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| Tom Melville puts more fuel on the burning draft cards at the Selective Service office in Catonsville on May 17, 1968. (Photo: William L. Laforce/Baltimore Sun) |
Fifty years ago today—on May 17, 1968 in the small town of Cantonsville, Maryland—nine Catholic Worker and anti-war activists made history, and inspired a wave of popular resistance, for their stance against the Vietnam War as they used homemade napalm to torch a pile of draft notices they had seized from the local federal office.
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house," declared Father Danial Berrigan in 1968 as he explained the group's action. "We could not, so help us God, do otherwise."
Source:
50 Years Later, 'Catonsville 9' Burning of Vietnam Draft Notices Continues to Inspire, by Tom Queally, CommonDreams
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