DRAFT RESISTANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Among the many unhappy ways to spend any part of one's life I think perhaps being in jail is one of the least attractive. It is very strange, then, that I should commit, or urge upon men of draft age at Harvard, an act which might introduce into your lives a slim, but nonetheless real possibility of incareeration.

Along with a presently unknown number of young men from various colleges and universities in New England. I intend, next Monday, to delivery my draft card into the hands of a messenger (a member of the clergy) who will proceed to deliver it to the Department of Justice in Washington at the end of the week. I am going to meet with them on the Boston Common at 11 a.m. and from there go on to the Arlington Street Church, where I will hand in my registration certificate and classification card. I expect that many men from other urban areas all over the nation will do likewise. Each man will communicate to his local board his intention of ignoring all further communications from that office. As you know these acts will make all of us suspectible to prosecution under federal draft laws.

This action is not a "demonstration." in the manner of a hunger-strike; it is (in intent at least) a preventative, inhibitory even revolutionary act, in the manner of a labor strike. It is a step toward the strangling of the source of labor with which the armed forces produce their product (label it as you wish).

I have spoken to some people who are sympathetic but feel that this is not the right time. I do not know when the right time will be. All acts of democratic process, discourse of reason, and mass demonstration have been tested and proved hopelessly wanting in their effect on the policy of our government and the course of our current history.

In some vastly bored, irritated, and very non-heroic corner of my mind I know I can't keep my student deferment, or any other relation to the mechanisms of conscription, any longer. For me, at least, now is the right time. Melvin Konner