From protest to resistance
By the autumn of 1967, some opponents of the war had concluded that marches were not enough. The spring demonstrations had been large, yet the war continued and the draft call-ups grew. A slogan associated with some activists, “from protest to resistance,” described a change in aim: instead of asking the government to stop the war, they would try to interfere with its operation by refusing to take part in it and obstructing the machinery that supplied soldiers.
The month of October contained a cluster of events that illustrate this shift. They came within a few days of the march on the Pentagon, which has its own account, and are often seen as the same moment viewed from different places.
Draft card turn-ins
The groups that organised the draft resistance campaign, often called “the Resistance,” chose 16 October 1967 as a national day for turning in draft cards. The idea was simple and, legally, risky. Young men would return their cards to the government, or hand them to organisers who would pass them on, as a public declaration that they would not cooperate with conscription. Destroying or mutilating a draft card had been made a federal crime in 1965, and refusing induction could lead to prison under the Selective Service draft system.
In Boston, a ceremony at a church on that day drew considerable attention, and clergy such as William Sloane Coffin Jr. supported the action. A few days later, on 20 October, organisers gathered a large number of cards and took them to the Justice Department in Washington, a delivery reported to include more than a thousand. The numbers matter less than the principle. Participants were exposing themselves to prosecution, not just expressing opinions.
Stop the Draft Week in Oakland
The Oakland event, 16-20 October 1967, was a planned week of action at the Armed Forces Induction Center. Organisers in the Bay Area, including the Stop the Draft Week committee and student groups from Berkeley, aimed to shut down the centre by blocking the entrance, which was a place where draftees from northern California were processed.
On Monday 16 October, a group of several hundred demonstrators sat in and about 120 were arrested, including the folk singer Joan Baez, who was detained along with others. The following day, a larger crowd gathered to block the buses carrying inductees. Police using clubs and chemical spray cleared the area; the clash is sometimes called “Bloody Tuesday”. Protesters complained of excessive force, and officials said the crowd was obstructing lawful activity.
By Friday 20 October, the movement changed approach. Instead of staying put in front of the building to be arrested or beaten, thousands of demonstrators moved through nearby streets, blocking intersections with parked cars, makeshift barricades and groups that dispersed and reformed. Organisers called this “mobile tactics.” It meant that the police could not simply clear one doorway. The centre was disrupted, though not permanently closed, and the week was widely seen by participants as a sign that nonviolent tactics were being supplemented by more aggressive ones.
The Dow Chemical protest at Madison
Meanwhile, on 18 October 1967, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, students protested a campus visit by recruiters from Dow Chemical. The company made napalm, the incendiary weapon used by US forces in Vietnam, and had become a symbol of the war’s cost to civilians. Students occupied part of a campus building, and when the university called in local police, officers used clubs and tear gas to clear the way. Many people were injured and several dozen reportedly needed treatment, and the images shocked the campus.
The Madison protest mattered for two reasons. It drew attention to the university’s relationship to the war economy, and it showed that campus confrontations could come from students who had not previously been radical. Anger over the use of force brought more people into the movement than the original issue did.
What the shift meant
The new tactics divided supporters. For some, nonviolent civil disobedience and refusal of the draft were consistent with a moral position. For others, blockades and street fighting went too far. The public’s response was generally critical; surveys through this period suggested that most Americans disliked these methods even when they were becoming less sure about the war.
Still, the autumn actions made a mark. They helped set the stage for the events at the Pentagon on 21-22 October and for the confrontations on campuses in 1968. They also made young men’s relationship to conscription a central political question, an issue that continued into the lottery system of 1969. The movement that had been mostly marching in the spring was, by October, asking its members to risk prison.