The Boston 18
[Some of the Boston 18 outside the J.W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse in Post Office Square, Boston, 15 February 1983, the day they surrendered to begin serving 30-day prison sentences for blocking the entrance to the Post Office in that same building where men were being registered for the draft on 5 January 1981 during the mass Selective Service registration week for men born in 1962. Photo by Ellen Shub from Resistance News and the Harvard University archives on the history of women in America .]
Court proceedings in the cases of the Boston 18:
Nonregistrants weren’t the only draft resisters to be prosecuted in the 1980s. Many more allies who weren’t themselves subject to the requirement to register for the draft, notably including the Boston 18, were prosecuted for sit-ins, blockades, and other draft resistance actions at Post Offices (which were used as draft registration sites), courthouses where nonregistransts were on trial, and Selective Service System offices.
Hundreds of people were arrested, particularly at Post Offices during the mass registration weeks in July-August 1980 for men born in 1960 and 1961 and in January 1981 for men born in 1962, and outside court hearings in the cases of several of the 20 men eventually singled out for prosecution for publicly refusing to register, and during a blockade of Selective Service headquarters in Washington, DC, on 18 October 1982. (See these posters for some of these sit-ins and blockades.)
The consequences of these arrests were varied, but in some cases — particularly when arrests occurred inside Post Office buildings, which are generally areas of exclusive Federal jurisdiction, rather than outside on streets or sidewalks subject to state and local jurisdiction — included Federal charges.
The “Boston 18” were arrested inside the Post Office and courthouse in downtown Boston during the January 1981 registration week. The Post Office counters where draft registrations were being accepted by postal clerks were located on the second floor, inside the building, which also housed the offices of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Attorney, and the courtrooms and judges’ chambers of both the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The fact that the sit-in took place in the same building as their offices may have led them to take it more personally and respond with more severity than they might have to an action elsewhere, but there’s no hard evidence of that.
The Boston 18 included Mark Bader, Elisa Barbour, Bill Beck, Carol Bellin, Chris Cutelis, Elizabeth Davidson, Mary Dore, Diane Dunfey, Ed Feigen, Carl Gerds, Sean Herlihy, Chuck Hughes, Gary Sachs, Rich Schreuer, Barry Shea, Anne Shumway, Leslie Swanson, and Cynthia Waillette.
[Photos of the Boston 18 sit-in taken by Federal officers and introduced as evidence at the trial.]
I was one of several observers swept up in the mass arrest of the Boston 18, along with Jim Packer, a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild. Charges against Jim Packer and me were dropped, but most of the rest including Gary Sachs, who also wasn’t actually part of the sit-in, were convicted, most of them in a mass trial on 27 January 1981. Each of those convicted was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment and a $50 fine, the maximum sentence for a Federal “petty offense” tried by a Magistrate without an Article 3 judge or a jury.
Thirty days imprisonment was an unexpectedly harsh sentence for a simple sit-in, particularly compared to the much briefer jailing of those — including many of the Boston 18 — who had been arrested in the preceding few years for much more actively obstructive blockades by the Clamshell Alliance of construction of a nuclear power plant at Seabrook, NH. And while most people in the know would choose a minimum-security Federal prison over a city jail, being sentenced to a “federal prison” sounds like a heavier sentence.
Most of the men were sent to Federal Prison Camps or minimum-security Federal Correctional Institutions in Danbury, CT or Allenwood, PA. Most of the women were sent to Alderson, WV, at the time the only Federal prison for women (at all security levels) in the eastern U.S.
Because a transcript was prepared for use in the appeal, this is one of the best documented cases from the 1980s of mass anti-draft direct action. It provides a rare snapshot of who took part in anti-draft direct actions, their backgrounds, and their motives.
Expert witnesses at the trial of the Boston 18 included Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and the feminist scholar-activists Karen Lindsey (one of the principal spokespeople for the Women Opposed to Registration and the Draft) and Linda Gordon. But what I think is most interesting about the records of the case is the testimony of the defendants themselves. It provides a rare, possibly unique, look into the character and politics of the diverse community of allies who supported the young men who were being ordered to sign their lives over to the government and the military. Draft resistance was never limited to men of draft age.
In addition to the defendants, each of whom testified in their own defense, expert witnesses in the trial of the Boston 18 included:
This page published or republished here 26 November 2023; most recently modified 12 January 2024. This site is maintained by
Edward Hasbrouck. Corrections, contributions (articles, graphics, photos, videos, links, etc.), and feedback are welcomed.
