Well Doug my friend (and I would hope you still are).......I suppose your attitude toward what the motives of people were is still pretty common, but I think it's invalid and not based on any certain knowledge....just a leftover, as is the story of Sen. Kerrey. You were possibly on a hiatus when we ran this thread. Read it...and though I would not expect it to change your inner feelings, perhaps it will give you some insights to what was happening then.

I did not go to prison to be safe. Safe isn't a word anyone who has been to prison would use to describe it. Peterburg Federal Prison was not a safe place. My motives are outlined clearly in the other thread, but let me reiterate here that many DID choose to try to effect change by making the strongest statement we could at the time. Did it do any good? In hindsight, I still cannot say or even know. Courage did not enter into the decision and I would submit that it did not enter into the decisions that anyone made back then!

(From the other thread)
Back then I was as American as you got. For whatever made the place really suck (and the government was a start) it was still home and I felt a duty to it. Duty in my case took on a different meaning, but it was still a problem that stemmed from somewhere I loved and had not given up on.

I'd also like to change the thought process a bit as some of us looked at the situation then and other situations too, not as something worth dying for, but was (and is) it something worth killing for? That was at the heart of my thinking then and still remains so today. I am not necessarily a pacifist, though I admire many. However, if you have a gun and I have a gun and we're stalking each other, rest assured I am going to do my damndest to kill you first. This is what young people are asked to do in any war. I came to the belief that there was nothing worth killing for about VietNam. Others came to a similar realization after they were there and hence the abundant cases of post traumatic stress. Others wars are different and each one must be decided by the people involved.....Is it worth killing for? If you are going to put me in the situation of killing someone else before they kill me, you better have a damn good reason so I can live with myself afterwards.

When I refused to play and was arrested, the sentences were running at 5 years, out in about 3. By the time I was sentenced, it was down to 3 years and out in 18 months. After serving 7 months at Petersburg, it was reduced to 15 months and out in 6, so I was paroled. A short time later, they were down to a year and out in 3-6 months. We were a pain in the ass to the government! But if more had done it, could they have withstood the pain?

I would say once again, it is time to let it go.....not forget, but to let it go. We owe what we learned to our children...........and I hope we learned well. Perhaps we didn't.

Spaw