40 TH. Anniversary of Catonsville Draft Board Raid - NVDA Resistance to War!

by Susan - Jonah House Mon May 19, 2008 07:41 Maryland, USA

Slide Show of Peace Presence at Andrews AFB Air Show Saturday May 17, 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monashaw/sets/721576051249...6095/

More than fifty people - including Catholic Workers from many
communities, Vietnam and Iraq War veterans, activists from the
Baltimore area – were denied admittance into the annual Air Show at
Andrews Air Force Base http://www.jsoh.org/index1.html in Maryland
today for wearing "offensive" t-shirts. Most of the objectionable
shirts read "War Is Not a Game," "No War," and "Love One Another."

This year's admission to the famous annual show required several
thousand spectators to wait in line for at least two hours in the Fed
Ex Arena parking lot near the base for authorized shuttle rides onto
the base. All spectators were required to go through a military
security screening station before boarding a shuttle.

While those with "peace" t-shirts waited in line several hours without
incident, when they arrived at the check-point, they were told they
were banned from the shuttle because they were considered a "potential
threat" to security. A management spokesman from Fed Ex Arena,
flanked by six Police Officers told the group they would have to leave
the Fed Ex property for that day. Although Susan Crane, with the
Jonah House, a Peace and Justice Community in Baltimore, told the Fed
Ex manager, the group planned no protest legal or illegal and intended
that their shirts be their only witness, the manager told her his
orders were clear. Further he said, no one suspected of any
affiliation with Jonah House would be allowed into the show and
alluded to the Gods of Metal Plowshares Action that had taken place on
the base ten years earlier.

On May 17, 1998, Plowshares activists Dominican Sisters Carol Gilbert
and Ardeth Platte of Jonah House http://www.jonahhouse.org/ ; Fr.
Larry Morlan diocesan priest from IL, Fr. Frank Cordaro, a diocesan
priest from IA, and Kathy Boylan from the Dorothy Day CW House in
Wash. DC, as part of their "Gods of Metal Plowshares" witness, took
hammers and blood to a B52 bomber on display during Andrews annual Air
Show. (Gods of Mental Plowshares slide show
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monashaw/sets/721576039426...4915/ )

After being denied admission on the shuttle, the group moved and held
a vigil beside a wide thorough-fare leading into the event with
banners that read "War Is NOT a Game: Love One Another."

Most of the group was in Baltimore to honor the 40th anniversary of
the Catonsville 9. http://www.jonahhouse.org/catonsville40/index.htm
On May 17, 1968, nine peace makers entered the Selective Service
Office in Catonsville and quickly gathered 378 1-A draft files in wire
baskets, then took them to the parking lot and immolated them with a
homemade version of napalm. They prayed quietly over the burning
papers until the police arrested them 15 minutes later. They were:
Father Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest; his brother Father Philip
Berrigan, a Josephite priest; Bro. David Darst; John Hogan, a former
Maryknoll brother; Tom Lewis, an artist; Marjorie Bradford Melville;
her husband, Thomas Melville, former Maryknoll nun and priest; George
Mische; and Mary Moylan.

Among those present at Saturday's commemoration were Liz McAlister and
Frida Berrigan (widow and daughter of Phillip Berrigan) as well as
members of the 1998 Plowshares Action, Kathy Boylan and Frank Cordaro.

by irish peace Mon May 19, 2008 09:42

If you're anti-war your methods should be consistent with the violence you're agitating against. The pacifists at Catonsville did a nonviolent symbolical act in keeping with their abhorrence of the Vietnam War and the drafting of US youth into the war. Other "antiwar activists" showed a selective opposition to violence by bombing buildings and planning shooting insurrections. Fr. Dan Berrigan, (Sr.) Liz MacAlister and others consistently opposed the war on pacifist grounds and went to jail for their efforts. Their message hit home to middle-of-the-road church members, many of whom were moved by the symbolism of the Catonsville Nine to get out on the streets and protest against the war. The above article honestly weighs the diverse opinions of the Catonsville veterans and doesn't shy away from self critical remarks. For that frank honesty alone I rate the article highly. I'd say Ciaron and his tiny band of associates are inheritors to the moral power that longterm activists need if they are to keep going and if they wish to change minds and attitudes towards poverty, war and injustice.

by D_D Mon May 19, 2008 10:49

Whatever happened to that amazing left Catholic magazine 'The Catonsville Roadrunner'?

by irish peace Mon May 19, 2008 11:14

Here's a link to a brief mention of the Catonsville Roadrunner. It seems to have flourished for about ten years until around 1975. I remember reading a couple of copies. It was serious, but with a glint of humour. If I remember rightly it had lots of eyecatching drawings. Maybe other readers remember better?

http://www.innatenonviolence.org/billyking/bk108.shtml

Fr. Dan Berrigan visited Dublin, Derry and Belfast a few times in the turbulent years of the 1970s-80s and met community and religious groups, from Derry for example, to advise them on nonviolent action.

by irish peace Mon May 19, 2008 11:41

Here is a link to an online thesis on Direct Action in the Greater Manchester area, with a mention of Catonsville Roadrunner as one of several 'alternative' publications set up to counteract the influence of the mainstream commercial media.

I get the impression that there was a British version of
Catonsville Roadrunner in the 70s, but I think I personally got a few gawks of a US 'parent' of that publication. I'd be curious to get the facts right about this.

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/spire/Working_Papers/Brian...s.doc

relevant quote:

"The Manchester Free Press was an activist printing press, concentrating on printing the community newspapers that were an important part of the alternative left’s efforts to challenge the dominance of the right-wing media. The Free Presses were part of an extensive network of organizations that had developed in the city since the late 1960s. These included a more activist-oriented radical magazine Mole Express, the national radical Christian magazine The Catonsville Roadrunner, which was edited by a Manchester collective from 1972 to 1974, and several offices or activist centres. The most important base was a row of squatted buildings on Oxford Road between Manchester University and Manchester Polytechnic. This was where the first Women’s Centre, the first Gay and Lesbian Centre, Shanti, a ‘Third World Shop’ (one of only 4 in the UK in 1975, Uhuru in Oxford was another), Whatwork, an alternative employment agency, Grapevine – a vegetarian café, which also held political meetings, and Grassroots radical bookshop, were all based. On, or close to this road, were Manchester Alternative General Information Centre (MAGIC) a short-lived centre that had offered legal and welfare advice on squats, drugs busts and crash pads between 1971 and 1973, the by then struggling Claimants Union and the still existing workers’ co-op vegetarian café and wholefood shop ‘On the Eighth Day’. "

[From: Studying Local Activist Communities Over Time: Direct Action in Manchester, Oxford and North Wales 1970-2001
Brian Doherty Alexandra Plows and Derek Wall]

A thesis written at Keele University.

by Ciaron - Catholic Worker/Plowshares Mon May 19, 2008 12:12

Footage - Phil Berrigan's Final Warning (R.I.P. Dec. 02) (6 mins)
Phil, a WW2 combat veteran, spent 13 of the last 30 year's of his life in prison for
nonviolent resistance to U.S. war and war preparations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHabFrICz4&feature=related

Interviews with Tim Robins, Martin Sheen & other Hollywood stars following their performance of Dan Berrigan's play "The Trial of the Catonsville 9" (2 mins 40 secs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2jI465C0g&NR=1

Website Background on the Catonsville 9 action and pariticipants
http://c9.mdch.org/

Photos - Liz McAlister, Frieda Berrigan, Catholic Workers and Iraq Veterans celebrate 40th. anniversary of Catonsville 9 with peace presence at Andrews AFB Air Show last Saturday May 17, 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monashaw/sets/721576051249...6095/

by Jim Mon May 19, 2008 14:06

The Vietnam War was charachterised by three different US military offensives:

(1) Combating the Viet Cong.

(2) Fighting NVA units infiltrating South Vietnam from Cambodia.

(3) Fighting NVA units invading through the DMZ between the North and South.

The 1967 Tet Offensive whereby Viet Cong was a complete disaster with the almost complete destruction of the Viet Cong.
Subsequently "Viet Cong" were made up of NVA units from the North fighting in civilian dress after local South Vietnamese support evaporated.

NVA units infiltrating along the Ho Chi Minh trail were decimated in search and destroy missions by the US military helicopter borne troops supported by overwhelming air support.

Week on week hundreds of Americans were killed in the conflict but Vietnamese deaths were ten to twenty times that number.

The NVA offensive at te DMZ also ran into the sand.
The seige of the American base at Khe Sanh lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese regulars under heavy air bombardment.

Vietnamese attempts to defeat the US military in South Vietnam ran into a brick wall.

The negotiations that led to the withdrawl of the US in 1973 left South Vietnam independent with a strong South Vietnamese military still in control.

The 1974 Watergate scandal, the resignation of Nixon and the cut of all funding to the South Vietnamese military that lead to its swift collapse.

The South Vietnamese military did not have fuel, bullets, shells or food to feed its troops.

China and Russia broke the treaty agreements and resupplied the North Vietnamese.
Shattered and demoralised by defeat at the hands of the US military it regrouped, re-equiped and reorganised and invaded the south.

The collapse of South Vietnam was total and millions of Vietnamese fled the communists in boats and died in their hundreds of thousands on the high seas.
Millions more died in re-education camps at the hands of brutal ideological communists.
The collapse of South Vietnam also triggered the collapse of Cambodia and the excesses of Pol Pot.

For decades following the war Vietnam was an impoverished communist hellhole and still is.

Vietnam came crawling on hands and knees begging for US multi-nationals to employ its workers.

by NPR Tue May 20, 2008 09:25

National Public Radio - All Things Considered, May 17, 2008 Echoes of 1968:

Fire Sparked Push to End Vietnam War - 12 minute

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90...33944

On May 17, 1968, a quiet suburb of Baltimore became the flashpoint of
the movement to end the Vietnam War.

Nine members of the Roman Catholic Church broke into a Selective
Service office in Catonsville, Md., and stole hundreds of files
containing the draft records of young American men about to be sent to
Vietnam. Using homemade napalm, the group — which became known as the
"Catonsville Nine" — set the papers on fire.

Later that year, they would be tried and convicted of destroying U.S.
property, destroying Selective Service files and interfering with the
Selective Service Act of 1967. But their trial made Catonsville a
focal point of anti-war rebellion.

The Catonsville action was organized by the now-deceased Father Philip
Berrigan, who earlier that year had joined three other people in
pouring their blood on another set of draft files.

Other members of the group included Mary Moylan, George Mische, Tom
Melville, Marjorie Melville, John Hogan, David Darst and Tom Lewis.
Father Daniel Berrigan — the ninth member — was recruited by his
brother, Philip, to take part in the action, which began when they
infiltrated the Selective Service offices on Frederick Road.

"We had been briefed as to the location: second-floor office. Two of
the women of our group engaged the women in the office in conversation
as the rest of us went for the files," Berrigan says.

The activists, however, met with some resistance, and a Selective
Service clerk, Mary Murphy, had to be physically restrained.

"We took the A-1 files, which of course were the most endangered of
those being shipped off," Berrigan says. "And we got about 150 of
those in our arms and went down the staircase to the parking lot. And
they burned very smartly, having been doused in this horrible
material. And it was all over in 10 or 15 minutes. The police had been
summoned, and we were found in a circle around the fire."

Dean Pappas, a longtime political activist from Baltimore, helped the
Catonsville Nine make the napalm from soap chips and gasoline.

"For us in the anti-war movement in 1968, the Catonsville Nine action
had a tremendous catalytic effect," Pappas says.

He credits the Catonsville affair with dramatically increasing the
level of activity and interest among anti-war protesters.

"If somebody had told us a year before that we'd have 3,000 people in
the streets of Baltimore marching against the war in Vietnam, we would
have been incredulous — 'No, that can't happen.' And it did," Pappas
says.

For Stephen Sachs, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland who
led the prosecution against the activists, justice was served once the
convictions were handed down.

"You can't just burn what you hate," Sachs says. "The key to democracy
is process."

by D_D Tue May 20, 2008 11:07

Thanks for that 'Irish peace'. I caught a glimpse of the 'Catonsville Roadrunner' myself in !971 or thereabouts. It's format would be still good today. But 'not until this day' did I know that the Roadrunner was English and not American.

Perhaps one of the associated publications referred to was 'Slant', the more theoretical and theological publication of the 'marxist-Catholic' (it WAS the 60s) circle around the Oxford Dominicans. Terry Eagleton was a contributor, I believe. The Dominican libraries here would have files.

An Irish counterpart was 'Grille', in which John Feeny was involved I think. There's a task for our friends at the 'Irish Left Archive' over in the Cedar Lounge.

The official Irish Dominican periodical 'Doctrine and Life' and even the Redemptorist mag leaned to the left in places for a long time.

Incidentally, it was interesting that a Franciscan priest was among the delegation from the Coalition of Social Movements in Columbia that visited Dublin last week. Ah! I think I'll play 'The Rock Machine Turns You On'. In vinyl.

by irish peace Tue May 20, 2008 16:42

Yes, D_D, it came as a surprise to me that Catonsville Roadrunner was an English, Mancunian Catholic response to the symbolical action in that quiet Baltimore suburb; but I still feel there was an American publication that predated it. You mention the British Slant magazine edited by Terry Eagleton, the precosious Oxford don, now teaching in Manchester. That magazine was hoplessly theoretical, had a boring format and hovered in the unreality of academia. The Catholic writer Desmond Fennell wrote a hardhitting article, called England's troubles and the Catholic Left, in the Herder Correspondence magazine he edited during the mid-sixties and castigated the editor for not making any practical political suggestions for improving English life. Eagleton has intellectually gone all over the place since then. Perhaps his book on Literary Theory is the most useful thing he has written, although I read a wry novel he wrote about James Connolly, called Saints and Scholars (1987) which some agnostic visitors to this thread might find strange and entertaining.

The Grille magazine edited by the late John Feeny had a short life. He went into newspaper gossip journalism and published a rather opaque novel about UCD undergraduate radicals of the 60s called Worm Friday. Your comments on Doctrine & Life edited by left-leaning Austin Flannery OP during the 60s into the 1970s are quite true.

These comments amount to a footnote to the missed opportunities for a radical critique of Irish society from a christian perspective. It is a sad reflection on the general mental indolence in Irish society during those decades and into current times. This indolence and the scandalous governance of bishops who did nothing to deal with pedophile priests, indeed ignored the pleas of distraught parents, has led to the current cultural malaise in Ireland. The vacuum left by the dissipation of a folksy unintellectual church has been filled unhappily by hedonist drug taking, alcoholic stupor and sexual escapism - a hopeless seedbed for new political movement. The coming brief recession will provide further cause for hangovers, house repossessions and suicide. Sorry to be so pessimistic Ciaron, but you as an Aussie outsider have probably noticed things since first becoming active here.

by Jonah Tue May 20, 2008 19:46

Viva House - recently used in the U.S. tv series "The Wire", in an episode where Catholic Workers played the soup kitchen staff has always had a strong Irish connection. The soup kitchen has a mural of the ten hunger strikers.

Tom Lewis of the Catonsville 9 recently passed away and a memorial gathering for Tom was part of the 40th. anniversary celebrations of the Catonsville 9 raid.

Photos of gathering on link below...

http://www.photo.jonahhouse.org/catonsville-9-at-40/viv...lewis

by The Nation Thu May 22, 2008 01:09

LINK-"The Nation" Interview with Dan Berrigan 40 Years After Catonsville Draft Board Raid

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/hedges

by paddy pax Thu May 22, 2008 01:31

Thanks for the link to that Fr.Berrigan SJ interview. Here is a quote from him that I think is worth chewing on -

""The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life," he says. "It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base."

All empires, Berrigan cautions, rise and fall. It is the religious and moral values of compassion, simplicity and justice that endure and alone demand fealty. The current decline of American power is part of the cycle of human existence, although he says ruefully, "the tragedy across the globe is that we are pulling down so many others. We are not falling gracefully. Many, many people are paying with their lives for this."

"The fall of the towers [on 9/11] was symbolic as well as actual," he adds. "We are bringing ourselves down by a willful blindness that is astonishing." "

Berrigan visited Ireland several times. How many of the individuals or groups he talked to are still on the road today?

by R.I.P. John Hogan Tue Oct 28, 2008 08:44

LINK - R.I.P. John Hogan of the Catonsville 9

http://www.jonahhouse.org/Hogan.htm

by Stephen Green Fri Aug 19, 2011 18:08 stephenclare234 at btinternet dot com Norfolk

The Catonsville Roadrunner was started about 1969 by a group of radical christians in North London. I was one, and others included Viv Broughton, Jan Hammond, and Eric and Frances Loe. My sister Jill Green joined the group for a while and gave me a complete set of editions which I donated to the Peace Library at Bradford about three? years ago. I am sure they will be pleased to help any researchers. Some of the artwork was original but most was borrowed/stolen from other radical magazines. We used to put the paper together using Letraset borders, GumGum, rulers and scissors, often in the Loe's flat in Muswell Hill. Viv and Jan got married in a wonderful ceremony in a radical Catholic church (in Brixton?) but we weren't all Catholic or Anglican or Friends. I moved to Scotland and lost touch. I know the editorial and energy moved to Manchester. Hope this is useful.

Stephen Green

by Paddy too Sat Aug 20, 2011 01:49

@paddy pax - staying the long haul. Berrigan's comments are spot on. Students and other young people get involved intensively in activities but then move on after graduation/marriage, and fade into the suburbs, usually the leafy ones. In the 1970s Daniel Berrigan visited Ireland a few times. Once in Dublin he gave a public talk at UCD and after it a delegation from Derry visited him outside the lecture theatre, desperately looking for nonviolence advice. He was deeply moved that they should seek him out and went into a nearby space to listen to them privately. He visited Fr. Desmond Wilson at the Ballymurphy Community Center in West Belfast and encouraged everybody he met. He was a guest at the SCM house in Rathgar Road in the late 'seventies and met students and others, including Cathal Goulding (ex-stickies). The Ballymurphy Center still goes strong, but the SCM faded away. One person Berrigan impressed was Justin Morahan, who edited a cyclostyled paper called LPJ. Justin has been continuously busy in campaigns of various kinds in Dublin, and keeps in touch with Peace People and other individuals in Belfast.But Berrigan's remarks about people dropping out early still hold true. Berrigan himself still plods on at the age of about 82 (correct that if I'm wrong.)

by Doug Sun Aug 21, 2011 02:25

Paddy too mentions the SCM house in Rathgar Road. That was a student christian group who made office space available during the latter part of the Seventies for a Resource Centre. The Resource Centre was used by several campaigning groups including women's awareness groups, anti-nuclear power activists and a prison reform group. A pacifist magazine called Dawn was often published from there but also sometimes from an address in Belfast. Some anarchists brought out early cyclostyled copies of an environment mag called Contaminated Crow, using the same facilities.I don't know when the SCM moved from that place, but Dawn mag ceased publication about 1984 after ten years of appearing. Veterans from that mag still publish an informative newsletter on peace, human rights, environmental and other concerns. It's called Innate News for some reason, and there is a website somewhere.Daniel Berrigan SJ was a prominent US antiwar and civil rights campaigner during the 1960s onwards and he certainly inspired students and others in many countries. Does anyone know where he is nowadays?

by Ciaron - Giuseepe Conlon House, London Catholic Worker Sun Aug 21, 2011 19:12

I attended an SCM conference in Ireland in the Christmas of '79.  Met the Dawn folks there.In '87 & '90 I lived with Philip Berrigan at Jonah House Baltimore http://www.jonahhouse.org/for approx a year leading up to GUlf War 1. Dan a Jesuit, was a regular visitor from NYC.He did a benefit gig for us in NYC as we headed to trial in Syracuse '91 for damaging a B52 Bomber on the eve of Gulf War 1. Dan had also advised and acted in "The Mission" where he connected with a young Liam Neesen.Dan spoke in Dublin in July 02 at an event organised by Afri and Catholic Worker.Dan is now 90 living on the lower east side of NYC. In relatively good health.Phil died in the Dec of 02.  Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" who was with Phil when he died has produced a number of radio programs. See here....http://www.democracynow.org/features/philip_berrigan

by Philip Kellingley - Catonsville Roadrunner Sun Mar 17, 2013 18:39 fpdesigns at gmail dot com

I was the 'business manager' of the Catonsville Roadrunner for a few months at the end of (I think) 1969. At that time I lived with Viv and Jan in their flat round the corner from Mornington Crescent tube station. We gathered material for the paper from other 'underground' magazines and from radical Christians who sent us news. Sadly, I moved away from London early in 1970 and lost touch with them.

I remember we had a fund raiser concert in Friends House in London with Suzanne Harris (who had been arrested for singing "Go Out and Multiply - Are You Sure That's What God Said?" in Moscow) and Sidney Carter, amongst others.

Further to previous notes - CR was a UK publication, not an American one, but we did use a lot of American artwork on the covers. I believe the artist used most was Cobb, who seemed prolific in 'underground' magazines at the time.