When I was in my early twenties, I joined The Catholic Worker Movement in 1964. The Worker had a soup kitchen one block off the Bowery in the Lower East Side of New York City. There we fed, housed and clothed people who came to us for shelter. Most of the young men who worked there were non-cooperators with the draft.
Most of them went to jail for that non-cooperation—they either refused induction, or publicly burned their draft cards. We were all involved in anti-draft activities. Our phones were tapped. FBI agents followed us in cars as we went to talk to colleges about the draft, the war in Vietnam and non-co-operation with the war. A friend was arrested as we walked over to the Worker one early morning, wrestled into a car by FBI agents, sped out of New York to his home state in Louisiana where he was thrown into jail and summarily beaten up while awaiting trial. Most of my male friends served from three to five years in prison. When they were released, the war was still going on. There were no parades for them either when they returned or recognition for their particular sacrifice. They came out and tried to resume their lives as the soldiers coming back from Vietnam tried to resume theirs. Both cohorts returned to civilian life changed men by their experience. My hunch is they have much more in common with one another now than the men who sent them either to jail or off to war.