Resist Newsletter, Oct. 1968

Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Resist Newsletters Resist Collection 10-28-1968 Resist Newsletter, Oct. 1968 Resist Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter Recommended Citation Resist, "Resist Newsletter, Oct. 1968" (1968). Resist Newsletters. 130. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter/130 a call to resist ....... illegitimate authority 28 October 1968 - 763 Massachusetts Avenue, #4, Cambridge, Mass. - Newsletter #18 NOVEMBER, 14 THE CATONSVILLE NINE I shall try to report on the The draft has been stopped in Catons events that occurred in Baltimore ville and Milwaukee. But even before during the week of October 7, 1968, the nine and fourteen acted, it had surrounding the trial of the been reduced to its lowest level in Catonsville Nine. The major purpose of years - by the action of the 4000 men the week's events was to provide of the Resistance (and other resisters) visibility and support for the Nine who for a year have been the leading beyond the courtroom and the usual edge of the anti-war movement. That press coverage. (In other words, we edge is still in motion, still cutting had learned a bitter lesson from the - and its support remains one of the trial of the Bos.ton Five and were not basic commitments of the RESIST signers. about to repeat mistakes made there.) Once again, in a nation-wide draft card Other purposes were accomplished as turn-in on November 14th, young men well. Organizing the events organized will say NO! They want us to stand a movement in Baltimore that had with them - personally, visibly. existed heretofore only as potential. "We did it ourselves," Dee Ann Pappas ·what can we do? exulted one night, "no one from the movement out there had to come in and 1) Call them, meet with them to plan run the show." But the movement out for the 14th. there also came to Baltimore, as witnesses, speakers, marchers, and 2) Join them on the 14th. Invite demonstrators, and as supporters of them home for dinner after the event. the Nine. Even more significant was Find out what they're doing and think the result of what I can only call ing, what they need. Reinforce the the "surfacing" of the Nine: their connection. presence each evening, after the court had been dismissed, allowed more than 3) Earlier that week help them to 2,000 people through the week to see build up to the event. Put an ad in and hear them firsthand. Their lives, a college or local paper to demonstrate acts, and words may serve, especially faculty and professional support. Put because of the week's events, to set pressure on college administrations to a new direction for the non-violent follow the lead of Harvard, Chicago, peace movement. and others in guaranteeing re-admission The Courtroom. The Catonsville after jail to resisters. Visit, picket, Nine were charged with damaging telephone draft boards and their indi government property and interfering vidual members - ask if they know what with ·the Selective Service System. they're doing; suggest that they quit. They had hired a panel of lawyers Tell the press and the television and (including William Kunstler, Harold radio people what you are doing. Buchman of Baltimore, and Harrop Freeman of Cornell) who organized a If you need encouragement, or more collective defense and worked specific suggestions, contact Support together as a team. As Kunstler said in-Action (the New York Resist chapter) at a rally on the evening before the at 135 West 4th Street, New York City, 10014 (212 533 5120). They are full Cont'd on p. 2 ... of experience, ideas, and inventions. Page 2 THE CATONSVILLE NINE continued A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY trial, their job was to serve a political movement, to devise At the time of writing, we are only strategies to help keep it in two weeks away from an election in which operation and give expression to its we do not have a meaningful choice. The ideas, since the law itself lessons people draw from this situation functioned to impede that movement. are various: for some it only confirms The strategy devised was straight their distrust of electoral politics; forward. The Nine declared that they others believe that a better (McCarthy had, indeed, burned with napalm ite) Democratic Party must be built; several hundred 1-A draft files and there are those who tell us to vote for they clarified in testimony that they the "lesser evil"; finally, there are had accomplished part of what they the advocates of street action. I intended - to interfere with the should like to call attention to some draft - since the Catonsville board thing which goes beyond the elections~ was no longer drafting men. At the the building of communities of resis same time, the Nine pleaded not tance. It seems clear that there will guilty, arguing, in the words of be more and more sanctuaries - both on Thomas Melville, that "We recognize and off campus, religious and secular. no crime in what we did." Rather, as The actions of the Catonsville Nine and Mary Moylan put it, burning files the Milwaukee Fourteen are likely to be constituted a "celebration of life." imitated by those courageous enough to Just before the trial began, the risk long terms in jail. In the past defense had decided to ask for a jury, these actions have drawn people together persuaded in part by Joseph Sax's and given them a sense of responsibility essay in the Yale Review (Summer, 1968) toward each other. Often enough, this and Paul Freund's subsequent interview~ newly found sense of community has not in the New York Times, both of which managed to last beyond the event itself: had raised the seemingly defunct the communities have simply dissolved. notion that juries have a right and a Yet if resistance to the war and to duty to decide against the judge's conscription is to be deepened, if our interpretation of the law, if, as sense of purpose is to be taken serious Alexander Hamilton said in 1804, ly, we should develop a more solid and "'exercising their judgment with lasting sense of responsibility toward discretion and honesty, they have a those who take great risks. This kind clear conviction that the charge of of community has been developing in the court is wrong.'" Interestingly, Baltimore. But its development is not though Judge Roszel Thomsen allowed accidental: it took a good deal of care the defendants unusual latitude ful preparation and hard work. It (especially when compared with Judge strikes me that rather than worrying Ford's courtroom in the Boston trial) about the elections, resistance and to explain their histories, motives, peace groups might better spend their and rationales, including their views time developing strategies for building of American foreign policy, he would communities of resistance. To begin, not allow defense counsel to tell the we should all carefully consider (prob jury about Sax's view of their ably in study groups) what the meaning responsibility. Instead, Judge of the Catonsville and Milwaukee actions Thomsen charged the jury precisely as is for people like ourselves. What pur Judge Ford had: they were to consider pose do these actions serve? Of what the "facts" of the case, not the moral use are they? And how do we - as groups excellence nor the good motives of of opponents to the war - relate to the defendants, which he and the them? November 8th is sentencing day government readily acknowledged, nor for the Catonsville Nine. On November the morality or legality of the war in 14th there will be a national draft card Vietnam. Even the government's turn-in. These are dates which can acknowledgement that it was reasonable have, unlike electiqn day, a lasting effect on the building of a resistance Cont'd on p. 3 ... community. --Louis Kampf Page 3 THE CATONSVILLE NINE continued picketing around the Post Office building continued, and on Thursday to believe the war illegal was ruled this became a candle-lit silent vigil. irrelevant. Thus, the jury's verdict When the defendants emerged after the of "guilty as charged" came as no verdict had been announced, they saw surprise to anyone. hundreds of people holding tall white The Streets of Baltimore. candles in the growing darkness. Several hundred people were witness ~ Note on Hospitality. No one to some ,extraordinary moments in the knows how many people came to courtroom when, for example, the Judge Baltimore for some or all of the week's and the Nine debated during the 90 events, but on Sunday night, one minutes that the jury was out. But thousand non-Baltimoreans registered several thousand people participated at St. Ignatius Church. In the course in some or all of the week's events of the week, 800 people were housed outside the courtroom - to which (and perhaps as many Baltimoreans the city of Baltimore was witness. complained that they had not happened Street events had been planned for to be sent a visitor). This, too, was the four days of the trial. On Monday new for Baltimore. Hundreds of Cornell morning, about two thousand people students, supporters of Father Dan gathered in Wyman Park, near the Johns Berrigan and many of them draft Hopkins campus, for a 40-block march resisters, lived with Baltimore through Baltimore's business and families that week. shopping district, on main streets But the individual hospitality that had been cleared of traffic. There of Baltimoreans was not matched by its had never been anything remotely like institutions.

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