Links about the Draft, Draft Registration, and Draft Resistance

Draft resistance history since 1980

[Crowd at the West Coast mobilization against the draft and draft registration listens to speakers including Fred Moore of the National Resistance Committee. Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco, 22 March 1980. Photos by Chris Booth for Resistance News.]

• History of draft registration and draft resistance since 1980
  (by Edward Hasbrouck)
• Prosecutions of Draft Registration Resisters in the USA since 1980
  (includes final verdicts, sentences, and results of appeals in all 20 cases; also includes links to GAO audits and Selective Service System reports on compliance with registration)
• Public vs. Quiet Resistance
  (by Edward Hasbrouck, National War Tax Resistanne Coordinating Committee blog, 10 October 2018)
• A Call for Resistance
  (Founding statement of purpose of the National Resistance Committee, 2 March 1980)
• Draft resistance and the politics of identity and status
  (by Edward Hasbrouck, in We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America, edited by Elizabeth Betita Martinez, Mandy Carter, and Matt Meyer, October 2012, published by PM Press and the War Resisters League)
• National Resistance “Conspiracy”?
  (1984 article by Edward Hasbrouck analyzing government documents and other sources on the government’s prosecution policy and the possibility of prosecutions for conspiracy, aid, abetment, or advocayc of draft registration resistance)
• Letters to the editor in the New York Times about draft registration and resistance:
  • On the Failures of Draft Registration
    (letter to the editor by Edward Hasbrouck from Lewisburg [PA] Federal Prison Camp, 21 March 1984: “The issue for Congress and the American people is the failure of draft registration: After almost four years of registration, a million of those eligible haven’t registered…. In such circumstances, it is absurd to think that reinstatement of the draft is a realistic possibility, and it is dangerously naive to make foreign policy commitments that will require a draft.”)
  • A Consensus in Support of Draft Registration (1)
    (letter to the editor by Wil Ebel, Assistant Director of Selective Service for Public Affairs, 23 March 1984: “Edward Hasbrouck’s letter assailing draft registration is woefully in error. Perhaps we should not expect an incarcerated individual to have accurate and up-to-date information, but your readers should not be deluded by Mr. Hasbrouck’s misrepresentations. Draft registration is not a failure.”)
  • A Consensus in Support of Draft Registration (2)
    (letter to the editor by Rep. Gerald Solomon: “Edward Hasbrouck called the Solomon Amendment, which denies student aid to those who refuse to register for the draft, ‘a failure.’ The real failure is his inability to separate constitutional rights from taxpayer-financed privileges. We’re hearing a lot these days about ‘yuppies,’ the young urban professionals from the baby boom now on the cusp of political and economic power. I’d hate to think they still cling to the ‘me generation’ notion that the working taxpayers of this country owe them a college education and upward mobility…. If I had my way, those who do not register would lose not only the ‘right’ to a student loan but every other taxpayer-funded benefit.”)
  • Courageous Foes of Draft Registration
    (letter to the editor by Marjorie Baechler, 7 April 1984: “The remark by Wil Ebel of the Selective Service System that ‘perhaps we should not expect an incarcerated individual to have accurate and up-to-date information’… is an attempt to demean Edward Hasbrouck… and all of us who share conscientious objection to the settling of disputes through the violence of war.”)
  • We Still Won’t Go!
    (letter to the editor by Edward Hasbrouck, 9 December 1990; PDF of print version as leaflet. “Only 20 nonregistrants were ever prosecuted, the last almost five years ago. The attempt to enforce registration has been abandoned, essentially in failure, while millions continue not to register.”)
• Life Outside the Mainframe
  (about Fred Moore, editor of Resistance News and one of the coordinators of the National Resistance Committee)
• Bernie and Me
  (by Alex Reyes, Eastern Regional Director and Washington, DC, representative of the National Resistance Committee; note that this is about Bernard Rostker, former Director of Selective Service, and not about Sen. Bernie Sanders)
• Courage Under Fire: Resistance to War
  (Interview with Edward Hasbrouck beginning at 20:10, National Radio Project, 2004; background)
• A Conversation with Draft Resisters from the Vietnam War Era and Resisters from the Early 1980s
  (Video outtake from the 2020 documentary film, The Boys Who Said No)
• POEM: Attorney General Edwin Meese III
  (by Dan Rutt, 20 August 2015. Blog post includes a poem written in prison in 1987, and more reflections on draft registration resistance.)
• Protesters proud of actions opposing draft: Today, he’s convinced it was the right thing to do.
  (Connecticut Post, Sunday, 3 September 2006)
• Unrepentant Resister: Looking Back 20 Years to my Draft Resistance Trial
  (by Andy Mager, Syracuse Peace Council Newsletter, February 2005)
• 1980-1981 Military Draft Actions in Chicago
  (by Karl Meyer)
• Costs of a Flimsy Card
  (by Michael Wehle, The Progressive, April 1987)
• Draft Resistance, 80’s Style
  (profile of 1980’s draft resister Ben Sasway by 1960’s draft resister and New York Times staff writer David Harris, The New York Times Magazine, 22 August 1982, comparing draft resistance in the 1960’s and in the 1980’s)
• Nothing About the Draft Makes Sense
  (by William Greider, Rolling Stone, 30 September 1982. “Registration is not working…. [H]undreds of thousands are not signing up. Collectively, they confront the government with one of the grossest episodes of mass defiance of the law since Americans decided to drink their way through Prohibition. In this case as well, the only practical solution is repeal.” See also William Greider’s 1981 Rolling Stone profile of draft registration resisters Matt Meyer, Matt Nicodemus, and Edward Hasbrouck, not available online.)
• Men and Women Who Dare to Say No
  (history of Mennonite resistance to draft registration, 1980-1985)
• When Law and Conscience Conflict: The Draft Nonregistration Case of U.S. v. Mark Arden Schmucker
  (by one of Mark Schmucker’s attorneys; published as a chapter in the the court’s officially-commissioned history of its notable cases, pp. 266-288)
• Rally at noon
  (editorial in the Daily Princetonian during the tenure of current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan as chair of the editorial board, 12 February 1980)
• Resist Registration
  (editorial in the Harvard Crimson, 8 January 1981. “It isn’t often [the government] decides to give large parts of the population an opportunity to show their displeasure with the country’s foreign policy. This week, though, the government has called on all 18-year-old men to register for the draft. It is an opportunity not to be missed. We urge those called upon to register to refuse, and to refuse loudly.”)
• Why I Refuse to Register
  (Op-Ed by Paul Jacob, first published 17 May 1985, The Orange County Register)
• Who is Ed Hasbrouck, and why is he bucking the system?
  (by Melinda Macauley, The Townsman, Wellesley, MA, 9 December 1982, pp 10-11)
• Who Is Edward Hasbrouck?
  (background to my draft registration resistance and other political activism)
• National Resistance Committee archives
  (Swarthmore College Peace Collection)
• Stanford Against Conscription records, 1979-1985
  (Stanford University Archives)
• Reawakening resistance to draft registration: some implications for the 1980’s.
  (by Lieutenant Paul Joseph Jackson, U.S. Navy, December 1980. A bizarre and confused but nonetheless interesting master’s thesis by a student/researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, who infiltrated meetings and collected literature from Northern California draft resistance and draft counseling organizations in 1980. “The objectives of this research are (1) To determine who the leaders of the local draft registration meetings are; (2) To determine the extent of their support at these meetings; (3) To gather data on the alternatives to draft registration offered at these meetings as well as in current anti-draft literature; (4) To gather data on the effectiveness of such meetings in convincing draft-age youth not to register or to register under protest; (5) To offer predictions, based on the history of draft resistance in America and on the observations made above, on the impact of such groups on future attempts to bring back the draft.”)
• I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force
  (by Bernard Rostker, ISBN 0-8330-3896-6, RAND Corporation, 2006, free e-book or PDF download. Now on the staff of the RAND Corporation, Rostker was Director of the Selective Service System from 1979-192. Despite its obvious self-interest, this book is the most detailed and revealing “insider” memoir of the reinstatement of draft registration in 1980. Rostker left the Selective Service System in 1982, and his memoir makes no mention of the aborive attempt at prosecution of nonregistrants that followed.)
• Selective Service System “Channeling” memorandum, 1965
  (Also available as a PDF as reprinted by the Resistance, c. 1968. One of the few pre-1980 documents on this Web site, but reproduced here because of its enduring influence and because the full document, while often mentioned, isn’t readily available elsewhere.)

Prosecutions of draft registration resisters since 1980

Resistance within the military and by veterans and military families

• The GI Rights Hotline
  (877) 447-4487
• CourageToResist.org
  (“No recruitment. No draft. Support GI resisters. An army of None!”)
• Bradley Manning: Rich Man’s War, Poor (Gay) Man’s Fight
  (by Larry Goldsmith, June 7, 2011; included in the anthologies Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars and Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion.)
• Info and Resources on Resistance Within the Military
  (Jeff Paterson, Gulf War refusenik)
• Peace-Out
  (“You can get out of the military as a conscientious objector, even if you enlisted. Here’s how.”)
• Iraq Veterans Against the War
  (“Bring the troops home now. Support Iraqi reconstruction. Support our veterans and our troops now and upon their return home.”)
• Veterans For Peace
  (“Veterans working together for peace & justice through non-violence”)
• Military Families Speak Out
  (“People opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones in the military”)
• Gold Star Families for Peace
  (“Families of soldiers who have died as a result of war … organizing to be a positive force in our world to bring our country’s sons and daughters home from Iraq, to minimize the human cost of this war, and to prevent other families from the pain we are feeling as the result of our losses.”)
• West Point Graduates Against The War
  (“Duty, Honor, Country.”)
• Vets4Vets
  (“Outreach to Iraq-era vets by Iraq-era vets” including confidential support groups)
• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
  (“We uniquely empower Iraq & Afghanistan combat veterans to use their credibility and experiences to speak truth to power [and] shape public opinion.”)
• Sir! No Sir!
  (a documentary film on “the story of the G.I. movement to end the war in Vietnam”)
• Winter Soldier
  (a re-released 1971 documentary film on the eyewitness testimony of Vietnam veterans about what they had seen and done in the war)
• “Fuck the Troops”: 1 2 3
  (Why some people don’t “support the troops” who fight, but only support the troops who refuse to fight)

U.S. war resisters in Canada and other countries

• War Resisters Support Campaign / Campagne d’appui aux objecteurs de conscience [Canada]
  (Canadian national headquarters in Toronto; campaigning “to allow US war resisters… to have refuge in Canada”)
• War Resisters Support Campaign - Vancouver
• Let U.S. Iraq War Resisters Stay in Canada!
  (Campaign in support of Canadian Bill C-440, “An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (war resisters)”. If passed, Bill C-440 will allow US Iraq War resisters to apply for permanent resident status in Canada.)
• Let Them Stay: Voices of US Iraq War Resisters in Canada
  (28-minute video, 2005; excerpts available online as streaming video with links to supplemental video and other resources, or available for purchase on DVD or videotape)
• Briefing Paper on US Soldiers coming to Canada
  (Canadian Friends [Quakers] Service Carol GiacomoCommittee; includes information on Canadian immigration and refugee laws relevant to draft as well as military resisters)
• Vietnam War Resisters in Canada
  (an extremely thorough bibliography of print and online resources compiled and maintained by Joseph Jones, Librarian Emeritus, University of British Columbia)
• Our Way Home Research (OWHR) Institute For War Resistance and Policy Alternatives
  (Involved in organizing the Our Way Home” Reunion Event and Memorial in Castlegar, B.C., in 2006 and 2007, and subsequent events honoring “the contribution made to Canadian life by the US war resisters who came to Canada during the Vietnam War…. the courage of those resisting current US militarism by seeking safe haven in Canada now, during the US war in Iraq [and] the thousands of Canadians who helped them resettle in this country, both then and now.”)
• Iraq war vet Andre Shepherd seeks asylum in Germany
  (By Military Counseling Network, Connection e.V., and Courage to Resist. 3 December 2008; includes link to audio interview)

Resistance to military recruiting

• National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
  (network of local and national counter-recruitment organizations)
• From Student Debtor to Soldier: How the student loan debt crisis forces low-income students of color into the military
  (by Anna Attie, In These Times, 14 December 2020)
• Counter-Recruitment in the Time of Covid
  (by Kate Connell and Fred Nadis of Truth in Recruitment, Antiwar.com, 29 September 2020)
• Truth In Recruitment
  (Santa Barbara County, CA)
• Counter-recruitment and the draft
  (letter to the editor by Edward Hasbrouck, S.F. Weekly, 2 November 2005)
• What Everyone Should Know Before Joining the Military
  (FAQs about military recruiting and enlistment)
• Does Selective Service data matching violate Federal laws?
  (comments of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and others, 21 December 2004)
• Not Your Soldier” Project
  (youth counter-recruitment and direct action organizing and training)
• Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO)
  (San Diego, CA; local group with some national resources)
• Oh Baby, It’s Drafty Out There
  (by Frida Berrigan, AlternNet, 5 July 2005)
• Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars
  (see also their anthology Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, also included as a section in their larger collection, Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion.)

Outsourcing and privatizing war to mercenaries and contractors

• The Mercenary Challenge to Anti-militarism: Privatizing (In)Security
  (by Celine Joiris, The Nonviolent Activist, January-February 2006)
• The Other Army
  (by Daniel Bergner, New York Times Magazine, 14 August 2005)
• Mercenaries ‘R’ Us
  (by Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet, 24 March 2004)
• Occupiers spend millions on private army of security men
  (by Robert Fisk and Severin Carrell, The Independent (UK), 28 March 2004)

Proposals for legislation related to Selective Service

Court cases about Selective Service registration

Petitions to Congress about draft registration and Selective Service:

• Repeal the U.S. Military Selective Service Act
• End Draft Registration Once and for ALL!
• Don’t Force Women to Register for the Draft, Dump the Draft Entirely


• Petition to U.S. Presidential Candidates: Don’t draft our daughters. (Petition started by the Family Research Council against extending draft registration or the draft to women, but expressing no opinion on whether men should have to register or be drafted.)