Draft Protesters Plead 'Not Guilty' to Charges

Twenty-two anti-draft protestors, arrested for "idle and disorderly conduct" while demonstrating Saturday in front of a post office on Mt. Auburn St., yesterday entered a plea of "not guilty" at their arraignment.

The demonstrators, however, did not succeed in getting the charges dismissed, as they had hoped.

But Robert J. Hernandez--defense attorney for most of the group, four chose to represent themselves- said after the arraignment that he would begin proceedings to get the charges dismissed before February 12, the date set for the trial. Calling the charge "flack and without meaning," Hernandez expressed optimism that he would succeed and claimed that the law was on the demonstrators' side.

"Idleness and disorderly conduct is a very vague charge and it is one that is under a lot of question these days," Hernandez said, adding that standing in a picket line "is not what I'd call disorderly conduct."

The demonstrators - most of whom are members of the Boston Alliance Against registration and the Draft (BAARD)--clapped and laughed several times during the arraignment at the Middlesex County Court Building and court guards repeatedly threatened to kick members out of the room. The first warning came when one protester at first refused to stand up as Judge Lawrence Feloni entered the courtroom. When the group loudly hissed at Joseph Mlot-Mroz, a demonstrator who was not part of BAARD but carried an anti-Israel placard at the protest, they were again admonished by court officials.

At one point, Feloni threatened to charge the protesters with contempt of court after they giggled at a court clerk who repeatedly mispronounced their names.

Most of the BAARD members said before the arraignment that they expected the charges to be dismissed because Cambridge police neglected to read the Riot Act or warn the protesters that they would be arrested once they stopped circling with picket signs and joined arms in a "hug."

"We had no idea we would be arrested once we joined in that hug," Jo Swanson, who chose to represent herself, said yesterday. Swanson said the group was never given a warning or told to disperse before police arrested them.

"They may say they read the Riot Act but they never did so we had no idea what was going on," she added.

Swanson, who was arrested earlier for participating in a sit-in at a Boston post office, said she knew she would probably be arrested for the sit-in but had no intention of being taken in by police when she decided to picket Saturday.

Ted German, another of those arrested, also claimed that there was never any order to disperse and said that he did not think the protesters would be arrested when they linked arms.

The man who initiated the "hug," Will Doherty, a student at MIT, claimed that he only wanted to show the group's solidarity and hoped to attract attention from passing pedestrians.

Most of the demonstrators were immediately arrested after they broke from the picket line, joined arms, and began chanting "Hug against the draft." Police then moved in immediately and shoved the protestors into a paddy wagon parked several feet away.

Another group of demonstrators, including David MacMillan, a Divinity School student, were arrested in another scuffle 45 minutes later, and a third group was taken into custody when a fight broke out between several protestors and Mlot-Mroz, who carried a sign labeling Israel a "banditsatanic state," Another man was later arrested for letting the air out of the tires of a police van.

While most BAARD members felt that their demonstration was successful, post office employees estimated that about 25 18-year-olds registered while the three-hour demonstration went on outside.

The BAARD members, however, disputed this estimation, saying that only a handful of people entered the post office during the protest, "and most of them were little old ladies."

Hernandez, in addition to stressing the police's failure to read the Riot Act, said the Cambridge officers "looked like they went there prepared in advance to arrest the demonstrators for something."

But if the demonstrators were annoyed by the charges, they were equally displeased with the court procedure. At a post-arraignment group meeting between Hernandez and his clients, many voiced their disappointment at being unable to voice their arguments before the court.

Instead, they were called up one by one, told to come back February 12, and then dismissed