Felon for Peace
eBook - PDF

Felon for Peace

The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister

  1. 280 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Felon for Peace

The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister

About this book

When Jerry Elmer turned eighteen at the height of the Vietnam War, he publicly refused to register for the draft, a felony then and now. Later he burglarized the offices of fourteen draft boards in three cities, destroying the files of men eligible to be drafted. After working almost twenty years in the peace movement, he attended law school, where he was the only convicted felon in Harvard's class of 1990.

This book is a blend of personal memoir, contemporary history, and astute political analysis. Elmer draws on a variety of sources, including never-before-released FBI files, and argues passionately for the practice of nonviolence. He describes the range of actions he took—from draft card burning to organizing draft board raids with Father Phil Berrigan; from vigils on the Capitol steps inside "tiger cages" used to torture Vietnamese political prisoners to jail time for protesting nuclear power plants; from a tour of the killing fields of Cambodia to meetings with Corazon Aquino in the Philippines.

A Vietnamese-language edition of Felon for Peace has also been published.

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Yes, you can access Felon for Peace by Jerry Elmer in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. List of Illustrations
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction
  7. 1. School
  8. 2. Students for Peace in Vietnam
  9. 3. Nonregistration
  10. 4. Draft-File Destruction: Six Draft Boards in Boston
  11. 5. More Draft-File Destruction: The Rhode Island Political Offensive for Freedom
  12. 6. Still More Draft-File Destruction (And a Plot to Kidnap Henry Kissinger?)
  13. 7. The American Friends Service Committee
  14. 8. Travels in Southeast Asia
  15. 9. Mass Civil Disobedience
  16. 10. After the War: Human Rights in Vietnam
  17. 11. After the War: Was the Peace Movement Effective?
  18. 12. There Is No Way to Peace; Peace Is the Way
  19. 13. Neither Fish nor Fowl
  20. Afterword
  21. Index