00:48:39.650 --> 00:48:41.184
Do you think they're going to do that?

00:48:43.620 --> 00:48:46.323
[crowd noises]

00:48:47.791 --> 00:48:51.695
David's right, non-violence
was a much better strategy.

00:48:52.462 --> 00:48:56.566
If you have 10,000 people
but one person breaks a window

00:48:56.800 --> 00:49:02.272
then the entire coalition
gets tainted by violence.

00:49:03.173 --> 00:49:14.318
[piano music playing]

00:49:15.118 --> 00:49:19.990
The idea of political non-violence,
that's the gift of the 20th century

00:49:20.157 --> 00:49:21.158
to the world.

00:49:22.092 --> 00:49:24.394
You can't do it any way
but non-violently.

00:49:25.062 --> 00:49:27.931
You can't do one thing
and expect another thing

00:49:27.998 --> 00:49:30.934
to grow out of it
if you want to make peace,

00:49:31.101 --> 00:49:32.102
you got to make peace.

00:49:34.571 --> 00:49:36.473
And I don't know who started it

00:49:36.540 --> 00:49:38.709
but pretty soon somebody starts

00:49:38.976 --> 00:49:42.145
looking right at the fixed bayonets
and all of these soldiers

00:49:42.212 --> 00:49:44.781
in full uniform, helmets,
the whole thing

00:49:45.482 --> 00:49:51.922
getting to know you,
getting to know all about you.

00:49:52.022 --> 00:49:54.958
And here everybody was
and everybody picked it up,

00:49:55.025 --> 00:49:56.193
my row picked it up.

00:49:56.360 --> 00:50:00.797
We had, I don't know,
150 people kicking

00:50:00.864 --> 00:50:06.269
arms around each other, singing this
famous song from the King and I.

00:50:07.371 --> 00:50:09.906
And I'm looking at these guys

00:50:10.007 --> 00:50:12.743
in their uniforms
and all of their clothes

00:50:12.809 --> 00:50:15.312
exactly the same army colored clothes,

00:50:16.413 --> 00:50:18.915
and they start just cracking up.

00:50:19.583 --> 00:50:21.918
And they're just like,
not all of them,

00:50:21.985 --> 00:50:26.456
but a whole lot of them start
grinning and smiling

00:50:26.523 --> 00:50:31.028
and laughing, and just the mask,
it just came off.

00:50:31.728 --> 00:50:55.318
[Orchestra music playing]

00:50:56.153 --> 00:50:59.356
[applause]

00:50:59.523 --> 00:51:02.793
Have you, Joan, heard about
the demonstrations

00:51:02.893 --> 00:51:05.295
which followed the one
in which you were arrested

00:51:05.395 --> 00:51:08.765
what's your opinion about the week
of stop the draft?

00:51:09.299 --> 00:51:13.970
I gather that our day was
the nonviolent oriented day

00:51:14.037 --> 00:51:16.440
and that's the way it went,
and after that there was

00:51:16.540 --> 00:51:20.644
pretty much chaos.
I was hoping that the nonviolence

00:51:20.710 --> 00:51:23.180
would continue
but it's much harder.

00:51:23.246 --> 00:51:25.048
Oh, this is interesting because

00:51:25.549 --> 00:51:29.419
we thought we should go back and
do a Christmas time nonviolent sit-in

00:51:29.486 --> 00:51:33.390
at the draft board
and this was a wonderful sit-in.

00:51:35.459 --> 00:51:38.095
Given the darkness
that's in the world

00:51:38.161 --> 00:51:40.497
and the cruelty that people
do when you do something

00:51:40.564 --> 00:51:43.266
that's the other side of that,
where people stand up

00:51:43.333 --> 00:51:45.435
and make themselves vulnerable

00:51:45.702 --> 00:51:48.772
like the real power comes
from the clarity of your vision

00:51:48.839 --> 00:51:52.709
and the deep morality of it
that people can see your humanity

00:51:52.776 --> 00:51:56.980
in doing it, and I think
that clarity just goes boom,

00:51:57.314 --> 00:52:00.584
people can see that.
Not that everybody wants to do it,

00:52:00.650 --> 00:52:02.686
people can see it
and understand it.

00:52:02.986 --> 00:52:08.125
[Kumbaya My Lord playing]

00:52:08.458 --> 00:52:12.262
Joan Baez was part of it again,
Roy Kepler and Ira Sandperl

00:52:12.429 --> 00:52:14.164
all these people of different ages,

00:52:14.231 --> 00:52:16.266
it wasn't just young people like me.

00:52:18.268 --> 00:52:19.169
So at that time

00:52:19.236 --> 00:52:21.972
because I was then a repeat
offender I and those

00:52:22.038 --> 00:52:24.908
who were doing this for the
second time got 45 days sentence.

00:52:25.942 --> 00:52:27.677
Bravery is contagious,

00:52:27.744 --> 00:52:31.815
courage is contagious.
I know that I get the most courage

00:52:31.882 --> 00:52:35.685
I get is from watching
other people do extraordinary things.

00:52:36.419 --> 00:52:40.924
[Kumbaya My Lord playing]

00:52:41.157 --> 00:52:43.393
The Alameda County prison farm
has been home

00:52:43.460 --> 00:52:47.998
to 78 diehard anti-war demonstrators
ever since their arrest

00:52:48.064 --> 00:52:50.967
at the draft induction center
in Oakland last week.

00:52:51.434 --> 00:52:53.403
There were lots of reasons
for my going to jail

00:52:53.470 --> 00:52:55.472
and I think I'm glad,
I think it was good

00:52:55.539 --> 00:52:57.140
that I went this second time.

00:52:57.240 --> 00:52:58.542
Here we are with the principles

00:52:58.608 --> 00:53:00.744
and the values going to jail
to Santa Rita

00:53:00.810 --> 00:53:02.946
sitting in there for 45 days,

00:53:03.013 --> 00:53:05.949
but I thought what was interesting
is that of all the women arrested

00:53:06.016 --> 00:53:08.885
on December of 1967
I was the only woman of color.

00:53:09.686 --> 00:53:12.122
But all the women who were
in Santa Rita at that time

00:53:12.188 --> 00:53:15.525
99% of them were black women,
and as the only black woman

00:53:15.592 --> 00:53:17.827
I felt more of an affinity with them,

00:53:17.894 --> 00:53:18.962
and they came up to me

00:53:19.029 --> 00:53:21.831
and said, well, why are you here?
And we said we committed

00:53:21.898 --> 00:53:24.234
nonviolent, direct action,
whatever the word,

00:53:24.434 --> 00:53:26.703
and the minute I said
because of the war in Vietnam

00:53:26.803 --> 00:53:31.308
they went like this, oh my gosh,
my husband, my boyfriend,

00:53:31.374 --> 00:53:34.344
my partner, they went before
the judge and the judge

00:53:34.411 --> 00:53:36.880
said to them you have two options
you're going to go to jail

00:53:36.947 --> 00:53:38.682
or you go to Vietnam

00:53:38.748 --> 00:53:43.553
and because of that common experience
of their men going off to Vietnam

00:53:43.620 --> 00:53:45.989
and us sitting in it against it
they all went

00:53:46.056 --> 00:53:48.191
oh, so now we have
a better understanding

00:53:48.291 --> 00:53:49.559
of why you're here.

00:53:50.293 --> 00:53:52.529
But Dr. King came and visited Joan

00:53:52.596 --> 00:53:55.198
and when they heard
the Dr. King was that Santa Rita

00:53:55.298 --> 00:53:56.866
for the reason
why we were all there

00:53:56.933 --> 00:53:59.336
they went, now we really
really get it and understand

00:53:59.502 --> 00:54:02.472
and then we just sort of bonded
with all the women

00:54:02.539 --> 00:54:04.174
who had sat in,
but I think it was

00:54:04.341 --> 00:54:06.743
an aha moment for those of us
too young to have been

00:54:06.810 --> 00:54:09.746
in the civil rights movement,
but here we are anti-Vietnam

00:54:09.813 --> 00:54:12.115
and King seems to be that
common denominator

00:54:12.215 --> 00:54:14.484
and factor, and Joan was too.

00:54:14.751 --> 00:54:16.720
I've just had the opportunity

00:54:16.786 --> 00:54:21.324
of visiting my very dear
friend Joan Baez

00:54:21.558 --> 00:54:24.694
as an expression
of my appreciation

00:54:24.794 --> 00:54:27.197
for what they are doing
for the peace movement

00:54:27.264 --> 00:54:31.034
and for what they have done
for the civil rights movement,

00:54:31.101 --> 00:54:34.337
and we must continue
to follow the dictates

00:54:34.404 --> 00:54:40.143
of our conscience even if that
means breaking unjust laws.

00:54:40.443 --> 00:54:44.047
[applause]

00:54:47.350 --> 00:54:51.321
[applause]

00:54:53.523 --> 00:55:02.298
[Amazing Grace playing]

00:55:02.599 --> 00:55:05.301
Dr. Martin Luther King,
39 years old,

00:55:05.368 --> 00:55:07.037
and a Nobel Peace Prize winner

00:55:07.137 --> 00:55:09.406
and the leader
of the nonviolent civil rights movement

00:55:09.506 --> 00:55:12.075
in the United States
was assassinated in Memphis tonight.

00:55:12.842 --> 00:55:15.578
Again we are made to look like
a nation of killers at a time

00:55:15.645 --> 00:55:17.881
when our detractors
and unbridled critics

00:55:17.981 --> 00:55:21.818
and adversaries had already
advanced that damaging assertion.

00:55:22.752 --> 00:55:25.455
The perpetrator of this deed
brings down upon all of us

00:55:25.588 --> 00:55:28.658
the painful charge
that we Americans are prisoners

00:55:28.725 --> 00:55:30.927
of violence and destruction
and death.

00:55:31.461 --> 00:55:32.762
You know what he stood for?

00:55:33.463 --> 00:55:34.464
Yes.

00:55:36.132 --> 00:55:38.802
He stood for non-violence and peace

00:55:39.202 --> 00:55:41.338
for all men of all kinds.

00:55:41.838 --> 00:55:44.507
- Do you believe in that?
- Yes, I do.

00:55:45.342 --> 00:55:56.986
[Amazing Grace playing]

00:55:57.354 --> 00:56:01.424
[military drums playing]

00:56:01.558 --> 00:56:04.060
Let me answer about human lives.

00:56:04.160 --> 00:56:07.931
I have been trying to end the war
in Vietnam from '62

00:56:07.997 --> 00:56:11.034
when I joined the peace movement
and I’ve quadrupled my efforts.

00:56:11.101 --> 00:56:14.003
My whole purpose
is to save both Vietnamese lives

00:56:14.070 --> 00:56:16.573
an American lives.
And I've assumed from the beginning

00:56:16.740 --> 00:56:19.642
that every American death
and every Vietnamese death

00:56:19.743 --> 00:56:21.811
was a funeral death
and that the only way

00:56:21.878 --> 00:56:23.480
to end this is to end the war.

00:56:25.415 --> 00:56:26.850
Dr. Benjamin Spock

00:56:27.016 --> 00:56:29.452
and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin

00:56:29.552 --> 00:56:32.021
urges young men to turn in
their draft cards.

00:56:32.722 --> 00:56:36.559
Indictments handed down earlier
this month charged Coffin, Spock

00:56:36.626 --> 00:56:40.730
and three others with conspiring
to counsel and aid young men

00:56:40.797 --> 00:56:42.265
to evade the draft.

00:56:42.632 --> 00:56:45.368
One of the last things Martin Luther
King did was sign a statement saying

00:56:45.435 --> 00:56:47.637
he's equally guilty too
and he should be indicted.

00:56:47.804 --> 00:56:50.240
Wow, they're going after people
like Spock

00:56:50.540 --> 00:56:53.877
and they have no qualms about arresting
a famous pediatrician,

00:56:53.943 --> 00:56:55.145
a baby doctor.

00:56:55.378 --> 00:56:58.515
They're upping the whole
level of pursuit and repression.

00:56:58.815 --> 00:57:01.317
He was the best-known
baby doctor in America.

00:57:01.885 --> 00:57:03.186
Ge had been in the navy,

00:57:03.253 --> 00:57:04.954
he's been in the Olympic.

00:57:05.155 --> 00:57:07.891
- How many copies has your book sold?
- 21 million

00:57:08.024 --> 00:57:09.659
in 22 years.

00:57:09.726 --> 00:57:11.294
Oh, you had a bad year?

00:57:11.394 --> 00:57:12.829
[laughter]

00:57:13.463 --> 00:57:14.764
I was baffled as to why

00:57:14.831 --> 00:57:16.666
the government wanted to tangle
with him.

00:57:16.933 --> 00:57:19.569
It legitimized opposition to the war.

00:57:19.636 --> 00:57:21.905
If anything had
incited more resistance.

00:57:26.376 --> 00:57:30.280
Catholic priests seized
Selective Service files

00:57:30.380 --> 00:57:32.949
and brought those files out
onto this parking lot

00:57:33.016 --> 00:57:34.217
and then burned them.

00:57:34.751 --> 00:57:37.987
We make our prayer in the name
of that God who's name is peace,

00:57:38.555 --> 00:57:43.593
and decency and unity and love, amen.

00:57:43.860 --> 00:57:45.995
I went into a draft
board in Catonsville

00:57:46.062 --> 00:57:49.599
I moved about 300 draft files
and burned them

00:57:49.666 --> 00:57:53.303
with homemade napalm
under the utterly absurd

00:57:53.369 --> 00:57:58.908
and totally un-American assumption that
it is better to burn papers than children.

00:58:00.310 --> 00:58:02.879
What the Americans
and the others are doing actually

00:58:02.946 --> 00:58:06.082
takes the whole question
of the draft and war away

00:58:06.149 --> 00:58:09.786
from college-aged males
who were subject

00:58:09.853 --> 00:58:12.322
to the Selective Service System
and really created the opportunity

00:58:12.388 --> 00:58:14.624
where anyone could participate.

00:58:16.860 --> 00:58:21.631
I believe we are in such times
as make it increasingly impossible

00:58:21.698 --> 00:58:25.134
for Christians to obey the law.

00:58:26.636 --> 00:58:32.542
We have chosen to be powerless
criminals in a time of criminal power.

00:58:34.410 --> 00:58:36.679
People were going to prison,
people were putting their lives

00:58:36.746 --> 00:58:39.549
on the line and we were
eager for that.

00:58:39.682 --> 00:58:42.619
We were in protests, we were in
opposition to this war

00:58:42.685 --> 00:58:44.554
and we wanted to make ourselves
known.

00:58:45.054 --> 00:58:47.490
I mean, we were escalating,
yeah, we were ready

00:58:47.557 --> 00:58:48.892
to take it a step further.

00:58:49.125 --> 00:58:51.661
And he told me, Joe,
we've been out there

00:58:51.728 --> 00:58:55.365
once or twice a week every week
for about five months

00:58:55.431 --> 00:58:59.736
and we just decided one morning
this is going to stop.

00:59:00.003 --> 00:59:03.172
We grabbed the baskets and headed out
the side door,

00:59:03.239 --> 00:59:06.509
headed down the alley around the corner
and took the baskets

00:59:06.576 --> 00:59:09.646
and put napalm on them,
just simply gasoline and soap,

00:59:09.812 --> 00:59:12.515
and lit a match and there they went.

00:59:13.516 --> 00:59:16.452
Walt had wiped it off on his shirt
and so when the baskets

00:59:16.519 --> 00:59:18.388
went up in flame he did too,

00:59:18.454 --> 00:59:21.724
just the front of the shirt so we were
able to put him out pretty quickly.

00:59:22.025 --> 00:59:24.961
We were pretty pleased with ourselves
then we were able to pull it off.

00:59:25.094 --> 00:59:27.497
I mean, we got three years,
each of us got three years.

00:59:29.065 --> 00:59:31.067
Just for me to know that
there was somebody out there

00:59:31.134 --> 00:59:33.069
there are people out there
who were really thinking this

00:59:33.136 --> 00:59:35.071
you were thinking this war is wrong.

00:59:36.005 --> 00:59:37.173
There was a lot of us.

00:59:38.641 --> 00:59:43.146
[crowd shouting]

00:59:43.546 --> 00:59:46.749
And if I have done a good job
of anything since

00:59:46.816 --> 00:59:51.621
I've been president is to ensure
that there are plenty of dissenters.

00:59:53.256 --> 00:59:55.758
Public opinion
has already been moving

00:59:55.858 --> 00:59:58.995
against the war and now it seems
to be accelerating

00:59:59.062 --> 01:00:03.566
thanks to this kind of sustained protests
that's led by the draft resistance movement.

01:00:03.933 --> 01:00:07.971
There is an incessant uprising in
this country in opposition to this war

01:00:08.037 --> 01:00:09.305
and it's going to get worse.

01:00:09.806 --> 01:00:11.007
In less than two years,

01:00:11.074 --> 01:00:14.010
1,400 young men
have been convicted of violating

01:00:14.077 --> 01:00:15.578
the Selective Service Act.

01:00:15.812 --> 01:00:16.813
The average sentence

01:00:16.846 --> 01:00:18.381
has been three years in prison.

01:00:19.248 --> 01:00:21.818
You face up to five years in jail

01:00:21.884 --> 01:00:24.787
have you had any second thoughts
about your act at all?

01:00:25.188 --> 01:00:26.289
I have no regrets about it.

01:00:26.656 --> 01:00:28.958
The price looks high but the price
most people pay

01:00:29.025 --> 01:00:31.160
for resisting American military
is death.

01:00:32.161 --> 01:00:36.032
It's become very obvious in the
advancement of the American state

01:00:36.099 --> 01:00:38.801
that the power that
the American state exercises

01:00:38.868 --> 01:00:41.137
is not a power that
will liberate men,

01:00:41.437 --> 01:00:44.273
is not a power that will bring
those men's lives closer to them

01:00:44.340 --> 01:00:46.776
it's not a power that
will straighten men's backs,

01:00:46.843 --> 01:00:48.878
it is not a power that will get men
off their knees.

01:00:50.313 --> 01:00:55.785
David was this powerful figure
doing something I hadn't known about.

01:00:57.887 --> 01:01:00.490
And I think that the whole concept

01:01:00.556 --> 01:01:02.892
of what he was doing
was so astounding to me

01:01:02.959 --> 01:01:04.794
and he was this lovely guy.

01:01:05.228 --> 01:01:12.635
And of somebody that young, engaged
the way he was was very appealing

01:01:13.302 --> 01:01:15.738
and so he got married.

01:01:16.372 --> 01:01:20.176
[wedding church bells playing]

01:01:22.245 --> 01:01:23.646
They're probably a lot of you

01:01:23.746 --> 01:01:26.182
have heard me speak before
and perhaps

01:01:26.249 --> 01:01:28.151
the only thing that'll be
different about tonight

01:01:28.217 --> 01:01:30.620
is that you won't have
to hear it again for a while.

01:01:32.789 --> 01:01:33.790
[laughter]

01:01:35.525 --> 01:01:36.926
And the specific reason

01:01:36.993 --> 01:01:38.628
is that I'm going to spend
the next three years

01:01:38.695 --> 01:01:40.129
of my life in a federal prison.

01:01:40.930 --> 01:01:45.234
T-minus 15 seconds away
from the Apollo 11 lift off.

01:01:46.569 --> 01:01:50.039
It was the morning that
the first rocket for the moon left.

01:01:50.106 --> 01:01:51.541
I remember it quite well.

01:01:51.774 --> 01:02:00.383
[A Song For David playing]

01:02:00.516 --> 01:02:01.717
I'm leaving my wife pregnant,

01:02:01.818 --> 01:02:03.553
I am leaving all those things
I think people

01:02:03.720 --> 01:02:15.431
[A Song For David playing]

01:02:15.498 --> 01:02:17.467
I think people should see
their presence in jail

01:02:17.533 --> 01:02:19.168
as a real political presence.

01:02:20.703 --> 01:02:21.871
Being a political prisoner

01:02:21.938 --> 01:02:23.272
is a fact in this society.

01:02:25.108 --> 01:02:29.145
The last time I saw David,
I saw them driving off down the road

01:02:29.212 --> 01:02:31.080
and one of the girls who works
with resistance

01:02:31.147 --> 01:02:33.483
that put a big old
resist the draft sticker

01:02:33.549 --> 01:02:36.352
on their bumper
and that's the last I saw.

01:02:38.855 --> 01:02:41.290
It was a moment of proof for me
as a human being

01:02:41.357 --> 01:02:43.760
that I could in fact
back up what I talked about

01:02:43.826 --> 01:02:45.461
I'd been going around
the country for three years

01:02:45.528 --> 01:02:47.196
telling people they ought
to refuse to cooperate

01:02:47.263 --> 01:02:48.931
with the draft, and a number
of people had done that

01:02:48.998 --> 01:02:50.600
a number of them were in jail.

01:02:50.666 --> 01:02:52.702
And if I weren't there
with them I would have felt

01:02:52.769 --> 01:02:54.370
like the biggest hypocrite
in the world.

01:02:58.407 --> 01:03:01.144
How do you view this?
Do you think it's worth it?

01:03:01.210 --> 01:03:03.746
I knew that when we got married that
he would be spending time in prison.

01:03:03.813 --> 01:03:07.350
I feel that if he and I continue
to be involved in the revolution,

01:03:07.450 --> 01:03:09.452
which we will, then we'll both
spend time in prison.

01:03:09.519 --> 01:03:12.722
So it's just something that you have to
adjust to.

01:03:12.855 --> 01:03:16.392
Did you have any final things to say
to David before they took them away?

01:03:16.526 --> 01:03:18.127
Yeah, I said I love you.

01:03:19.362 --> 01:03:23.166
No pictures,
no cameras in the courtroom, I'm sorry.

01:03:24.467 --> 01:03:26.803
They instruct the jury
at the beginning of a trial

01:03:26.903 --> 01:03:28.771
that morality has nothing to do
with the verdict

01:03:28.871 --> 01:03:29.906
they're supposed to bring.

01:03:30.239 --> 01:03:32.508
So morality has nothing
to do with law, only the

01:03:32.575 --> 01:03:35.511
gods know what's going
to happen next I'm afraid.

01:03:37.313 --> 01:03:39.382
I really thank my lucky stars

01:03:39.448 --> 01:03:43.853
that I decided as this young kid
who was all of 98 pounds

01:03:43.920 --> 01:03:47.490
when he turned 18,
I wrote to my local draft board

01:03:47.557 --> 01:03:52.228
and I said I couldn't register
for reasons of my conscience.

01:03:53.996 --> 01:03:55.698
I was working
with high school students

01:03:55.798 --> 01:03:59.569
trying to promote non-registration,
and to do that we started

01:03:59.635 --> 01:04:02.939
a newspaper called Together,
and it was distributed

01:04:03.005 --> 01:04:04.240
throughout the country.

01:04:07.343 --> 01:04:12.515
And another informal organizing technique
we used was having potluck dinners.

01:04:13.082 --> 01:04:15.051
From all the high schools
around the Bay Area

01:04:15.117 --> 01:04:17.987
that would come to these dinners
and find support

01:04:18.321 --> 01:04:21.123
because you're just figuring out
who you are.

01:04:22.024 --> 01:04:25.261
My beliefs are found in a deep love
for America,

01:04:25.328 --> 01:04:27.730
for the democracy that it can be

01:04:27.797 --> 01:04:31.033
for the lasting peace and
prosperity of all men

01:04:31.067 --> 01:04:35.304
and for the joys of little children
which forced me to say

01:04:35.404 --> 01:04:38.774
stop the war and the draft,
I refused to register.

01:04:39.408 --> 01:04:41.444
With the glad heart
Christopher Jones.

01:04:42.345 --> 01:04:44.480
Mr. Jones And Mr. Yuri?

01:04:45.114 --> 01:04:48.117
And I defended myself
with a jury so I didn't have

01:04:48.217 --> 01:04:51.454
a legal advisor or a lawyer
speaking for me,

01:04:51.520 --> 01:04:54.857
and this was a conscious decision,
because it was part

01:04:54.957 --> 01:04:58.294
of our nonviolent action
was to speak from our hearts,

01:04:58.327 --> 01:05:02.231
to the jury and to the judge,
and try to share with them

01:05:02.298 --> 01:05:05.601
why we refused to register
or be inducted.

01:05:05.668 --> 01:05:07.403
I've been waiting two and a half years
to have a trial

01:05:07.470 --> 01:05:10.006
and it's good to know finally
that it's going to be over with.

01:05:10.506 --> 01:05:12.842
I really think if we over
and over again

01:05:12.975 --> 01:05:14.911
make a really personal confrontation

01:05:15.211 --> 01:05:18.748
that sooner or later some
judges are going to crack

01:05:18.914 --> 01:05:20.650
if we had enough guys doing it,

01:05:20.716 --> 01:05:21.918
I really think so.

01:05:22.051 --> 01:05:23.753
I'm sure that's going to happen.

01:05:23.920 --> 01:05:25.922
The jurys are already changing.

01:05:31.494 --> 01:05:33.529
There were these cases
all around the country

01:05:33.596 --> 01:05:36.299
where a young guy would be
going to prison

01:05:36.365 --> 01:05:38.367
or going to court
and I'm bunch of people

01:05:38.434 --> 01:05:40.436
would stand up for him,
write letters,

01:05:40.503 --> 01:05:42.138
get in the newspapers and so on.

01:05:42.204 --> 01:05:43.339
I think one of the things

01:05:43.406 --> 01:05:44.907
that sticks in my mind
most about

01:05:45.174 --> 01:05:51.080
the draft resistance movement
is going to some of the trials

01:05:51.147 --> 01:05:53.482
of people who refused induction.

01:05:54.383 --> 01:05:58.754
[acoustic guitar playing]

01:05:59.088 --> 01:06:00.790
And just feeling

01:06:00.856 --> 01:06:04.360
so strongly the commitment
that they made,

01:06:04.427 --> 01:06:08.130
the sacrifice that they were
making to go to jail for a year or two

01:06:08.197 --> 01:06:09.999
because of what you believe in.

01:06:11.934 --> 01:06:16.138
So this is the transcript of my
statement to the court

01:06:16.205 --> 01:06:17.807
on the day of my sentencing.

01:06:19.108 --> 01:06:21.711
Conscription is for slaves
not free men.

01:06:22.044 --> 01:06:24.280
These words did not come easily
but they are true

01:06:24.447 --> 01:06:25.681
and the truth needs saying.

01:06:26.315 --> 01:06:27.616
I don't want to go to prison,

01:06:27.683 --> 01:06:28.951
what man does?

01:06:29.018 --> 01:06:30.553
But it is a risk I take.

01:06:30.920 --> 01:06:34.657
All of us in this court live in
frightening and challenging times.

01:06:35.057 --> 01:06:38.060
I urge the court to accept
the challenge the draft resisters

01:06:38.160 --> 01:06:40.496
have openly placed before
this country

01:06:40.563 --> 01:06:42.031
by refusing to sentence.

01:06:42.498 --> 01:06:44.200
Sentences had tended to be

01:06:44.266 --> 01:06:46.469
two and a half years
and he gave me three

01:06:47.036 --> 01:06:49.171
and I suspect that maybe
the demonstration

01:06:49.238 --> 01:06:51.240
around the courthouse
might have affected that.

01:06:51.307 --> 01:06:55.177
When the judge sentenced Bob
to three years in prison

01:06:55.244 --> 01:06:57.980
there's this applause in the back
and they look around

01:06:58.047 --> 01:07:00.950
and here's this Narayan Desai,
the great Gandhian,

01:07:01.017 --> 01:07:03.085
he's applauding because
the longer you suffer

01:07:03.152 --> 01:07:05.755
the more pure it is in a way.

01:07:05.988 --> 01:07:08.124
It was a hell of a good send-off
I must say.

01:07:10.159 --> 01:07:13.362
I was going to stand there and
tell him I did not do anything wrong

01:07:13.429 --> 01:07:16.132
and if you want to put me in jail
then you go ahead and put me in jail

01:07:16.198 --> 01:07:18.000
and that's, of course,
is what they did.

01:07:19.735 --> 01:07:22.138
I was prepared to go
to prison for five years,

01:07:22.204 --> 01:07:24.507
two years, no problem.

01:07:24.807 --> 01:07:25.941
And I in San Francisco

01:07:26.008 --> 01:07:28.377
where the average was two years
only got one year,

01:07:28.577 --> 01:07:31.280
and it's because I think
we got through to the judge's heart

01:07:31.747 --> 01:07:34.383
And indeed he
and the other judges in the district

01:07:35.017 --> 01:07:38.354
starting reducing the sentences
over the next couple of years.

01:07:38.587 --> 01:07:43.059
I thought that my brilliant defense,
I defended myself in court

01:07:43.125 --> 01:07:46.328
was what could convince
Judge Harry Pregerson

01:07:46.595 --> 01:07:51.267
but he decided I'm not going
to send any of these resistors

01:07:51.400 --> 01:07:52.601
to prison anymore,

01:07:52.701 --> 01:07:54.136
and I happen to be

01:07:54.236 --> 01:07:58.841
the next one up
so he didn't send me to prison.

01:08:00.443 --> 01:08:04.280
I knew I was going off
to prison because I knew

01:08:04.346 --> 01:08:07.016
I was going to continue
in not cooperating

01:08:07.249 --> 01:08:10.786
and several friends of mine
who are also organizers

01:08:10.886 --> 01:08:14.757
and they were targeting organizers
for prosecution

01:08:14.890 --> 01:08:15.925
we're already in prison.

01:08:16.725 --> 01:08:19.628
So by the time I went to prison
I was a little discouraged

01:08:19.695 --> 01:08:22.498
about how successful
we had been.

01:08:22.665 --> 01:08:25.334
It was only until many years later
until the 1990s

01:08:25.434 --> 01:08:27.703
that I found out about
a study that had been conducted

01:08:27.770 --> 01:08:30.372
in the late '70s that showed
that in fact

01:08:30.439 --> 01:08:33.676
we were very effective
that through a combination

01:08:33.776 --> 01:08:37.213
of the courts being overwhelmed
with draft resisters

01:08:37.246 --> 01:08:38.914
and the draft boards
was screwing up

01:08:38.981 --> 01:08:41.784
in the prosecutions,
lawyers were getting more and more

01:08:41.851 --> 01:08:45.254
adept at finding holes
in the prosecution cases,

01:08:45.321 --> 01:08:48.090
you had judges who didn't want
to send young men to prison

01:08:48.157 --> 01:08:49.525
for resisting the draft.

01:08:49.692 --> 01:08:50.893
In major cities

01:08:50.960 --> 01:08:54.130
you had situations where 90%
of the people indicted

01:08:54.196 --> 01:08:55.531
were not prosecuted.

01:08:55.698 --> 01:08:58.334
It was unbelievable and this was
happening all over the country

01:08:58.400 --> 01:08:59.502
but we didn't know it.

01:08:59.568 --> 01:09:00.870
The courts were in chaos

01:09:00.936 --> 01:09:04.140
they couldn't handle it they couldn't
enforce the draft laws anymore.

01:09:05.908 --> 01:09:09.311
My whole appeal was to the jury
and to the righteousness

01:09:09.378 --> 01:09:10.679
of what I was doing.

01:09:11.313 --> 01:09:13.549
Now the courtroom is packed
every seat taken

01:09:13.716 --> 01:09:16.118
we have a picture
of our guru on the front seat,

01:09:16.185 --> 01:09:18.087
I'm wearing pants
that I made myself

01:09:18.154 --> 01:09:20.756
and I've got a beard down here
and hair down to my shoulders,

01:09:21.157 --> 01:09:22.224
and I'm barefoot.

01:09:22.358 --> 01:09:24.727
The judge comes back
and he says case is dismissed.

01:09:26.195 --> 01:09:27.496
And people are just cheering,

01:09:27.563 --> 01:09:28.998
they're going we love you
Judge Curtis

01:09:29.064 --> 01:09:32.401
and it was
a radical different situation.

01:09:35.871 --> 01:09:38.207
But it showed how the times
were changing

01:09:38.274 --> 01:09:40.476
and that people
were willing to take the risk

01:09:40.543 --> 01:09:42.144
and to stand up
for what they believed

01:09:42.444 --> 01:09:45.748
and ultimately you get more
than 200,000 cases

01:09:45.814 --> 01:09:48.350
are referred by
the Selective Service

01:09:48.417 --> 01:09:50.019
to the Department of Justice.

01:09:51.253 --> 01:09:53.422
You get 20,000 indictments

01:09:53.489 --> 01:09:57.960
8,000 convictions
and 4,001 who gets sent to prison.

01:09:58.527 --> 01:10:02.231
It's time for new leadership
of The United States of America.

01:10:04.233 --> 01:10:07.770
On the 1968 campaign trail
Richard Nixon runs

01:10:07.836 --> 01:10:11.073
as a peace candidate,
promising to abolish the draft

01:10:11.140 --> 01:10:13.409
and pledging to end the war
with honor.

01:10:13.976 --> 01:10:19.682
The greatest honor history can bestow
is the title of peacemaker.

01:10:20.616 --> 01:10:23.219
This honor now beckons America.

01:10:27.690 --> 01:10:29.959
The first thing that he does is
he tries to create the impression

01:10:30.025 --> 01:10:31.894
that he's scaling down
the war effort,

01:10:32.228 --> 01:10:34.230
which, of course, is a smoke
and mirrors game,

01:10:34.330 --> 01:10:36.298
in fact he's escalating the war
dramatically,

01:10:36.398 --> 01:10:37.600
particularly the air war.

01:10:38.467 --> 01:10:39.835
[bombs exploding]

01:10:41.303 --> 01:10:42.671
[bombs exploding]

01:10:45.140 --> 01:10:47.643
But he does start
to bring the first troops home,

01:10:47.710 --> 01:10:49.878
he tries to reduce draft calls,

01:10:49.945 --> 01:10:51.247
move to a lottery.

01:10:51.313 --> 01:10:53.248
Get rid of the Selective
Service Director

01:10:53.315 --> 01:10:54.516
all of those things.

01:10:54.583 --> 01:10:57.386
And he's kind of creating the impression
that he's winding things down.

01:10:57.720 --> 01:11:00.556
The reality was he
was lowering the troops

01:11:00.623 --> 01:11:04.493
in order to stay in indefinitely
with air power

01:11:04.627 --> 01:11:06.061
and with some troops.

01:11:06.161 --> 01:11:10.833
We have announced that 60,000
Americans will be returned from Vietnam.

01:11:11.433 --> 01:11:12.768
Their concern was there would be

01:11:12.835 --> 01:11:15.037
greater draft resistance
if the president

01:11:15.104 --> 01:11:19.775
didn't take this particular action,
but by the end of 1969

01:11:19.842 --> 01:11:22.511
the public is restless.
What they didn't know

01:11:22.578 --> 01:11:24.747
at the time was that Nixon
was contemplating

01:11:24.813 --> 01:11:26.215
a ground invasion of the north.

01:11:26.448 --> 01:11:30.919
For once we've got to use
the maximum power of this country,

01:11:31.120 --> 01:11:35.758
against this shit-ass little country,
to win the war.

01:11:35.958 --> 01:11:39.295
Which led him to develop
the notion of bombing the dikes,

01:11:39.461 --> 01:11:41.530
slaughtering millions
of people through floods,

01:11:41.597 --> 01:11:44.433
maybe even using atomic weapons,
this is going to be

01:11:44.533 --> 01:11:46.535
if Ho Chi Minh
does not come around

01:11:46.602 --> 01:11:47.936
this is what we're going to do.

01:11:48.037 --> 01:11:49.772
Now I understand that

01:11:49.838 --> 01:11:52.574
there has been
and continues to be opposition

01:11:52.641 --> 01:11:55.277
to the war in Vietnam
on the campuses

01:11:55.444 --> 01:11:57.146
and also in the nation.

01:11:57.646 --> 01:11:59.915
We expect it, however,

01:11:59.982 --> 01:12:03.719
under no circumstances
will I be affected whatever by it.

01:12:04.420 --> 01:12:06.121
Mr. President...

01:12:06.388 --> 01:12:10.726
Then we had the moratorium,
the single largest peace demonstration

01:12:10.793 --> 01:12:11.860
in American history.

01:12:12.361 --> 01:12:15.998
[Something In The Air playing]

01:12:16.532 --> 01:12:17.966
The word protester

01:12:18.033 --> 01:12:21.270
generally evokes an image
of long hair and love beads

01:12:21.670 --> 01:12:23.806
but today the crowds
that marched and chanted

01:12:23.906 --> 01:12:26.875
and cheered the speeches
look more like a cross-section

01:12:26.942 --> 01:12:28.544
picked by the Census Bureau.

01:12:29.611 --> 01:12:33.382
This was the look of the land today
from one coast to the other.

01:12:33.949 --> 01:12:38.954
[Something In The Air playing]

01:12:39.188 --> 01:12:42.057
Never before has Boston
seen so many demonstrate

01:12:42.224 --> 01:12:43.792
so peacefully for peace.

01:12:44.860 --> 01:12:46.795
100 or so went in with a petition

01:12:46.862 --> 01:12:50.866
asking the United States Attorney
to stop prosecuting war resisters.

01:12:51.633 --> 01:12:54.737
The moratorium demonstration
was historic in its scope

01:12:54.803 --> 01:12:57.473
never had so many demonstrated
their hope for peace.

01:12:57.973 --> 01:13:01.310
[Something In The Air playing]

01:13:01.643 --> 01:13:06.148
Nixon is weighing a ground invasion,
and we know from his memoirs

01:13:06.215 --> 01:13:10.586
that he decides not to, in part,
because the scale of protests at home

01:13:10.686 --> 01:13:13.655
is already so significant
that he didn't dare do it.

01:13:15.190 --> 01:13:17.793
The longer we kept doing stuff,
the more people

01:13:17.860 --> 01:13:21.663
kept joining us, and the more
that happened the more

01:13:21.730 --> 01:13:23.432
people were able to stand up.

01:13:27.069 --> 01:13:40.949
[music playing]

01:13:41.283 --> 01:13:44.153
I managed to smuggle in
with my friend, Gary.

01:13:44.486 --> 01:13:48.157
A movie camera, his mother
left it underneath a cattle grill

01:13:48.490 --> 01:13:51.126
and made a movie about
what it was like to be in prison.

01:13:52.094 --> 01:13:53.996
It was a minimum-security camp

01:13:54.062 --> 01:13:56.098
and as long as you follow
the rules

01:13:56.165 --> 01:13:59.201
and don't get caught
you could get along.

01:13:59.835 --> 01:14:01.603
And you had to look like
you're working

01:14:01.670 --> 01:14:03.605
but nobody really worked.

01:14:04.606 --> 01:14:06.408
The highway that we were
put there to build

01:14:06.508 --> 01:14:09.945
was slated to take like 138 years

01:14:10.012 --> 01:14:12.314
to be completed
at the current rate.

01:14:13.182 --> 01:14:14.750
It was just like they were
going to force you to do

01:14:14.817 --> 01:14:16.518
the military one way
or the other,

01:14:16.685 --> 01:14:19.655
so they put in a military type
uniform on you

01:14:19.788 --> 01:14:22.591
and put you out on the desert and
said, you want to run away? Run away.

01:14:23.492 --> 01:14:25.861
But it would be difficult to run away

01:14:25.928 --> 01:14:27.896
because I mean you'd have
to run across a lot of desert

01:14:27.963 --> 01:14:30.065
and they'd probably catch you.

01:14:32.467 --> 01:14:34.002
But then we start having strikes

01:14:34.069 --> 01:14:37.105
we're always ready to cause
a little trouble, right?

01:14:37.439 --> 01:14:40.375
So I didn't last that long
in Sanford.

01:14:41.109 --> 01:14:44.046
For the next year and a half
I refused to work.

01:14:44.480 --> 01:14:46.081
A block was maximum security.

01:14:46.315 --> 01:14:48.150
The deal there was
you could have nothing.

01:14:48.350 --> 01:14:50.652
So they'd keep me in there
for a week or two.

01:14:50.986 --> 01:14:54.256
It was dark,
there was wire over the windows,

01:14:54.356 --> 01:14:57.192
and there was just a piece of steel
bolted up against the wall

01:14:57.259 --> 01:14:58.727
with a thin mattress on it.

01:14:58.794 --> 01:15:00.863
Couldn't have anything but a Bible,
you could have a bible.

01:15:00.929 --> 01:15:02.965
But there are no lights,
so it's very hard to read.

01:15:03.532 --> 01:15:06.668
So that went on for years.

01:15:08.971 --> 01:15:13.308
I don't want to for a moment
get nostalgic and say that prison

01:15:13.442 --> 01:15:14.910
was a wonderful thing.

01:15:14.977 --> 01:15:17.179
I learned an immense amount

01:15:17.246 --> 01:15:19.081
because I was thrown in
with people

01:15:19.147 --> 01:15:20.782
I never would have ever met,

01:15:21.516 --> 01:15:26.521
but prison is a dehumanizing ugly,
ugly institution

01:15:26.655 --> 01:15:28.690
and nobody should ever forget that
for a moment.

01:15:29.091 --> 01:15:32.661
It's funny, in prison
it's such an isolating place to be

01:15:32.728 --> 01:15:34.997
it's demoralizing in that sense,

01:15:35.063 --> 01:15:37.933
you can't see your friends,
you can't see your loved ones.

01:15:38.233 --> 01:15:40.569
If you're heterosexual
you're not having sex with anybody.

01:15:40.636 --> 01:15:44.106
So it's hard to do that time.

01:15:44.406 --> 01:15:47.476
Certainly prison had
some long-lasting impacts on me

01:15:47.542 --> 01:15:51.113
I had for two years or so,
maybe even longer,

01:15:51.480 --> 01:15:54.950
all the time I was on parole,
I had these recurrent nightmares

01:15:55.017 --> 01:15:57.619
that I was back in prison.
Always followed the same pattern

01:15:57.686 --> 01:16:00.322
the FBI, which had tried
to get me back in prison

01:16:00.422 --> 01:16:03.091
had succeeded in my dreams
getting me back in prison

01:16:03.225 --> 01:16:05.127
and I don't know how
I was going to get out of there.

01:16:05.193 --> 01:16:07.930
That finally stopped after
of three years or so

01:16:07.996 --> 01:16:11.667
and it started up again
when in 2008 when I started

01:16:11.733 --> 01:16:13.702
to write a memoir about
my experiences in

01:16:13.769 --> 01:16:15.604
in the movement and in prison

01:16:15.671 --> 01:16:17.873
and the same dreams came back.

01:16:19.241 --> 01:16:22.244
There was never any time I questioned
the decision that got me there.

01:16:22.477 --> 01:16:24.012
I had some miserable times,

01:16:24.079 --> 01:16:25.547
I mean, it's prison.

01:16:26.081 --> 01:16:29.785
The first time I did two months
in isolation when I first got there.

01:16:30.919 --> 01:16:33.855
Once a week they let you go down
the hall to the shower.

01:16:36.258 --> 01:16:43.432
[acoustic guitar playing]

01:16:43.498 --> 01:16:45.634
The baby really makes him happy.

01:16:47.636 --> 01:16:50.038
He said he looked in the mirror
and he's smiling so big

01:16:50.105 --> 01:16:52.774
that it hurt, he said he felt
like a chitmunk, and he couldn't...

01:16:52.908 --> 01:16:55.610
he said he had more smile
than his face could handle.

01:16:56.745 --> 01:16:58.981
My son was born
four months after

01:16:59.047 --> 01:17:01.249
I got to the joint,
that was tough.

01:17:02.284 --> 01:17:05.587
I didn't think much about
what it would be like for David

01:17:05.787 --> 01:17:08.423
not having that baby
when he was first born

01:17:08.490 --> 01:17:10.325
and in fact it
was very difficult.

01:17:11.426 --> 01:17:15.163
The prison guard asked David
if he'd seen his son

01:17:15.731 --> 01:17:18.834
and David said, no,
and the guy said well I have.

01:17:20.102 --> 01:17:21.136
He had a picture

01:17:21.203 --> 01:17:26.341
in the letter to David and he didn't
give it to him until he felt like it.

01:17:27.442 --> 01:17:30.212
So, no, it was not easy in there.

01:17:31.046 --> 01:17:32.914
When they made the cover
of Look magazine

01:17:33.015 --> 01:17:34.950
they legitimized everything
we were doing.

01:17:36.051 --> 01:17:38.086
That shot was taken when he was
in prison

01:17:38.153 --> 01:17:40.756
the story contained that information
about why he's there

01:17:40.822 --> 01:17:44.393
because he didn't kill anybody.
They legitimized being a prisoner

01:17:44.459 --> 01:17:46.795
in the time of war in America.

01:17:48.530 --> 01:17:49.965
A political prisoner

01:17:50.032 --> 01:17:52.768
and being a political prisoner
was not uncommon.

01:17:52.834 --> 01:17:55.537
There was intimidation and harassment.

01:17:56.938 --> 01:18:00.208
I went to 18 different prisons

01:18:00.275 --> 01:18:05.680
and when I went to prison
my wife was three months pregnant

01:18:05.947 --> 01:18:09.317
but my daughter
was born while I was in prison

01:18:09.384 --> 01:18:14.089
and so we gave her an African name,
Abidemi, which means

01:18:14.156 --> 01:18:15.891
born while father's away.

01:18:18.527 --> 01:18:20.862
You have to block the outside
world out.

01:18:21.229 --> 01:18:24.066
When you caught
in that kind of situation

01:18:24.132 --> 01:18:26.835
you have to say this is where I am
I'm going to be here

01:18:26.902 --> 01:18:28.403
I don't know how long.

01:18:29.771 --> 01:18:32.541
[music playing]

01:18:32.841 --> 01:18:34.910
Time needs to become your friend.

01:18:36.545 --> 01:18:39.014
With your time in prison
what do you do with it

01:18:39.081 --> 01:18:42.651
is to tell stories to pass the time.

01:18:42.851 --> 01:18:44.052
There was life there,

01:18:44.119 --> 01:18:46.922
there was resilience there
that people could still laugh

01:18:46.988 --> 01:18:50.725
and they could tell stories
and this wide variety of people.

01:18:53.228 --> 01:18:56.264
Interestingly enough, Dan Ellsberg
came to visit me in prison.

01:18:56.331 --> 01:19:02.504
He was deeply moved by it thinking
if I were willing to risk imprisonment

01:19:02.571 --> 01:19:05.507
like Randy Keeler and these
other young men

01:19:05.574 --> 01:19:08.210
what could I do to help stop
this war if I were willing

01:19:08.276 --> 01:19:12.481
to take that risk.
He realized not long afterwards

01:19:12.547 --> 01:19:14.850
that he could release
the secret study

01:19:14.916 --> 01:19:16.918
now known as the Pentagon Papers.

01:19:17.352 --> 01:19:21.556
This weekend, portions of a highly
classified Pentagon document came to light

01:19:21.690 --> 01:19:22.991
for all the world to see.

01:19:23.125 --> 01:19:25.193
Its main effect
is to refute the notion

01:19:25.260 --> 01:19:26.828
that we stumbled into the war.

01:19:26.895 --> 01:19:29.364
A name has now have come out
as the possible source

01:19:29.431 --> 01:19:33.135
of the times pentagon documents
it is that of Daniel Ellsberg

01:19:33.201 --> 01:19:36.705
the top policy analyst
for the defense and state department.

01:19:37.205 --> 01:19:40.642
Dr. Ellsberg, do you have any concern about
the possibility of going to prison for this?

01:19:40.709 --> 01:19:43.044
Wouldn't you go to prison
to help end this war?

01:19:43.145 --> 01:19:45.113
Without the draft resistance

01:19:45.180 --> 01:19:48.550
I would not have had
this notion of going all the way,

01:19:48.617 --> 01:19:50.085
but it did put into my head the notion

01:19:50.152 --> 01:19:55.190
okay even if there is a chance
that this will help it's worth doing.

01:19:58.527 --> 01:20:02.464
David Harris was released from a federal
prison near El Paso, Texas today.

01:20:04.099 --> 01:20:06.568
That's a choice I made
a long time ago it's a choice

01:20:06.635 --> 01:20:08.270
I just backed up for 20 months

01:20:08.436 --> 01:20:10.138
and if I had to make the choice again
it's a choice I'd back up...

01:20:10.205 --> 01:20:13.341
I walked out of prison
certainly different than I walked in.

01:20:13.408 --> 01:20:17.479
I literally stood in my house
flipping the light switch on and off.

01:20:17.779 --> 01:20:19.548
I hadn't turned the lights on

01:20:19.714 --> 01:20:21.416
and off for 20 months.

01:20:24.219 --> 01:20:27.189
I think a lot of people
have trouble with

01:20:28.190 --> 01:20:31.660
that separation,
and I tried to stay

01:20:32.260 --> 01:20:36.097
tuned into it and it was really
difficult to do.

01:20:36.498 --> 01:20:40.068
And when he came home things
unravel pretty quickly.

01:20:43.238 --> 01:20:46.741
We both changed,
When somebody goes to prison...

01:20:46.875 --> 01:20:50.912
I was home painting floors,
getting recipes

01:20:51.479 --> 01:20:54.716
trying to get ready
to be the perfect wife.

01:20:56.418 --> 01:21:00.755
So it was sad to me too,
I couldn't do it.

01:21:01.590 --> 01:21:08.396
[acoustic guitar playing]

01:21:08.697 --> 01:21:12.901
I have concluded that the time
has come for action

01:21:14.536 --> 01:21:17.672
Tonight American
and South Vietnamese units

01:21:17.739 --> 01:21:22.344
will attack the headquarters for the
entire communist military operation.

01:21:22.444 --> 01:21:23.645
In South Vietnam.

01:21:24.613 --> 01:21:27.449
This is not an invasion of Cambodia.

01:21:29.317 --> 01:21:33.688
Ten days after promising to withdraw
another 150,000 American troops

01:21:33.755 --> 01:21:36.992
from Vietnam, President Nixon
on his own authority

01:21:37.058 --> 01:21:39.127
and without the advice
or consent of Congress

01:21:39.294 --> 01:21:41.096
decided to widen the war.

01:21:43.231 --> 01:21:46.801
The intervention in Cambodia
triggered sharp and strenuous protests

01:21:46.868 --> 01:21:50.171
in the United States mainly
at hundreds of college campuses

01:21:50.272 --> 01:21:52.874
most notably at Kent State
University.

01:21:53.041 --> 01:21:54.175
National guardsmen

01:21:54.209 --> 01:21:57.312
senselessly opened fire
into a crowd of demonstrators

01:21:57.379 --> 01:21:59.714
killing for students
and wounding nine.

01:22:00.282 --> 01:22:07.122
[Ohio playing]

01:22:11.293 --> 01:22:12.727
Just days after Kent State

01:22:13.228 --> 01:22:17.198
two African American protesters
are killed and 12 injured

01:22:17.299 --> 01:22:19.801
by police at Jackson State
College in Mississippi.

01:22:21.169 --> 01:22:23.972
The Cambodia invasion sparks
a wave of anti-war

01:22:24.072 --> 01:22:25.240
and a high draft action.

01:22:26.441 --> 01:22:28.710
Draft boards across the country
are ransacked

01:22:29.344 --> 01:22:31.579
tens of thousands
of draft files were burned,

01:22:31.646 --> 01:22:34.082
which permanently eliminate
those men from the call-up.

01:22:35.083 --> 01:22:38.119
Four million students go out
on strike shutting down

01:22:38.219 --> 01:22:39.721
campuses nationwide.

01:22:40.455 --> 01:22:45.060
This campus is on strike
to reconstitute the university

01:22:45.126 --> 01:22:48.596
as a center for organizing
against the war in Southeast Asia.

01:22:50.966 --> 01:22:53.468
Within a month 25,000 draft cards

01:22:53.535 --> 01:22:55.603
have been in nationally.

01:22:56.604 --> 01:23:00.642
Within a year over half the inductees
at the Oakland induction center

01:23:00.709 --> 01:23:02.744
refused to show up when called.

01:23:03.945 --> 01:23:08.083
After all, how would you like to be in Vietnam
in '69 and '70 when every couple of months

01:23:08.149 --> 01:23:09.317
more thousands are coming home

01:23:09.384 --> 01:23:11.886
ultimately everyone's going
to come home it's pretty clear.

01:23:12.220 --> 01:23:14.956
This war is going on and on and on
these draftees are more

01:23:15.056 --> 01:23:17.092
and more distressed
with what's going on

01:23:17.392 --> 01:23:20.929
and there was a breakdown
of morale.

01:23:21.196 --> 01:23:27.035
[The War Drags On playing]

01:23:27.469 --> 01:23:30.605
I think also in a very practical level
we created a phenomenon

01:23:30.672 --> 01:23:32.674
which ultimately threatened
the government's capacity

01:23:32.741 --> 01:23:35.143
to wage the war, I mean,
by 1970 they were drafting

01:23:35.210 --> 01:23:37.145
three people to get one foot
soldier,

01:23:37.245 --> 01:23:40.749
by 1970 the spirit of rebellion
that had motivated

01:23:40.815 --> 01:23:43.084
the anti draft people
had made its way into the military.

01:23:43.785 --> 01:23:47.088
I haven't fired my guns they been here
and I like it that way.

01:23:47.589 --> 01:23:49.657
It's the Woodstock generation
coming to Vietnam.

01:23:50.125 --> 01:23:52.060
Killing for peace
just doesn't make sense.

01:23:57.866 --> 01:23:59.768
How long the war goes on,

01:24:00.235 --> 01:24:01.603
how long it lasts

01:24:01.736 --> 01:24:04.339
how long the public
has tolerance for the way

01:24:04.406 --> 01:24:06.975
that it's being prosecuted
those things are dictated

01:24:07.042 --> 01:24:09.677
by many factors,
but draft resistance

01:24:09.744 --> 01:24:13.615
it certainly helped prevent it
from escalating dramatically

01:24:14.215 --> 01:24:15.450
and that's no small thing.

01:24:16.751 --> 01:24:18.953
[bombs exploding]

01:24:21.890 --> 01:24:24.025
Very few, even scholars today

01:24:24.092 --> 01:24:26.361
really have it in their minds
that that war

01:24:26.461 --> 01:24:28.630
could have been even worse
than it was.

01:24:34.069 --> 01:24:37.005
The joint chiefs were pressing every
day of the week

01:24:37.072 --> 01:24:39.074
for it to be worse than it was.

01:24:39.207 --> 01:24:41.342
I still think we ought to
take the dikes out now.

01:24:43.645 --> 01:24:45.313
Will that drown people?

01:24:45.580 --> 01:24:47.682
That will drown about 200,000 people.

01:24:48.783 --> 01:24:50.318
Well, no, no, no, no, no, no,
I'd rather use a nuclear bomb.

01:24:50.385 --> 01:24:51.886
Have you got that ready?

01:24:52.921 --> 01:24:55.156
That I think will just be too much.

01:24:55.356 --> 01:24:57.625
A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?

01:24:57.692 --> 01:25:01.029
I just want you to think big, Henry,
for Christ sakes.

01:25:02.063 --> 01:25:04.065
I think that the anti-war movement

01:25:04.132 --> 01:25:06.968
definitely kept a ceiling
on the war at every point

01:25:07.035 --> 01:25:08.870
through Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon

01:25:09.304 --> 01:25:12.740
at every one of those points
without the prospect that escalation

01:25:12.807 --> 01:25:15.810
would cause and even much,
much larger movement.

01:25:16.511 --> 01:25:18.413
There would have been
massive escalation

01:25:18.480 --> 01:25:21.049
over what there ever
was in the war.

01:25:21.449 --> 01:25:24.619
I think we had a severe constraining
impact which I thought

01:25:24.686 --> 01:25:27.055
saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

01:25:33.428 --> 01:25:37.732
Virtually everything
that people did had some impact

01:25:37.799 --> 01:25:38.933
at some time,

01:25:39.000 --> 01:25:41.236
whether it's a large demonstration

01:25:41.836 --> 01:25:45.673
or a civil disobedient activity,
or whether it's burning draft cards

01:25:45.807 --> 01:25:50.411
all of these things, at one time
or another had some impact

01:25:50.478 --> 01:25:55.383
on decision makers and on the flow
of opinion during the Vietnam War.

01:25:56.084 --> 01:25:59.087
And that's where social change
comes from is when

01:25:59.154 --> 01:26:02.824
I step outside of my usual boundaries
and start to take

01:26:02.891 --> 01:26:06.628
some kind of further action
there are people watching me

01:26:06.694 --> 01:26:09.163
and they might take the same action.

01:26:10.131 --> 01:26:11.966
[train horn]

01:26:12.100 --> 01:26:13.835
The effect that people have

01:26:14.235 --> 01:26:17.038
standing up for their own rights
can transform people

01:26:17.105 --> 01:26:19.440
who are coming with
the opposite point of view

01:26:19.507 --> 01:26:22.243
and that's a critical part I think,
it's the the importance

01:26:22.310 --> 01:26:23.511
of a personal example.

01:26:23.745 --> 01:26:24.979
Has it been worth it?

01:26:25.046 --> 01:26:28.082
Yes, I mean, I haven't really
lost nothing.

01:26:28.316 --> 01:26:32.086
Many people are doing
what I did and they go into jail for it

01:26:32.153 --> 01:26:35.256
and you don't read about them, at least
I was a case that the world watched.

01:26:35.823 --> 01:26:39.194
And if I had went to prison I
would have been a famous celebrity

01:26:39.260 --> 01:26:42.130
I would have gotten fan mail,
I would have gotten credit

01:26:42.197 --> 01:26:45.500
for my stand, but what about
the people who nobody knows

01:26:45.567 --> 01:26:48.536
and their daughters, so I look at them
as being more great,

01:26:48.603 --> 01:26:49.904
I would say, than I am.

01:26:50.004 --> 01:26:53.141
I think it took some bodies in prison

01:26:53.208 --> 01:26:57.245
paying the price
to make it all real.

01:26:58.613 --> 01:27:00.415
It was a lot of time,
it's 30 months

01:27:00.481 --> 01:27:04.452
but I never lost sight
of the reason why.

01:27:05.787 --> 01:27:07.822
We saw what you were doing

01:27:07.889 --> 01:27:10.858
and in our name
and that's what had to be stopped,

01:27:11.225 --> 01:27:13.361
and doing a little bit of time
was nothing.

01:27:15.763 --> 01:27:17.999
Still we never lost sight
of the fact that people

01:27:18.066 --> 01:27:22.670
who were paying the price
were the guys in country.

01:27:23.471 --> 01:27:25.573
And then there was a lot of blood.

01:27:26.240 --> 01:27:35.250
[helicopter blades spinning]

01:27:35.550 --> 01:27:38.920
I think, obviously, we were not successful
at ending the war or the way we wanted to.

01:27:39.354 --> 01:27:41.389
We wanted to end it
on a moral decision.

01:27:41.456 --> 01:27:45.560
We wanted the country to just look up
and say this is wrong,

01:27:45.627 --> 01:27:48.162
we don't want anything to do
with it, we're going to get out of it.

01:27:48.196 --> 01:27:51.399
That's not what happened,
what happened was the government

01:27:51.499 --> 01:27:55.136
said this is unwinnable and we
got to extricate ourselves from it.

01:27:55.470 --> 01:27:59.874
A ceasefire International supervised
will begin at 7:00 p.m.

01:27:59.941 --> 01:28:02.543
this Saturday January 27
Washington time.

01:28:03.478 --> 01:28:08.549
Within 60 days from this Saturday
all American forces will be withdrawn

01:28:08.616 --> 01:28:09.751
from south Vietnam.

01:28:10.318 --> 01:28:13.688
Refusing to cooperate
with the war machine

01:28:13.788 --> 01:28:16.157
was one of the most effective things
we could do

01:28:16.224 --> 01:28:19.827
to slow and eventually stop the draft
and the war.

01:28:20.728 --> 01:28:27.802
[music playing]

01:28:28.369 --> 01:28:30.738
For us ourselves, as a people

01:28:30.805 --> 01:28:33.441
it was important
that we did play the role we played

01:28:33.508 --> 01:28:36.778
and express our opposition an outrage
and all the rest.

01:28:36.844 --> 01:28:40.782
Make a difference,
change, don't stand back

01:28:41.015 --> 01:28:45.219
and just wish you could step
out on the pages of history.

01:28:45.453 --> 01:28:47.622
There are times when you have
to fight.

01:28:48.089 --> 01:28:51.326
[somber music playing]

01:28:51.893 --> 01:28:53.928
They've got to give us that, look,

01:28:53.995 --> 01:28:55.963
I had the choice to make you
had a choice to make

01:28:56.064 --> 01:28:59.567
you made your choice,
I made mine, but I didn't run from it.

01:29:01.936 --> 01:29:04.038
It moves me to think about it.

01:29:09.377 --> 01:29:31.232
[music playing]

01:29:31.432 --> 01:29:36.971
Getting people to do civil disobedience
is I think a worthwhile project

01:29:37.138 --> 01:29:40.708
because it can change
what else they do significantly

01:29:40.842 --> 01:29:44.445
and most people can let themselves
be heard.

01:29:44.512 --> 01:29:46.481
They can stop being silent.
01:29:47.014 --> 01:30:25.420
[music playing]