1968, 2008: ‘Wars Don’t Die’-Survivors of Catonsville Nine mark anniversary with a protest

1968, 2008: ‘Wars Don’t Die’
Survivors of Catonsville Nine mark anniversary with a protest
by Timothy B. Wheeler


Forty years ago today, nine Catholic men and women - three of them priests - walked into a military draft office in Catonsville and seized the records of hundreds of young men likely to be summoned to fight in Vietnam.


They burned the papers in the parking lot, using homemade napalm to start the blaze. As the flames rose, the nine solemnly recited the Lord’s Prayer and stood around waiting for the police to arrest them.

That day in the turbulent spring of 1968, the Catonsville Nine, as they became known, put the quiet Baltimore suburb on the map in a growing nationwide protest against the Vietnam War. The band of activists - whose dramatic trial drew hundreds of antiwar protesters to Baltimore that fall - inspired similar disruptions of draft offices around the country.

The Catonsville Nine also provoked an intense debate, one that has resonated across the decades as Americans challenge another unpopular war - this time in Iraq.

“I think what people are seeing is that the wars don’t die,” said one of group’s leaders, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, now 87 and living in New York. He and his late brother Philip, also a priest at the time, became prominent figures in the peace and social justice movements.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/17/9028/

http://c9.mdch.org/

... "We use napalm on these draft records because napalm has burned people to death in Vietnam," read the press statement. In the basement of a Baltimore rowhouse, members of the support team .. concocted napalm out of Ivory soap flakes and gasoline, using a recipe adapted from the US Special Forces Handbook. With the press alerted and the nine participants thoroughly briefed, they set out for Catonsville about noon on May 17, 1968 ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=4

... Outside in the parking lot, the files were spilled on the ground, doused with homemade napalm, and ignited ... "We do this because everything else has failed," said one. After a short time, five police officers arrived, arrested the participants, and loaded them into the back of a paddy wagon. Meanwhile Baltimore County firefighters put out the fire. The entire action took less than fifteen minutes ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=2

... On the trial's opening day, hundreds of protestors assembled in Wyman Park near the Johns Hopkins University campus and began a three-mile march to the War Memorial Plaza across from the Post Office building where the trial was being held ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=22

... several hundred police in full riot gear surrounded the Post Office ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=21

... The prosecution called only two witnesses, .. both Selective Service employees working the day of the raid. The defense called no witnesses, but the defendants were allowed to speak of their personal convictions and experiences ... "I wanted to do a tiny bit to stop the machine of death I saw moving," said David Darst ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=23

... Appeals exhausted, the Melvilles and John Hogan went to jail. David Darst died in a car accident before he could serve his sentence. Mary Moylan, George Mische, Tom Lewis, and Daniel and Phil Berrigan decided not to cooperate and went underground. Philip turned himself in at a Manhattan church in April 1969, but Daniel remained at large until August, when the FBI caught up with him at the Block Island home of theologian William Stringfellow. In May, Mische was captured by the in FBI in Chicago. Moylan, never captured, surrendered in 1978 ... http://c9.mdch.org/page.cfm?ID=25

I think this is really, really, REALLY true. I thought the same about Cindy Sheehan's actions during some of the darkest hours of this war. A few people burning Draft records, or dogging Bush with the question, "Why did my son die?", cannot stop the war machine, but they can save souls--provide a "moral compass," remind us of our humanity and of the horror of war, remind of the law and of the wrongness of unjust war, hearten people of conscience, hearten dissenters and resisters, help the young in their difficult decisions about participating in war, teach everyone in the society that there are better ways for our country to conduct itself in the world, and, above, HEARTEN the good and the just--the MAJORITY--who may get demoralized, and feel disempowered, when such a vast injustice as the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, is perpetrated by the government of a so-called democratic country.

Literally a candle lit in the darkness--against fear and oppression. That's what anti-war protests have mostly been about. And although the Catonsville 9's action, and those of tens of thousands of other protesters in the 1960s, didn't stop that heinous war, they did accomplish, a) staying Nixon's hand as to nuking Vietnam; b) saving the lives of those who resisted the Draft and went into hiding or fled; c) prevented war for many years--more than a decade--as people absorbed "the lessons of Vietnam"; d) prompted Congress to forbid the Reagan war on Nicaragua (enforcing the law was the problem--only a few were punished, and Reagan got away scot free).

What the '60s protests didn't do--and perhaps couldn't do--was lead to dismantling of the "military-industrial complex," which should have been done after WW II, and when it was not, most surely after Vietnam, one of the most monstrous injustices our government has ever committed--TWO MILLION PEOPLE slaughtered in Southeast Asia before it was over. This was clearly a symptom of out-of-control war profiteers. They laid back. They did "little wars" --the outrageously illegal war on Nicaragua, specifically forbidden by Congress; Grenada, Panama; wars we didn't know about (slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala, with Reagan's direct complicity); then the contrivance of Gulf War I. Gradually they made a comeback, with bigger and bigger wars--until the war profiteers and global corporate predators seeking oil now run our government.

One more thing the Vietnam era protests did. When Bush started the drumbeat for a major, and extremely unjust, war on Iraq, on the eve of the invasion, FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed it (Feb. '03, NYT poll; other polls 54-55%). They had "learned the lessons of Vietnam." They did not believe Bush that Iraq was a threat. 56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). It has now grown to a whopping, epochal antiwar majority of 70%. And the discrepancy between that overwhelming revulsion at unjust war, among the American people, and the actions of our government (including, until very recently, Congress) perpetrating and continually funding a war that has unjustly taken 1.2 MILLION lives, at least, is stirring up American Revolution II: our revolt against the war profiteers and global corporate predators who now rule us.

Actions like the Catonsville 9's--courageous, ethical actions against the war machine--may seem small and ineffective at the time, but they have vast ripple effects among human beings. It can take decades, even centuries, before those ripples grow into a big wave and sweep human society with new realizations of right and wrong. The anti-slavery movement is a good example of this. Protest against slavery goes back thousands of years, and was not eliminated from the world--at least as an acceptable policy--until relatively recently. The creation of the UN, the Geneva Conventions and other world anti-war institutions, in the post-WW II world, were great advances for humanity in the realization of what a failure war is, and how wrong "pre-emptive" and aggressive war are. The Bush Junta deliberately set about undoing all of that progress. It is the memory of the '60s protests--that amazing revolt against unjust war, by an entire generation--that inspire us now, both those who lived through it, and those who were not yet born. We revolted. We didn't win the battle for world peace, but we started it. Those mobilizing against the Bushites and their heinous war policies may finish that struggle, and the young may see world peace in their lifetimes, or they will at least advance that struggle, to be finished by others. It is long and hard lesson that humanity is learning. God bless all those who have helped along the way.

qualifies also. Thanks, PP, for thinking and expanding. You are a treasure, and I'm glad you're here.