Resister
A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War
by Bruce Dancis
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Pub Date Feb 06 2014 | Archive Date Jun 05 2014
Description
Bruce Dancis arrived at Cornell University in 1965 as a youth who was no stranger to political action. He grew up in a radical household and took part in the 1963 March on Washington as a fifteen-year-old. He became the first student at Cornell to defy the draft by tearing up his draft card and soon became a leader of the draft resistance movement. He also turned down a student deferment and refused induction into the armed services. He was the principal organizer of the first mass draft card burning during the Vietnam War, an activist in the Resistance (a nationwide organization against the draft), and a cofounder and president of the Cornell chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. Dancis spent nineteen months in federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky, for his actions against the draft.In Resister, Dancis not only gives readers an insider's account of the antiwar and student protest movements of the sixties but also provides a rare look at the prison experiences of Vietnam-era draft resisters. Intertwining memory, reflection, and history, Dancis offers an engaging firsthand account of some of the era's most iconic events, including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Abbie Hoffman-led "hippie invasion" of the New York Stock Exchange, the antiwar confrontation at the Pentagon in 1967, and the dangerous controversy that erupted at Cornell in 1969 involving African American students, their SDS allies, and the administration and faculty. Along the way, Dancis also explores the relationship between the topical folk and rock music of the era and the political and cultural rebels who sought to change American society.
Advance Praise
“Resistance to the draft helped restore honor to a misguided nation that invaded Vietnam, where it left millions dead. In his admirable memoir, Bruce Dancis, a hero of draft resistance, casts light from fresh angles on the movement’s inner life, the course of Cornell’s radicals, and the imprisonment that was a price paid for honor.”—Todd Gitlin, Columbia University, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
“Resister is that rare memoir by a 1960s radical that teaches as it enthralls. Bruce Dancis narrates his odyssey from childhood in a left-wing enclave of the Bronx, to antiwar activism at Cornell, to prison in Kentucky with a historian’s grasp of context and a journalist’s flair for anecdote. It is one of the wisest books about this era of conflict I have ever read.”—Michael Kazin, author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation and editor, Dissent
“Bruce Dancis has put a crucially important slice of American history on the record, in a deeply personal, down-to-earth way. But unlike almost all the rest of us who lived through the 1960s, he had the courage to go to prison for his beliefs. He and the few like him are the real heroes of that time.”—Adam Hochschild, University of California, Berkeley, author of To End All Wars
“Bruce Dancis has written a brave memoir and history that sheds light on a little-known aspect of this nation’s fractious internal conflict over the Vietnam War. Millions of Americans opposed the war and the military draft, but Dancis was among the few willing to sacrifice years of his life to end both. We can learn much from his account.”—Clayborne Carson, Stanford University, author of Martin’s Dream
“Bruce Dancis’s Resister reminds me of the chaotic combination of innocence, hopefulness, anger, and alienation that motivated hundreds of thou-sands of young people (and many not so young) to join together in the effort to oppose a brutal and unjust war in Vietnam in the late 1960s.”—Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College, coauthor of America Divided
“In this beautifully crafted history/memoir, Bruce Dancis, former Cornell University SDS leader, takes us on a road trip that crosses the country as civil rights, war, and feminism upend the ex-pected. Anyone interested in how change happens should be happily immersed in this compelling and eminently readable book that captures the seriousness, craziness, and impact of the long 1960s era in new and nuanced ways.”—Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College, author of Examining Tuskegee
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780801452420 |
| PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
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