Forty-four years ago today the Catonsville Nine raided Selective Service Local Board #33 in Catonsville, Md. In the parking lot outside the draft office, they burned 600 1-A draft files with homemade napalm and then waited to be arrested. They committed this act to challenge Americans to reconsider their nation’s often brutal foreign policy. They argued that it was better to burn paper than to burn children. 

The war in Vietnam was not the only motivating factor for the Nine. Similar atrocities were being committed in Guatemala under the auspices of American military advisors and funded by U.S. dollars. Catonsville Nine members Tom and Marjorie Melville witnessed this firsthand and wrote about it in Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? published in 1971.

The state trial of the Milwaukee 14 began on May 14, 1969. (Two members of the group, Cullen and Gardner, were tried separately.) After a 12-day trial they were found guilty. The jury deliberated for just an hour and ten minutes. 

Less than one month later the group was tried again on federal charges. On June 11, the judge surprisingly dismissed their federal charges on the grounds that it would be impossible to seat an impartial jury. Out of 142 jurors surveyed, only one had not heard of the Milwaukee 14. 

The above photos were taken by Gary Ballsepier during the Milwaukee 14 state sentencing hearing. If you can identify anyone in the photos please email hitandstay@gmail.com

40th Anniversary Commemoration of the Harrisburg Seven Trial

Saturday, April 21, 2012, 3pm-6pm, Midtown Scholar Bookstore-Café,1302 North 3rd Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17102, www.MidtownScholar.com (717) 236-1680

A few weeks ago, I heard about an event scheduled for this coming Saturday in Harrisburg, Pa. The centerpiece, in my estimation, will be the appearance of Liz McAlister (Action Community member, Harrisburg defendant, and co-founder of Jonah House) and William O’Rourke (author of The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left).

I remember reading O’Rourke’s book in grad school, in the way that grad students do by skimming through quickly looking for the most useful parts. This was somewhat limited by the unfortunate nonexistence of an index. But I recently picked up a copy from the Enoch Pratt Free Library and have been enjoying it again—this time with a slower more rewarding pace.

Written from a mostly outsider’s point of view, it’s a fascinating sketch of a case that unfurled over the course of two years capturing national headlines all the way. I cannot recommend this book enough and would place O’Rourke’s Harrisburg among the most important works on the nonviolent antiwar movement. Right up there with first-hand activist accounts such as Elmer’s Felon for Peace and McGowan’s Peace Warriors. Notre Dame University Press is re-issuing the book with a new afterward and an index. You can pick up a copy and maybe even have it signed this Saturday in Harrisburg. -JT

The following is a slightly abridged press release for the event:

PRESS RELEASE: 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the Harrisburg Seven Trial

For three months in the spring of 1972, the trial of the Harrisburg Seven was the center of the national media’s attention.

In November 1970, J. Edgar Hoover addressed the House’s Appropriations Subcommittee and claimed the nation’s greatest threat was “a militant group, self-described as being composed of Catholic priests and nuns, teachers, students and former students…whose principal leaders…are Philip and Daniel Berrigan.” What better place to ensure a conviction, he felt, than in the conservative and safely Republican Middle District of Pennsylvania.

In protest, liberal activists descended upon the state capital, determined to educate the populace through citizen Defense Committee meetings, teach-ins, and community forums. Well-known names such as Howard Zinn, Joan Baez, William Kunstler, Tom Hayden, and Noam Chomsky showed up in Harrisburg.

“We drive through Harrisburg with the exaggerated interest of occupiers,” observed visiting reporter William O’Rourke, nearly four decades before the Left would co-opt that very term and Bill Ayers would return to teach these new “occupiers” on the Capitol steps.

At the time of the Harrisburg Seven trial, federal authorities considered the Berrigan brothers more dangerous than the Weather Underground. The Berrigans’ emphasis on nonviolence and peaceful protest appeared to be swaying public opinion against the War in Vietnam, so the full resources of the FBI were unleashed to discredit them. The charges became conspiracy to “seize, kidnap, abduct, and carry away Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger” and blow up steam tunnels in Washington “thereby rendering inoperative the heating system in government buildings of the United States.” The proof rested upon a series of clandestine, quasi-love letters between Father Philip Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth McAlister.

Smuggled out of Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary by then prisoner, part-time Bucknell student, trusted coconspirator Boyd Douglas, the letters might reasonably have been thought at the time to convince the jury pool comprised of patriotic central Pennsylvanians. During the voir dire process, mention of the My Lai massacre drew blank stares, and the reply most often given by prospective jurors to “Could you trust a long-haired witness?” was “As long as they’re clean.”

The defense team—a modern-day dream team comprised of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, acclaimed civil liberties attorney Leonard Boudin and a handful of others—would employ the art of scientific jury selection. Through painstaking questioning, they reduced nearly four hundred prospective jurors to twelve.

During the trial Zoia Horn, the head of the reference department at Bucknell, became the first librarian ever to go to jail in the cause of intellectual freedom. Despite being granted immunity by the prosecution, Horn refused to testify. Her friend and colleague Gene Chenoweth, who was the informant Douglas’s unsuspecting academic advisor, watched helplessly as the tight-knit college community in Lewisburg was torn apart by the spy in their midst. Our nation “stands on freedom of thought,” wrote Horn, “but government spying in homes, in libraries and universities inhibits and destroys this freedom.”

Prodded in part by the conservative reporting of the Patriot News, a new independent newspaper emerged – The Harrisburg Independent Press or HIP. Alongside ads for the city’s then ubiquitous x-rated theaters (always in a groovy font), its first editor, Ed Zuckerman, not only covered the trial but bravely exposed the seamier side of local politics, including what the paper asserted were the “the conflicts of interest” of then Dauphin County DA Leroy Zimmerman.

In the end, despite millions of dollars and countless hours of investigation by the FBI, the government failed to obtain guilty verdicts on the central conspiracy charges. Prosecutor William Lynch only secured convictions on the smuggling of contraband correspondence in and out of prison. The defense team accurately anticipated the mood of the jury when it shocked the legal establishment by deciding to rest its case without calling any witnesses. “Your Honor,” summarized Clark, “The defense insists upon their innocence. They oppose this war and always will. The defense rests.”

Now defendant McAlister, professor Chenoweth, editor Zuckerman, and lawyer Glackin are returning to Harrisburg. On Saturday, April 21st, at 3pm. All four will reflect on the 40^th anniversary of this monumental trial.

The itinerary

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM – Panel discussion with audience questions. The panel will include McAlister, Chenoweth, Glackin, and Zuckerman.

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM – Complimentary public reception and free-will offering for Jonah House

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM – Keynote address followed by audience questions with Notre Dame’s Prof. William O’Rourke, author of The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left

The panelists

Elizabeth McAlister is one of the Harrisburg Seven defendants and wife of Philip Berrigan. McAlister co-founded Jonah House, a Catholic Worker House of Resistance dedicated to nonviolent, revolutionary direct action, resistance, and community engagement in Baltimore, MD. She has been a leader in the Plowshares movement for nuclear disarmament and was the recipient, along with Daniel Berrigan, of the 2002 Chomsky Award, “established to recognize persons or groups who have been a source of inspiration through their commitment to scholarly activities related to justice; have been personally active in the promotion of peace and justice; and are dedicated to a life of simplicity.”

Gene Chenoweth is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Bucknell University, where he served as academic advisor to FBI informant Boyd Douglas.  A friend of imprisoned librarian Zoia Horn, Chenoweth was deeply affected by the trial and will reflect on its lasting impact on the campus community.

Charles Glackin -Tax Director and Special Counsel to Auditor General Bob Casey from 1969-72, Glackin worked with attorney Paul O’Dwyer on the Harrisburg Seven trial and appeal, and later decided to become a trial lawyer, specializing in white collar criminal defense, civil liberties and other pro bono representation. He was lead counsel in the trial and appeal of the Plowshares Eight in 1980. He now practices law in Philadelphia, Pa.

William O’Rourke is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and the founding director of Notre Dame’s graduate create writing program, O’Rourke has written four novels and five works of nonfiction.  His gripping narrative of the Harrisburg Seven trial, first published in 1972, was praised by Gary Wills in the New York Times as “a clinical x-ray of our society’s condition.”

Ed Zuckerman founded the Harrisburg Independent Press in 1971 at the suggestion of Fred Solowey, a classmate from Cornell University, where Solowey had befriended Dan Berrigan. By weird coincidence, Zuckerman had just completed a year teaching English and journalism at Harrisburg Area Community College.  He was hitchhiking across Canada when he got the call from Solowey.  After a year running HIP, Zuckerman began a career as a freelance journalist, writing articles for many magazines (the Village Voice, the Real Paper, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine, Spy, Harper’s, etc) and wrote two nonfiction books (The Day After World War III and Small Fortunes). He then stumbled into a career writing television dramas, including “Law & Order,” “JAG,” and “Century City.”  For HBO, he wrote “Path to Paradise,” a docudrama of the first World Trade Center bombing.

“The chance to destroy the draft files of everyone I had grown up with was very appealing.” – Jeremiah Horrigan

Yesterday was the 40^th anniversary of the trial of the Buffalo Five. But really, the Buffalo Seven would have been a more accurate—if not too revealing—name for this action that culminated in a 10-day federal trial. When we left off yesterday, five members of the group were arrested at the Old Post Office on Ellicott Street. What was not mentioned was that two of the activists involved in this nighttime draft board raid managed to escape arrest. They were Jim Good and Mike Hickey, and the story of their escape, sans pants and tennis shoes, may rate a third Buffalo installment on this blog.  

The trial of the Buffalo Five opened on April 17, 1972 and was presided over by Judge John T. Curtin. Curtin served in the Marine Corps and was appointed his judgeship by LBJ, who did not start the war in Vietnam but most certainly escalated it. This was a memorable trial for many reasons, not the least of which was highlighted by a pair of Vietnam vets and a former FBI agent testifying for the defense.

Having celebrated yesterday with a brief description of the action, some archival photos, and group-member Jeremiah Horrigan’s narrative account, today we dive a bit deeper with an excerpted interview with Horrigan conducted via e-mail. (Unfortunately due to time and budget constraints, I was unable to interview Horrigan in person with a camera rolling. Fortunately, we did get to interview one of the men who got away, Jim Good, and as of our latest edit [under 100 minutes!] he will appear in Hit and Stay.)

Interview with Jeremiah Horrigan, April 2012.

Joe Tropea: I want to begin by asking you about the name of your action. I’ve found that a few of the Action Community raids are known by different titles to different people. For example, the New Haven action was also known as “Brothers and Sisters” (named in solidarity with the Black Panther trials happening at the time) and the Women Against Daddy Warbucks were also called the Manhattan Five. Do you prefer the Buffalo Five to The Buffalo?

Jeremiah Horrigan: Since we never expected to be arrested, two of our guys, Chuck Darst and Michael Dougherty, composed a lengthy statement of responsibility that was to be left behind. (Leaving such missives and later “surfacing” to take responsibility while not admitting guilt for a crime none of us believed to be a criminal act was the modus operandi that had developed in the years following Catonsville. More about that later.)

The statement Chuck and Mike composed was signed “The Buffalo.” There were references in it to the vanishing herds out west. The name had the advantage of being punchy, if a bit melodramatic. When we were busted, the papers followed the fashion of the day and dubbed us The Buffalo 5. This of course gave us a giggle because two of our number, Jim Good and Michael Hickey, had escaped capture that night, vaunting over deadly looking wrought iron fences to run through the predominantly black East Side of Buffalo in their BVDs, looking for and finally finding someone who was willing to give them a lift back to the place we called Houston Control.

JT: How did you become involved in the draft board actions? What, or should I say who, was your entry point into the Action Community?

JH: This is a vast question with an answer I’ll try to keep under book-length. My point of entry was a Methodist church rectory on 219^th Street in the Bronx that was known as Iron Mountain. I wound up there one day looking for a book for a theology class I was taking at Fordham University. To make a very long story short— I fell in with an intriguing bunch of characters there. Ostensibly, it was a mail order bookstore for Resistance literature. But its real purpose was as a sort of clearing house for people who were plotting draft board actions. The man who utterly dominated the place was named John Peter Grady, a pugnacious, hard-drinking Irishman with an explosive laugh and a burning desire to take on— and take down—the government. He was the “who” who opened the door for me. Here’s an indication of how important he was to me: my wife Patty and I (who I met at Iron Mountain) named our first son Grady.

JT: How was the Buffalo action planned? Were there any other individuals, veteran raiders who had a role in planning or organizing this action?

JH: I heard about the action from a woman at Iron Mountain who thought it might appeal to me because Buffalo was my hometown. She was right. The chance to destroy the draft files of everyone I had grown up with was very appealing. I’d already burned my draft card at a spaghetti dinner at Iron Mountain. Now I could effectively burn everyone else’s.

When I got there, plans were already afoot, thanks to the husband-wife team of Mike Dougherty and Barbara Shapiro. Mike had been a part of a previous action; I’m not sure what experience Barbara had. She was a forceful person and was this action’s major domo. John Grady, who otherwise might have had a more active role in the action, was deeply involved in the Camden, NJ action.

If I had any doubts about the action, they were assuaged by the presence of two friends I’d gone to high school with, Mike Hickey and Ken Mudie. Mike was there the night of the action; Kenny was an intrinsic part of Houston Control, both before and after the action. Kenny, for example, had a job and helped pay for food and lodging for us media heroes, critical aspects of any action that got little attention then or now.

JT: Were you aware that Jim Good and Mike Hickey had escaped capture? At what point did you realize this?

JH: I’m not sure when I realized it—maybe in jail the next morning, when I saw the headlines. We were sequestered individually after arrest; incredible as it may sound, I wasn’t interrogated. I think the feds figured we were small potatoes, compared to the Camden group.

JT: Do you recall how many counts you were charged with and how much time you faced?

JH: I remember three federal counts, including the strange-sounding “crime on a government reservation.” Each count had a maximum of five years in prison.

JT: I’m curious about your trial. I’ve read that Judge John Curtin gave you, the defendants, a lot of leeway in making your defense case. Also, can you tell me about the outcome of your trial?

JH: Federal Judge John Curtin did indeed give us tremendous leeway. Buffalo had two federal judges, Curtin and a guy named Frederick Marshall. Curtin was seen as the liberal and Marshall the conservative. I remember being initially disappointed we were assigned the liberal judge. I felt we needed a hard-liner—remember Julius Hoffmann?— to squelch our intended defense (jury nullification) and thereby demonstrate the government’s unwillingness to listen, it’s disregard for fairness or justice.

Instead, we got Curtin, who demonstrated throughout the trial a willingness to hear us and to let us present what amounted to a show trial on our own behalf in which we prosecuted the war. He gave us wide latitude in calling witnesses—they included a Vietnamese woman, a Marine who had been part of a covert military incursion into Cambodia, and ex-FBI agent Bob Wall. We all testified on our own behalf. It was political theater performed in federal court. Imagine a federal judge today—any judge— allowing such testimony in a court. John Curtin epitomized everything good about a justice system that we resisters had no respect for in the beginning. That was a feeling that didn’t survive the trial itself.

In the end, we were convicted on two of the three counts facing us— despite our having confessed to everything. And though we all expected to do time—maybe a year—Curtin gave us suspended sentences. We walked, despite our (judicial) convictions. And yes, Curtin made several speeches following the trial that were critical of the war.

Curtin recently celebrated his 90^th birthday. I learned of this and sent him a long-overdue note expressing my thanks and praising his heroism.

JT: Were you involved in any other actions that you’d feel comfortable talking about?

JH: After the Buffalo action, I retired from active duty. Our son Grady was born seven months after sentencing—yet another reason I was glad to have escaped prison.

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the trial of The Buffalo a.k.a. the Buffalo Five. Late one Saturday night in August 1971, several members of the Action Community staged a raid on the Selective Service offices located in the Old Post Office building (121 Ellicott St.) in Buffalo, NY. The raiders entered the building on the previous Friday morning and stayed overnight in the top floor attic. They planned to spend their time inside the federal building not only destroying as many draft files as possible, but also going through the Army Intelligence Office for files they might take and use to promote ending the war in Vietnam.   

Realizing their jeans and shoes made too much noise and fearing that the night watchman might hear them as they moved about the building, the decision was made to shed their loud swishing jeans and squeaky tennis shoes. Despite all their many precautions—the casing, the exit plan, and stripping down, the raid was stopped before it was finished. Not because the security guard detected them, but because of a tip from an informant some 400 miles away.

Bob Hardy, a member—and FBI informant unbeknownst to his peers at the time—of the Camden 28 action had tipped off the FBI while both actions were in progress. By sheer coincidence, and after fits and starts in both locations, both Camden and Buffalo were happening the very same night.

At 10:45pm on Aug. 21, Maureen Considine, Chuck Darst (brother of “David” Darst of the Catonsville Nine), Jeremiah Horrigan (labeled above as Joe Hill), Jim Martin, and Ann Masters were taken into custody at the Old Post Office. “The contents of three green laundry bags stuffed with documents taken from the government” were also taken away as evidence, according to the Buffalo Courier Express.

Below is an excerpt of a recent brief memoir posted to Fictionique by Jeremiah Horrigan. Tomorrow I will post an interview I recently had with Jeremiah, reflecting back on his action, arrest, and trial.

Hidden History by Jeremiah Horrigan

I’m standing in a vast, darkened office lined with row after row of filing cabinets. It’s a hot August night. I’m wearing only BVDs and a t-shirt. I have to open those filing cabinet drawers—that’s what I’m here for. But the cabinets are locked and I don’t have a crowbar.

Before I can get one, my eyes are drawn to the office windows. The night sky has erupted in pulsating red. Peering through the windows, I see police cars crowding the curb and sidewalk three stories below. The light from their cherry tops fills the room.

Shit.

In the corridor outside the office I hear faraway shouts that are lost against the echoing stone walls of the cathedral-like building. I step into the corridor. No one sees me. I walk to a corner room down the hall. Another man is there; Chuck. Friend and fellow conspirator. We stare at each other. We’re both shaking, shivering in our shared knowledge of failure. We’d arranged to meet here if anything went wrong.

Something has gone wrong.

I look at Chuck. We grin stupidly at each other. One of us decides to whistle. We both try, but our mouths are dry, our eventual song off-key and raspy. The sound brings a pair of cops to the door. We stop whistling. They look as scared as we do. Jumpy. I don’t remember guns. We raise or hands. The cops pull us out into the corridor that’s now ringing with shouts and the sounds of rushing feet.

The cops throw us down on the terrazzo floor. Cuff our hands behind our backs. Their blood is up. They call us a few choice names. One of the cops gets it right.

“Draft board raiders, huh? Fuckin’ draft board raiders.”

That had been the idea, to empty the selective service office in downtown Buffalo, New York, of its draft records. And to steal files from the Army Intelligence office down the hall.

That had been the plan, before it all went wrong.

Or, as events later demonstrated, before it all went right.

Read Horrigan’s full text here.

It’s not easy to explain the name, but an educated guess would say that the Beaver 55 activists chose their name to confound J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Chronologically falling after the Chicago 15, the Manhattan Five (better known as the Women Against Daddy Warbucks, the New York Eight, and the Cleveland Two, the Beaver 55 at least gives some indication as to why people referred to the Action Community as “the Numbers People.”

The Beaver 55 is another example of a two-target action. It shows how the Action Community attempted to expose the bloody hands  of U.S. corporations, such as Dow (more details here), for their role in the Vietnam War while also attempting to cripple the draft. More successful than the DC Nine, who originally planned a combined draft board/corporate raid, the Beaver 55 had good coordination and luck on their side. On November 1, 1969, eight activists shredded the induction files of an Indianapolis Selective Service complex that held 44 draft boards. 

The group acted again on November 7, 1969 in Midland, Michigan where they entered Dow Chemical’s data center, destroyed files and computer tape containing biological and chemical research, and left a note claiming responsibility for the Nov. 1 action signed “the Beaver 55.” Midland police estimated the damage to Dow’s equipment at “several thousand dollars.” Simultaneously, Dow’s offices in Washington, D.C.—the same ones hit by the DC Nine—were also raided again. Here a note claiming responsibility was left by “the Washington 54 1/2.” This note read in part: “Up against the wall, corporations! Your time has come. We support the DC Nine, Beaver 55 and the Buckeye 55.” 

Eight members of the Beaver 55 surfaced at a Nov. 16 Washington press conference held at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church. The eight activists told the crowd of 100 attendees that they planned to return to their hometowns to tell people what they had done and encourage them to do the same. Also in attendance at the surfacing were members of the Baltimore Four, DC Nine, Boston Eight, and Milwaukee 14. 

Another group using the name Beaver 55 in order to confound authorities destroyed Selective Service files in Saint Paul and in Minneapolis on February 28, 1970.

Pictured (in no particular order and without 100 percent certainty): Michael Donner, Jane Kennedy, Paul Mack, Connie Grubs McNamara, Marty McNamara, Jo Ann Mulert, Thomas Trost, and David Williams.

Forty years ago today three draft board raids were carried out in Upstate New York. Selective Service offices in Batavia, Geneseo, and Niagara Falls were ransacked and draft files were removed or destroyed on site. The name for this action was chosen based on an error in reporting made by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. 

According to Jim Good, Action Community activist, after the Camden and Buffalo actions had been stopped in-progress the previous fall, Hoover held “an extraordinary press conference in which he claimed to have broken the back of the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, which was a group, one of many groups.” But Hoover was mistakenly using the name of an action from February 1970. Neither of the groups who would come to be known as the Camden 28 and The Buffalo ever intended to call themselves the East Coast Conspiracy.

“We think he chose that name because of the word conspiracy in it. He was intrigued by conspiracy so he said he’d broken the back of the East Coast Conspiracy and we felt like we needed to show him that that wasn’t the case,” says Good. An anonymous phone call to a newspaper playfully claimed the raids were carried out by “The New and Improved East Coast Conspiracy.”

There are no photos of this group nor of their “crime” scene that I know of. In lieu of that, here’s a shot of Harry Reasoner as he reported the story on the ABC evening news.

In other news, as many of you may be aware, yesterday was the 44^th anniversary of the Baltimore Four action. On October 27, 1967, Fr. Phil Berrigan, Dave Eberhardt, Tom Lewis, and Rev. James Mengel entered the Baltimore Customs House, asked to see their draft records and then proceeded to pour a combination of their own blood mixed with “duck’s blood [from Broadway market] bought from a Polish market” onto the “draft records of men registered in 17 of 26 of the city’s local draft boards.” Afterwards, the Four waited patiently for police and FBI agents to arrest them.

And finally, in more recent news, here is a link to a HuffPost blog entry by our friend Fr. Paul Mayer regarding the Occupy movement. It’s concise and very much worth reading. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/father-paul-mayer/arrests-and-jail-on-wall-_b_1031076.html

Occupy Baltimore is http://occupybmore.org/

Events info - http://occupybmore.org/events

The Milwaukee 14 and a look at our doc

Saturday marked the 43^rd anniversary of the Milwaukee 14 action. This week also marked the start of our next round of editing. Skizz is back from his festival tour for his latest film Freaks In Love, and for the next few weeks, we’ll be fretting and toiling away getting our four-hour version of Hit and Stay down to 90 minutes. I can’t tell you how eager we are to have a finished movie. Deep breaths.

Before I get into a very brief history of the Milwaukee action, I have to tell you about some great news I received in the mail this weekend. It was a postcard from Viva House announcing that Jim Forest (writer, lay theologian, educator, member of the Milwaukee 14, and all-around great human being) will be appearing at Viva House on Monday, October 24^th at 6:30 pm. Jim’s visits from his home in Alkmaar, The Netherlands are few and far between. I will be posting more on this in weeks to come, but mark your calendars now.

The Milwaukee 14

On September 24, 1968, fourteen men, including five Catholic priests and a minister of the Founding Church of Scientology, removed 10,000 draft files from Milwaukee’s Selective Service office at 135 West Wells Street and burned them with homemade napalm in a nearby memorial square. 

This action happened in broad daylight while the draft office was open. You can view it from two different angles here and here.

After waiting peacefully to be arrested, many of the 14 spent almost a month in jail, unable to raise the unusually harsh bail set at between $25,000 and $30,000 per man. The first members of the Action Community to face double legal jeopardy, their state trial was set for May 14, 1969 and their federal trial was set for June 9, 1969.

Protesters marched outside the courthouse every day during the trials. They included Father James Groppi and Dr. Harvey Cox who co-chaired the Milwaukee 14 Defense Committee.

Judge Charles L. Larson presided over the state trial, which began as scheduled for 12 of the 14 men. Michael Cullen and Gerald Gardner were tried separately. On May 26, 1969, 12 of the Milwaukee 14 were found guilty on state charges. The jury deliberated for just an hour and ten minutes.

Judge Myron L. Gordon presided over the federal trial. On June 11, Judge Gordon surprisingly dismissed the federal charges on the grounds that it would be impossible to seat an impartial jury. Out of 142 jurors surveyed, only one had not heard of the Milwaukee 14.

Milwaukee 14 activists (age at the time of action):

Donald J. Cotton (24), Michael Cullen (27), Fr. Robert Cunnane (36), James Forest (26), Gerald T. Gardner (24), Robert Graf (24), Fr. Jon Higgenbotham (27), Fr. James Harney (28), Fr. Alfred Janicke (33), Doug Marvy (27), Fr. Anthony Mullaney (39), Fred Ojile (23), Br. K. Basil O’Leary (48), and Fr. Larry Rosenbaugh (33).

For more information on the Milwaukee 14 visit: http://www.nonviolentworm.org/Milwaukee14Today/HomePage

from JimandNancyForest.com

Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer beheaded in Berlin in 1943 for his refusal to be part of the armies of the Third Reich. His name was unknown to me when I began doing research for Hit and Stay, but it kept coming up during interviews. This is an excerpt of the introduction Jim Forest wrote for a book of Jägerstätter’s letters and other writings.

Human beings have at least one trait in common with fish: we tend to move in schools. When the drums of war are beating and the latest slogan of mass destruction is announced (“for God and country,” “the war to end all wars,” “the war to make the world safe for democracy,” “the war to defeat the axis of evil,” “the war on terror”), few and far between are those who, having been summoned, refuse to take up weapons.

On every side, there are those who go willingly, convinced of the war’s rightness or at least confident their government knows what it is doing and would not spend human lives for anything less than the survival of the nation. There are still others who have their doubts but avoid knowing better — they rightly sense that it’s dangerous to look beyond the slogans. There are also those who know that the war at issue is deeply flawed or even unjustified, but who go along anyway, knowing there is always a price to pay for saying no and not wishing to pay that price.

For many the idea of disobedience simply doesn’t occur. There is the joy — at least the sense of security — of being in step with others and acting in unity, even if it turns out that such unity is being put to tragic or murderous uses. We’re human beings, after all, and thus — for worse as well as better — profoundly social. We like to bond with those around us — to cheer for the same teams, to see things in a similar way, to be “good citizens,” to do “what is expected of us.” Those of us who are Christians may well find ourselves being urged “to do our part” even by our bishops, pastors and theologians.

Franz Jägerstätter was one of the least likely persons to question the justifications for war being announced daily by those in charge or to say to no to the demands of his government. What did he know? And, for that matter, who would care about his perceptions? He was only a farmer. He had never been to a university or theological school. His formal education had occurred entirely in a one-room schoolhouse. Though active in his parish, which he served as sexton, he was not a person whose name would ring a bell for his bishop. No priest or bishop or theologian, no matter how critical of Nazi doctrine, was announcing it was a sin to obey the commands of the Hitler regime when it came to war. So far as he knew none of his fellow Catholics in Austria, even those who openly disagreed with Nazi ideology, had failed to report for military duty when the notice came.

How could so unimportant a person dare to have such important convictions? How could a humble Catholic farmer imagine he had a clearer conscience than those who led the Church in his homeland? And, in any event, didn’t his responsibility to his wife and children have priority over his views about war and government?