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Dave Dellinger: The Life of a Nonviolent
Warrior
By GREG GUMA
Dave Dellinger’s father was a well-connected Massachusetts
lawyer and friend of Republican Governor Calvin Coolidge. One of his
grandmothers was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and his
father’s ancestors went back to North Carolina -- before the Revolution. In
fact, Benjamin Franklin was a direct ancestor, by way of a grandnephew and a
full-blooded Cherokee Indian.
With such a pedigree, it was hard to see why Dave would
become an all-American radical, an internationally respected nonviolent
activist and a leader of peace and justice movements for more than 60 years.
But the young man from the Boston suburb of Wakefield took a less traveled
path from the start, living with the poor, attending seminary, and refusing to
register for the draft at the brink of World War II. Then and later, he went
to jail for his beliefs. By the 1960s, he was a legendary figure, able to
forge an alliance between anti-war activists and civil rights leaders. He was
America’s Gandhi, advancing the theory of pacifist resistance through his
words and deeds.
On May 25, 2004, at 88, Dave departed this world among
family and close friends in Central Vermont from pneumonia-induced heart
failure. He had been living in Vermont for almost 25 years, most recently in
the Montpelier area. Whenever racism, imperialism, or injustice raised its
head, Dave was there, his efforts all the more remarkable for their
compassion, clarity, and humor. Putting himself in harm’s way, he sometimes
managed, almost miraculously, to turn antagonists into allies with the gentle
moral force of his convictions.
On the Path
Dave was mostly known as nonviolent anti-war activist, but
his path took many turns. In the mid-1930s, for example, it looked as if he
might end up in law or the government. Obviously, Dave saw something different
ahead. He’d been picking up ideas from philosophy and economics, from radical
campus Christians and college friends like Walt Rostow. Rostow was advocating
communism at the time, but Dave questioned its approach and lack of a
spiritual dimension. (Later, Rostow backed war in Southeast Asia “to save them
from communism.” Dave said he wasn’t too surprised.) He also drew inspiration
from nature, the campaigns of Gandhi, and from getting to know fellow workers
during a summer job in a Maine factory.
In his autobiography, From Yale to Jail, Dave
recounted a college incident that changed his life. One night, when tensions
were high after a football game, he and some college friends were attacked by
local toughs. In the fight, Dave decked one – and then experienced revulsion
at what he’d done. “I knew that I would never be able to strike another human
being again,” he wrote.
He stayed with the young man he’d hit, apologized, and
walked him home. As they parted, Dave felt what he called “the power of our
unexpected and unusual bonding.” The encounter’s impact stayed with him.
On his way to begin a doctorate fellowship at Oxford
University in 1936, he stopped in Spain to see the communal settlements of the
Popular Front and stayed at the People's University in Madrid. As Francisco
Franco's soldiers advanced on the city, he considered joining the resistance.
If his friends were going to die, he thought, he was ready, too. But he
couldn’t ignore grim reality: Communists were shooting Trotskyists and both
were shooting anarchists. In fact, while he was in Barcelona, some anarchists
fired at his car. Ultimately, he came to the philosophical realization:
“Whoever won in an armed struggle, it wouldn't be the people.”
Back in the US, Dave rejected a comfortable future and left
Yale. With no cash and wearing his oldest clothes, he traveled around the
country, riding freight trains, sleeping at missions, standing in bread lines,
even begging. His journey continued intermittently for three years, following
a path inspired by Francis of Assisi.
Love, War, and Prison
The 1940s were not easy times to oppose war and promote
nonviolence. Pacifists found themselves alone as liberals and Leftists in the
anti-war movement supported “preparedness,” collective security, and -- once
Germany attacked Russia -- entry into the conflict. Dave was living and
working in Harlem while studying at the Union Theological Seminary. After the
1940 conscription law was passed, he opted not to accept religious exemption;
instead, he and several others refused to register for the draft.
His reasons for opposing the unfolding “world war” were
complicated. He knew about US corporate support for Hitler and the Nazis. He
had also visited Germany, and concluded that there was potential for internal
opposition. In general, he saw the war as a geopolitical chess game rather
than a fight against tyranny and racism. Beyond that, he couldn’t stomach
having an exemption when so others, especially Blacks, were given no choice.
His decision not to register led to two of the most
important events in his life: meeting the woman with whom he would spend the
next 60 years, and going to jail for the first time.
Dave spent a year in the Danbury federal prison. Early on,
because he sat in the Black section during a movie, he was put in solitary.
Then, when he refused to answer to a number or submit to guard harassment, he
was thrown into the notorious Hole. Some prisoners were broken by the
experience. For Dave, it led to a personal breakthrough.
“I felt warm inside,” he wrote later, “and filled all over
with love for everyone, everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t know, for
plants, fish, animals, even bankers, generals, prison guards and lying
politicians … Why did I feel so good? Was it God? Or approaching death? Or
just the way life is supposed to be if we weren’t so busy trying to make it
something else? It didn’t matter why. The only thing that mattered was that it
was happening.”
After that, Dave was targeted as a troublemaker. But his
commitment to ending racial segregation also brought him new allies,
especially among Black prisoners. There were more threats and more days in
solitary. Dave didn’t waver, even when Communist prisoners -- who at first
called him a hero – decided he was a “fascist coward” after Germany invaded
the Soviet Union.
Shortly after getting out, Dave was invited to speak at a
National Conference of the Student Christian Movement in Ohio, and there met
Betty Peterson, a student at Pacific College in Oregon. She also opposed the
draft, had worked with migrant workers, and was interested in Dave’s commune
experience. On February 4, 1942, only a month after they met, Dave and
Elizabeth married.
Building a Movement
During the war years, the couple and their comrades often
risked arrest as they struggled against the tide. A demonstration at the
Capitol in 1943 led to another prison term for Dave, this time two years at
the prison farm just outside the walls of the Lewisburg penitentiary. During
that sentence, he joined a strike to end segregation and fasted for weeks to
stop prison censorship and the use of the Hole. The protesters won a small
victory this time, ending the censorship of mail.
By the time Dave was released in 1945, Elizabeth had given
birth to their first of five children and was living at a Pennsylvania apple
farm. Before long, between picking apples and working on a nearby dairy farm,
Dave and friends teamed up to launch Direct Action, a magazine
reflecting their militant opposition to war and faith in the power on
nonviolent action. That was succeeded by Alternative, Individual
Action, and finally Liberation, a venerable magazine for 20 years.
Countless writers, many prominent from the 60s onward, contributed to a new
groundswell of radical thought.
Dave’s first editorial in Direct Action, written in
September 1945, condemned the recent atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
and outlined his philosophy:
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomized at a time when the
Japanese were suing desperately for peace. The American leaders were acting
with almost inconceivable treachery by denying that they had received requests
for peace … . The atom bombs were exploded on congested cities filled with
civilians. There was not even the slightest military justification, because
the military outcome of the war had been decided months earlier. …
“The war for total brotherhood must be a nonviolent war
carried on by methods worthy of the ideals we seek to serve. The acts we
perform must be the responsible acts of free men, not the irresponsible acts
of conscripts under orders. We must fight against institutions but not against
people.
“There must be strikes, sabotage and seizure of public
property now being held by private owners. There must be civil disobedience of
laws which are contrary to human welfare. But there must be also an
uncompromising practice of treating everyone, including the worst of our
opponents, with all the respect and decency that he merits as a fellow human
being. We can expect to face tear gas, clubs and bullets. But we must refuse
to hate, punish or kill in return. …”
It’s common to hear that the 50s, and even the early 60s,
were times of conformity and repression. But storms were brewing behind those
calm skies, and Dave helped drum up the winds for change. There were
anti-nuclear demonstrations and civil disobedience actions, marches and
Freedom Rides in the South, solidarity actions to bridge the people-to-people
gap between Cuba and US after 1959, protests with Martin Luther King in the
civil rights movement, and a series of nonviolent committees and
organizations. It was a tumultuous period, leading up to
the 1967 March on the Pentagon, protests at the Democratic National Convention
in 1968, and the 1969 show trial of the Chicago Eight.
“The anti-Vietnam War movement did not start in a vacuum,”
Dave wrote. “It was the offspring of previous movements for justice and peace.
And like a lot of children it had to fight its way against the efforts of its
parents to prevent it from straying too far outside the compromises they
themselves had made with conventional society.” Going up against the national
“peace leaders” of his day, Dave and a few others sided with SDS (Students for
a Democratic Society), which came on strong beginning in 1965 with a call for
a national anti-Vietnam war demonstration. After that protest, Dave was jailed
again -- and threatened with charges of treason. When some of his fellow
political prisoners heard, they refused bail unless the threats were dropped.
Faced with solidarity, the government folded.
The next year, Dave visited Vietnam for the first time,
personally witnessing the ruthless conduct of the war, talking with US POWs,
and getting the Vietnamese side from Ho Chi Minh. They also talked about
Harlem (“Uncle Ho” had worked for a Brooklyn family after World War I) the
poverty of Black people, and how anti-communist paranoia had led the US into a
series of arrogant mistakes. The visit led to a series of trips Dave helped
organize until the war ended in 1975. His people-to-people diplomacy helped
secure the release of captured US servicemen.
Showdown in Chicago
In 1968 -- from Berkeley to Prague, in Mexico City and
Paris -- a hunger for change filled the air. Even mainstream media and some US
leaders couldn’t deny what was happening. In March,
Eugene McCarthy, an opponent of the war, won 42 percent of the presidential
primary vote in New Hampshire. Soon afterward, Robert Kennedy entered the race
and President Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek another term. Then, on April
4, a rifle shot rang out in Memphis, ending the life of Martin Luther King.
Rebellions erupted in 125 cities, leading to 20,000 arrests and the
mobilization of federal troops.
In June, Kennedy was assassinated. By July, more than 220
major demonstrations had happened on campuses across the country. In Vietnam,
10,000 US soldiers had died since the beginning of the year, more than in all
of 1967. At that point, the Democrats held their nominating convention.
According to Chicago’s strongman Mayor Richard Daley,
“agitators” like Dave, Tom Hayden of SDS, Abbie Hoffman of the Yippie
movement, and others incited the riots that erupted at the Democratic National
Convention in August 1968. As was later proven, however, it was actually a
police riot. Meanwhile, a climate of repression blanketed the nation. A new
attorney general, Richard Kleindeinst, called anti-war activists “ideological
criminals,” while the FBI launched a secret counter-intelligence program.
“Tricky Dick” Nixon was in the White House, and scapegoats were needed to
explain away civil disorder.
Eight activists, including Dave, were indicted. The main
charges were conspiracy and traveling across state lines “with the intent to
incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry on a riot.”
Actually, some of the defendants didn’t even know one another, and as Abbie
used to say, “We couldn’t agree on lunch.” But they felt that the charges were
a distraction, and decided to put the government on trial. At 54, Dave was the
self-proclaimed “old man” of the group.
The proceedings ran five months, beginning on September 26,
1969. Many of the key moments were big news across the country. A few were
absurdly funny, like the day the defendants rolled in a cake to celebrate
Bobby Seale’s birthday. When Judge Julius Hoffman ruled the cake out of order,
Bobby said: “You can arrest a cake, but you can’t arrest the revolution.” But
sometimes the trial looked like an inquisition, perhaps never so clearly as on
October 29, when Blank Panther Bobby Seale was carried into the court, bound
and gagged, for demanding his right to defend himself.
The following February, as Judge Hoffman began post-trial
contempt proceedings, Dave was allowed to address the court. It was an
extraordinary moment. “I will talk about the facts and the facts don’t always
encourage false respect,” he began. “Now I want to point out first of all that
the first two contempts cited against me concerned ... the war against
Vietnam, and racism in this country, the two issues this country refuses to
solve, refuses to take seriously.”
Hoffman ordered him to stop, but Dave was on a roll. “You
see,” he said, “that’s one of the reasons I have needed to stand up and speak
anyway, because you have tried to keep what you call politics, which means the
truth, out of this courtroom, just as the prosecution has.”
Ignoring the judge’s repeated command that he sit down and
shut up, Dave continued. “You want us to be like good Germans supporting the
evils of our decade, and then when we refused to be good Germans and came to
Chicago and demonstrated, now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly
and politely to the concentration camps while you and this court suppress
freedom and the truth. And the fact is that I am not prepared to do that.” The
marshals started moving in.
“You want us to stay in our place like black people were
supposed to stay in their place, like poor people were supposed to stay in
their place, like people with formal education are supposed to stay in their
place, like women are supposed to stay in their place, like children are
supposed to stay in their place, like lawyers are supposed to stay in their
places. It is a travesty of justice and if you had any sense at all you would
know that the record that you read condemns you and not us. And it will be one
of thousands and thousands of rallying points for a new generation of
Americans, who will not put up with tyranny, will not put up with a facade of
democracy without the reality.”
And as the marshals grabbed him, he declared, “People no
longer will be quiet. People are going to speak up. I am an old man and I am
just speaking feebly and not too well, but I reflect the spirit that will echo
throughout the world.”
Applause and “complete disorder in the courtroom” followed
-- especially when the marshals tried to silence Dave’s daughter Michelle and
he bounded to her rescue. As John Tucker, one of the defense attorneys,
recalls it, “Everyone -- the audience, the press, the defendants and their
lawyers -- was screaming or shouting or sobbing. No one who was there will
ever forget it.”
A Civil Resister
Long after the Chicago trial (the defendants were initially
found guilty, but the verdict was overturned by history and higher courts),
Dave continued to work with countless peace, solidarity, and social justice
movements, often joining in protests and hunger strikes. He actively supported
independent political action, from the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance and the
Greens to Bernie Sanders. Accompanied by Elizabeth, he frequently visited
prisoners, an enduring commitment that helped spark the 2002 formation of
Vermont’s Alliance for Prison Justice. Most notably, he worked for the
releases of Native American leader Leonard Peltier and Black journalist Mumia
Abu Jamal, whom he considered political prisoners convicted of murder on
trumped-up evidence.
Comfortable working with young people and collective
process, he never stopped fighting for disarmament and social justice, and
against corporate exploitation and war. And through it all, he taught and
practiced nonviolent civil resistance, bringing those he touched countless
teaching moments.
For 12 years, beginning in 1990, Dave was board co-chair of
Toward Freedom (TF), a progressive foundation based in Burlington, VT, and
wrote frequently for its flagship publication. In 1993, Pantheon Books
published his long-awaited, often revelatory autobiography, From Yale to
Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter. It was recently released by
Catholic Worker Books. His other books include Revolutionary Nonviolence,
More Power Than We Know, Beyond Survival, and Vietnam
Revisited: Covert Action to Invasion to Reconstruction.
Dave remained engaged in life and interested in politics
until his final months. In 2001, for instance,
at age 85, he got up at 2:45 a.m. to catch a ride to demonstrations in Quebec
City against the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Continuing to speak out for disarmament and social justice, he focused more
recently on prison issues and economic alternatives to globalization.
In October 2001, some of his friends organized a
celebration of his life in Burlington. It was a long overdue tribute and
hundreds came, including family members and old movement friends Howard Zinn,
Dennis Brutus, Cora Weiss, Art Kinoy, John Froines, Staughton Lynd, Ralph
DiGia, Ted Glick, and many more. True to form, Dave didn’t want the event to
focus only on him, but also on Elizabeth and the issues and movements to which
they had committed themselves. Still, the touching stories revealed the
friendships, hopes, passions, and fierce determination that shaped Dave’s
life. TF preserved the evening on a CD set, Nonviolent Warriors: Dave
Dellinger and the Power of the People.
About a year ago, after a TF meeting, Dave quietly passed
me a copy of a poem he had just written. A meditation on Valentine’s Day, it
also described his approach to life with eloquent simplicity:
I love everyone,
even those who
disagree with me.
I love everyone,
even those who
agree with me.
I love everyone,
rich and poor,
and I love everyone
of different races,
including people
who are indigenous,
wherever they live,
in this country
or elsewhere.
I love everyone,
whatever religion they are,
and atheists too.
People who contemplate,
wherever it leads them.
I love everyone,
both in my heart
and in my daily life.
Echoing Gandhi, Dave often said: “Be the change you wish to
see.” He did just that, and it was inspiring to behold.
Greg Guma edits Toward Freedom, a progressive
magazine also available online at TowardFreedom.com, and is the author of
Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization, and What We Can Do and the new
play, Inquisitions (and Other Un-American Activities), available on CD
and airing on radio. He worked closely with Dave for 20 years.
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