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<\/p>\n\n\nSome months after my 18th birthday a letter from the Selective Service arrived in my mailbox. I had not yet registered for the draft, it stated correctly, adding that failure to do so could land me in prison for up to five years or require me to pay a hefty fine, or both. Yikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Growing up in an affluent Massachusetts suburb, where nearly everyone went to college and barely anyone joined the military, the U.S. war in Vietnam was almost as far away socially as it was geographically. Sure, I knew the war was on and that I\u2019d probably be against it if I thought much about it. But it didn\u2019t really affect me or anyone I knew. However, with the threat of prison as an alternative, I headed to the closest draft board office, signed up, and soon was issued a draft card.<\/p>\n\n\n
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The memories came back as I read \u201cI Refuse to Kill: My Path to Nonviolent Action in the 1960s,\u201d an engaging new memoir<\/a> by Francesco Da Vinci. Born into a prosperous family in an affluent Virginia suburb, Francesco grew up without much religious training and little direct exposure to pacifism. But his psychiatrist father taught that love was a transformative power. And it was the dawn of \u201cthe 60s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like others of his generation, Francesco was swept up in the idealism unleashed by the election of John F. Kennedy as president. While his best friend Jerry talked about enlisting in the armed forces, Francesco stepped tentatively into an antiwar perspective and belief in nonviolence, if not yet activism. Though his parents forbade him from attending the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King\u2019s example and the courageous acts of other civil rights activists helped shape his moral outlook. \u201cEach call to conscience that I experienced planted a seed,\u201d he recalls, a seed that would eventually sprout into an application for exemption as a conscientious objector, or CO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With engaging prose and photos \u2014 many from Francesco\u2019s own camera, which he started carrying with him in high school \u2014 the memoir chronicles a young man\u2019s principled encounters with the war system in which he refused to participate. Along the way, he becomes a skilled photographer, falls in love, starts a peace center, and tries repeatedly to convince his Virginia draft board that his objection to war is sincere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many other men of his generation, Francesco had to become intimate with the bureaucratic complexities of the draft. Exemptions. Deferments. Classifications. Inductions. And local draft boards which had the authority to determine who was eligible for what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The system, which exists to this day despite a brief hiatus in the late 1970s, has evolved since the U.S. Civil War, when the only way to avoid conscription was to pay for someone to take your place. In World War I, members of Christian churches with established pacifist beliefs could be exempt from military service. However, they were often cruelly treated, and some 500 conscientious objectors were sent to federal prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By World War II, members of other religious groups could gain CO status, but they remained a minority among Quakers, Mennonites, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and Brethren. Many \u2014 more than 12,000, according to the Center on Conscience and War \u2014 performed alternative service, such as forestry, farm labor and work in hospitals for people with mental illness. Other pacifists, who refused to cooperate at all with the system, went to prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the U.S. waded into the \u201cbig muddy\u201d of Vietnam, a successful CO application still required belief in a \u201cSupreme Being.\u201d By the time the war ended, Supreme Court decisions had expanded the definition of CO twice, first, in the 1965 Seeger decision to include religious objectors who did not<\/em> believe in a Supreme Being, and second, in the 1970 Welsh decision to include those who held moral or ethical beliefs akin to religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For CO applicants like Francesco, the challenge was not only to articulate their views, but to show that they were sincerely and deeply held to the satisfaction of the local draft board. And since draft boards, appointed by Pentagon officials, tended to be skeptical of anyone who tried to evade military service, it was no simple task. This was especially so in conservative areas, like the Virginia county where Francesco grew up and submitted his registration form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With a student deferment while he attended the University of Maryland, Francesco initially occupied himself with studies and recreation. \u201cMy previous goal of applying nonviolence in the service of others conveniently slipped to the back-burner,\u201d he recalls. But as the war escalated and continued to gnaw at his conscience, Francesco began to contemplate applying for CO status and going to prison if his application was turned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With his girlfriend, Jane, Francesco\u2019s antiwar journey finally stepped out of his head and into the streets when he joined a massive march on the Pentagon in 1967. In the crush of protesters, a soldier whacked him in the ribs with a rifle, but he writes, \u201cWe had reached a turning point in our lives. No longer were we watching <\/em>history; we were making <\/em>history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n His conscience was bolstered by exposure to widespread antiwar sentiment during a family trip to Europe and the antiwar candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. By 1968, Francesco was ready to leave his student deferment aside and apply to be a CO. It was not an easy step to take. \u201cJust because you don\u2019t believe in the war doesn\u2019t mean you have to be a martyr,\u201d his father tells him. \u201cYou realize, of course, that if you go ahead with this, you\u2019ll end up in prison?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While a CO exemption was perfectly legal, Francesco writes that refusal to serve in the armed forces was widely seen as a sign of cowardice and lack of patriotism. \u201cThe aspersions hurled at COs were even worse than those aimed at antiwar marchers: draft-dodgers, commie sympathizers, subversives<\/em>, saboteurs <\/em>of our country\u2019s war effort,\u201d <\/em>he writes.\u201cMany regarded the act of applying as a conscientious objector in and of itself as treasonous. Almost nowhere in the media were COs being supported, and whatever was written about them was almost invariably distorted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost conscientious objectors could state that the light of traditional organized religion guided them. In my case, I was guided by a non-religious but spiritual philosophy \u2014 a set of ethics that countered violence and racial injustice with nonviolent action. I suspected my individualistic religion of \u2018nonviolent activism\u2019 would undoubtedly put my CO case in jeopardy,\u201d Francesco states. He was right: the Fairfax County Draft Board turned him down, 4 to 0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy late 1960s, an estimated 5,000 war resisters and prisoners of conscience were serving sentences for refusing to participate in any way with the war machine, even alternative service,\u201d according to the Center on Conscience and War. Heading for his first induction physical, Francesco thought he would be one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His \u201cKafkaesque\u201d experience at the induction center brings to mind Arlo Guthrie\u2019s tale of being \u201cinjected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.\u201d Like Arlo, when Francesco declared he would not serve in the military, he was singled out for special questioning, fingerprinted and sent away. (Or as Arlo was told, \u201cKid, we don’t like your kind. We’re gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington.”<\/a>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Francesco\u2019s story goes on, through a move to California, a series of appeals, a succession of lawyers, exposure to the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez, marriage to his college sweetheart, a phase of self-righteous preachiness (\u201cobnoxious as a newly converted non-smoker\u201d), and the establishment of a peace center in San Diego, where he led regular trips to the bus station to leaflet young men on their way to induction. Throughout, he describes his deepening commitment to nonviolence amidst the clamor of a changing antiwar movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I won\u2019t give away the ending, other than to say he does an excellent job of capturing the emotions and tensions which accompanied his chosen path. The book is full of dialogue, taken from journals Francesco began keeping in his youth, and concludes with an excerpt from his final CO application, in which he articulates his nonviolent philosophy. I appreciated the addition of context helpful to contemporary readers, like using a quotation from Colin Kaepernick to accompany his account of police brutality during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Looking back on the My Lai Massacre and the Phoenix Program, he asks, \u201cIn our democratic society, are we to remain silent in the face of terrorist activities sanctioned by our government?\u201d It\u2019s a question that is disturbingly timely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the draft, such as the difference between alternative service and non-combat military service for COs, additional details would be helpful, since young men are still required to register with Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthdays. In fact, an effort to force young women to register, too, is gaining traction in Congress, where it\u2019s being promoted \u2014 by Democrats \u2014 as a step toward gender equality. Although no one has been prosecuted for years, the maximum penalty for non-compliance \u2014 even failing to provide the agency with address changes \u2014 is still punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a hefty fine, which has been raised to $250,000. I would have also liked to learn more about the non-lawyers who mastered the details of the system and conducted regular counselling sessions to help young men decide what to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/wr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/01\/Francesco-at-the-Poor-Peoples-Campaign-1968-688x1024.jpg\")