50th Anniversary of Catsonville 9

On May 17, 1968, 9 Catholic peaceniks burned hundreds of draft files protesting the American War against Vietnam, thereby saving lives of American workingclass men who were about to be drafted.

See "50 Years Later the Spirit Still Lives On" by Frida Berrigan, 5/17/18 at
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/17/50-years-later-spirit-catonsville-nine-lives

If you do not remember this, please be sure to read this tribute as it is the heritage we defend as we continue the struggle for peace, labor, equality and the environment. While it is true the opposition to the War Against Vietnam had finally become widespread in 1968, it still took a great deal of courage to do something like that in a society filled with anti-Communism and racism.

Best segment: "And then there were the friends, fellow community members — people as close as family. One was a young mother on Long Island, raising five boys. On May 17, 1968, she was sitting in her kitchen, listening to the radio, busy with some household task. The news announcer reported that nine Catholic antiwar activists were arrested after destroying draft records. She was a devoted Catholic, and this was an action involving two priests, a brother, a former priest, a former nun and four lay people. “I was sitting down, and I stood up. I haven’t sat down since,” she said."

We need far more people to stand up and fight back. We are faced with poverty as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and getting worse daily. The Catsonville 9 were part of a huge peace movement that was on every college campus to oppose the draft and in every big city, and an outgrowth of the massive civil rights movement that preceded it, all based on the relative prosperity won by labor organizing of the 1930s and 1940s. We need to see thousands of people at every demonstration because they all matter. They say cut back; we say fight back!