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The Alternative Community in Buffalo, 1965-76

D. The Buffalo: ... The Liberation and Creation of Documents (1971‑71)

By Elwin H. Powell

By Spring 1971 antiwar activists were no longer demonstrating against the war; instead, they were actively attempting to immobilize the war machine. Records give authority for conscription; destroy draft board files and selective service will falter. The political police system is based on secrecy; expose the secrets and the apparatus will topple. In February 1971 the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives (ECCSL) removed 800 pages of documents from the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania. Key portions were first printed in the underground press; then reprinted in the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Now for the first time ever there was documentation ‑ written proof ‑ that the FBI compiled dossiers on innocent citizens, spied on people engaged in lawful protest. On April 7, 1971 Congressman Hale Boggs, the Majority Leader, compared the FBI to the Nazi and Soviet Secret Police, citing the Media documents as evidence (Taped CBS Interview, April 6, 19 7 1). Boggs called for the resignation of Hoover, which ignited a furor in top circles of government. Attorney General John Mitchell demanded Boggs apologize to Hoover; Nixon issued proclamations of lavish praise for Hoover. But the sacred consensus had cracked: other congressmen were stepping forth with tales of FBI phone tapping, even calling for an investigation of the FBI itself.

April was a cruel month for the Police Establishment. People swarmed on Washington, not to sing, "Give Peace a Chance" but to close it down. On Moratorium Day, November 15, 1969, a million people were in Washington and there were 85 arrests; on Mayday 1971, 60,000 entered the city and 12,000 were arrested. Traffic moved but at the expense of mass arrests later declared illegal. Soon after Mayday Dan Ellsberg was releasing the Pentagon papers. Nixon showed himself quite indifferent to the one million marchers of November 1969 (his press secretary announced that he spent the day watching the football game on TV). But he did not ignore Ellsberg. Nixon set out to plug the leaks in a rotting dike, and brought on the disaster he sought to avoid: revelation of pervasive criminality (not mere corruption) at the top level of government.

Throughout the country little Maydays were happening. On May 7 in Buffalo protestors just returned from Washington D.C. sat down on Main Street attempting to stop traffic. Though easily routed by cops driving motorcycles through the formation, the idea of stopping the machinery of the State was taking hold. Occasionally the new symbol Q meaning resist appeared on buildings.

And then on the night of August 21, 1971, the Draft Board and Military office in Buffalo were raided; simultaneously a similar raid occurred in Camden, New Jersey. A naive observer might suppose the two events were related. In Buffalo 5 people were arrested; in Camden, 28. With these arrests J. Edgar Hoover himself announced that the FBI had broken the back of the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives. Front page headlines of the Buffalo Courier Express of August 24, 1971 read ARMY SECURITY PAPERS FOUND IN RAID SACKS: FILES LABELLED SENSITIVE. The story by Dale C. English begins: "Records from high sensitive U.S. Army Intelligence and security units were among three sacks of documents assembled by participants in Saturday night's antiwar did on the Old Post Office Building in downtown Buffalo . . . Five suspects . . . arrested at gunpoint inside the building. While neither military spokesmen nor the Buffalo Federal Bureau of Investigation office would discuss the content of the three green laundry bags stuffed with documents taken from the government files during the abortive raid, an FBI spokesman in Washington confirmed that the papers concerned military intelligence matters. "

The five defendants came to be known as the Buffalo‑5 though they preferred to be simply the BUFFALO, with the understanding that anyone could join their open conspiracy against the State ‑‑ to be the Buffalo 5 would set them apart from others as heroes and heroines. They established a Defense Committee at 124 Jewett Parkway. From August until April 1972, the Defense Committee, which became in fact a Resistance Community, carried on an active dialogue with the citizenry of the metropolitan area, holding rap sessions in suburban homes, in Catholic and Protestant churches, speaking in school assemblies, in the high schools as well as colleges, and never missing an opportunity for a radio or TV appearance. Lenin said "the first duty of a revolutionary was to patiently explain". This the BUFFALO did with amazing persistence. Their first document, prepared before the raid, reads:

Statement of the Buffalo

Okay. The war goes on. Vietnamization is found to be another lie as American bombs bought with our tax dollars fall in ever greater numbers on the people of Southeast Asia . . . even as American casualties drop.

Racism goes on. Pollution goes on. Big business' brutal pursuit of profit goes on. Global oppression at the hands of the greatest military and economic power in the world's history goes continually on. Repression of dissent and resistance here at home goes on. Indeed, fear and hatred go ever madly on.

So . . . in an effort to live lives of non‑fear, we too continue to oppose these wrongs. And today we put our lives together in an effort to help stop this madness.

You see, today we destroy the records of the Selective Service System in Buffalo, local boards 82 and 89. In addition, we confiscate records of the office of Military Intelligence, records that likewise exist in the service of the machine of death. We do this in an attempt to expose the myth that the military machine really protects us from anything.

We feel it is our right as men and women of responsibility, our duty before God and men ‑ to take this action against these records that help make the Vietnam War possible ‑ a violence of extraordinary arrogance and cruelty. We feel that in times like these ‑ when couniries have the capability to wage total war and annihilate all life on this planet a man's duty to his country is far surpassed by his duty to the whole race. Our moral outrage and our sober rationality both say to us, as others have said before, "Some property has no right to exist." Absolutely, we say that.

This action springs from a belief that a person's life is sacred, if to no one else, at least to him. And we believe that no government should have such total claims on a man's life as to be able to say: "Man, from the time you are IS until you are 26, you are our weapon. We as the government will tell you who the enemy is, who to kill. We will tell you when and where to kill him and perhaps be killed yourself. And only we as the government will judge the rightness or the wrongness of these We believe no government should be saying this ‑ either by Wars, drafting a man to fight its war or demanding money from him in the form of taxes to pay for them.

This is amazingly contradictory to the Gospel, to very American ideals of free conscience and choice, in fact, to everything we have held sacred since infancy. The instant we start drafting armies to protect our freedoms, our freedoms are meaningless and we undermine the most basic freedom ‑ the freedom not to kill on another's command.

In you, good neighbor, we wish to inspire neither alarm nor disgust by this, our night's work. We move here against vandals and terrorists especially those of official badge or office in our country. We could have used dynamite or fire upon these rooms . . . We could have thereby purchased our own safety . . . Indeed, such are the conventions of the land and times. But they are not our conventions, To us they are as dead as the polluted air and rivers of our country, as violent as the life imposed upon the people of our cities. So we have chosen to create a way to hinder the abduction of our sons and brothers and to open to citizens what our military protectors think of us,

We are reminded of the words of Camus: "I wish I could love my country and still love justice."

Simply stated, we stand for life, love, laughter, music, good food, friends, air, sunshine ‑ all things green and living and beautiful.

We stand against fear, hate, systems and structures not in the service of man, the military industrial complex which has run rampant and at the verge of destroying our life system ‑ our mother the earth.

We affirm these things by this action, we are one more set of lives standing on the side of life.

(signed)

THE BUFFALO

We take this name because the Buffalo, a once powerful beast of freedom

nearly exterminated under the advance of western civilization, is

returning today in even greater numbers ‑ perhaps symbolic of nature's

resilient resistance.

We are children of nature.

We are the Buffalo.

The BUFFALO were not only attempting to liberate the documents of the State, but to create a document ‑ a charter ‑ for a new Community. This STATEMENT OF THE BUFFALO was a virtual Declaration of Independence . . . It explained what the Revolution was about, articulating the First Principles of a new communal way of life. It was distributed as a leaflet at every rap session, there to be dissected and debated; it was printed and mailed to 5,000 people throughout the world. The prosecution read it into the Court record as the chief evidence against the BUFFALO ‑ and the reading brought a standing ovation from the 100 people in the court room. This document contains the core ideas of the resistance community; it was drafted by more than 5 people and serves as a manifesto for the legitimation of further acts of resistance.

In early October, 1971 the BUFFALO released a statement saying:

"J. Edgar Hoover and the federal government may believe that they have 'broken the conspiracy' which to them includes the Catonsville raid, the Flower City Conspiracy, actions taken by the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, the Harrisburg Case, and now the recent Buffalo and Camdet) raids. They have not yet realized that what they are up against is a movement, an idea that cannot be walled in and crushed by tactics of electronic surveillance, prison terms, and fear of spies and informers. The Movement stands for life and justice while the State is choking on its diet of death, racism and fear."

On October 28, 1971 raids occurred at three more Buffalo area draft boards ‑ at Batavia, Geneseo, and Niagara Falls. Raiders left a written note for J. Edgar Hoover, signed, "The New and Improved East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives". Through a Buffalo underground newspaper, Undercurrents (November 12, 197 1), THE BUFFALO said:

The people who paralyzed the Draft Mechanism of Batavia, Geneseo and Niagara Falls are our friends ‑ though we do not know that we will have a chance to meet them. They're our friends because their acts answer the same dilemma we have felt, namely that we have been lied to and that the lies continue, saying The country is caught in a war, rather than a crime.

The crime is being wound down, or stopped, rather than being hastily mechanized.

The judiciary can be trusted to hold the government to the Constitution. The elected Congress can be trusted to represent the people.

The methods of these people (i.e., The New and Improved East Coast Conspiracy . . . ) bind us even more closely to them. They neither injured nor terrorized any person. They didn't bomb or burn anything. They apparently broke through the skin to get to the heart of the matter the records That are the instruments for forcing our young into a criminal war. The papers call them 'vandals'. We call them people of conscience who, in order to save lives, were forced to step outside the law.

Trial of the BUFFALO opened on April 17, closed April 27, 1972 in federal court, John T. Curtin presiding.

The Prosecution's case was simple and undramatic: laws had been broken; the guilty must be punished; the war was not an issue.

The Defense presented a more complex argument: admitting they were legally guilty, they maintained it was not a crime to break a law to stop the greater crime of war; it is not burglary to break into a burning house to save the occupants. The defendants acted collectively as their own lawyers, cross examining witnesses, etc., though they also had a legal advisor, Vince Doyle.

The Prosecution called only a handful of witnesses ‑ FBI and local police who had done the arresting, the Captain in charge of Military Intelligence ‑ all agents of the State. The Defense tried to induce Prosecution witnesses to state their view on the Vietnam war, which the agents refused to do. Prosecution's examination of the defendants was lackluster, merely a reading into the record of the fact that the defendants had done what in fact they said they did do.

The Judge permitted maximum leeway in discussion of the war. The Defense called as witnesses a Vietnam expert, a history professor, a Vietnamese woman victim of the war, American soldiers who had fought in Vietnam, a theologian, and an ex‑FBI agent. The former FBI man told of the FBI's harassment of peace groups, of the illegal activity of the FBI, asserted that the FBI had been responsible for the burning of the headquarters of a peace group in Washington, D.C. The Prosecutor did not cross examine nor attempt to repudiate any of the Defense witnesses. The ex‑agent had worked with other intelligence agencies ‑ Army, Navy, Air Force ‑ exchanging information with them‑, he maintained that the military was heavily involved with domestic investigations of racial groupings like the NAACP, SCLC. But the Prosecution did not challenge his testimony.

Attempting to explain their action to the jury, the court, the public, the Defense argued that it was not what happened but why it happened which was at issue. None of them wanted to go to jail. But they felt it was necessary to take drastic action to compel an otherwise deaf establishment to hear their voices. If jail was the risk, then they would take it. Each defendant tells his or her own story.

On April 25 Ann Master takes the stand. She is now 26, had been at UB between 1963‑66, first in psychology, then social work. She left to work in Vista, in the South Bronx, became aware of extreme health problems of poor people. A new hospital had been built 7 years ago, but not opened because there was no money to run it. No money because of war. The Defense shows a 10 minute film on Vietnam. Grable, the Prosecutor, refuses to watch the film, saying it was not sanctioned by the U.S. Government. But the audience, the jury and the judge watch the film intently.

Ann resumes her testimony. Can we say 'we did not know?', she asks. The sheer number of villages destroyed shows it is no accident. Every aspect of life in Vietnam is governed by the constant threat of annihilation; Vietnamization, she says quoting Ambassador Bunker, is only "changing the color of the corpses',. Now I am quoting directly from my trial notes:

Ann talks about summer of 1971 and Dan Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers; a decisive event for her. He had put himself in jeopardy. She said she had never been a member of a peace organization, was not the marching type. But always felt she was not doing enough. Three fourths of the American people say war is wrong. Why then does it continue? Action is necessary. War is so wrong drastic action is necessitated. Non‑violence the limit of action. Some property has no right to exist, she says, quoting the initial statement of the Buffalo. Napalm has no right to exist. The same applies to the draft, where men are put into situations not of their own choosing to become killers. Or else they are jailed and driven into exile. Draft is enforced labor, slavery. Draft files serve no human purpose, not like birth certificates or employment records.

Then questions from Prosecutor Grable: When was the action planned? How many people were involved in the planning. Ann says she is here to talk only about herself; the particulars do not matter; the purpose was to make the records public. Grable presses the point: it seems that 7 pairs of shoes were found at the scene of the action but only five people. Who were the two who got away? At this moment people in different parts of the court room stand up, saying "I was one of them" and "I got away", "I was another". In all some 10 people stood up, claiming to have gotten away, and were removed from the court room. Later a leaflet appeared with the theme: "If the shoe fits, wear it."

The next day, Jeremiah Horrigan testifies. He is tall, thin, longish slightly flaring black hair, dressed in faded blue jeans, black shirt, with tail out, quiet, gentle, strong. Twenty‑two, he grew up in South Buffalo, the oldest of nine children, neither rich nor poor, had essentials, never lacked love. He talks directly and softly to the jury: "You people don't know me but I want to share my hopes and fears with you.

Why is he here? His first war memories go back to the 4th grade: "Mrs. Reilly had us hide under the desk and not look out the window . . . an Air raid drill at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis . grew up with the bomb. At 10 or I I I was convinced I would never see 12. "

But his political views were conservative. At Fordham there was an AntiROTC demonstration but he argued for ROTC's right to be on campus. Slowly he began turning into the people he argued against.

"By the second year at Fordham people called me Hippie. That felt good, It still does." Participated in an anti‑ROTC demonstration that second year and that felt good too. Sophomore year of college drops out. Got into experimental living which included things like smoking dope . . . Stopped in to the New York Defense Committee . . . typed envelopes. On March 20, 1970 an action at the draft board . . . sat down . . . arrested, taken to the Tombs for a day. It was a freeing experience, he said. He had finally confronted the fear he had about jail.

Then to Woodstock.

Afterwards to Rochester where he lived with people, draft resisters, who made a raid on FBI files but unfortunately got caught. He was helping at bookstore, selling stuff for the Rochester Defense Fund in Ithaca, New York. The owner operator had been busted so Jeremiah ran the store for the next I I months.

Then Mayday, 1971. Half a million people in Washington a few days before; maybe 700,000. Then on Mayday he was busted. But "in jail there was jubilation like back at Woodstock". The people were insecure, he felt, because of the spirit of the people, not because they were threatened by any kind of violence.

For three years the war has been part of my life; people are dying at our hands . . . But there is liberation through facing fear. He has seen his friends jailed for trying to do the right things; trying to stop a crime. We are members of a community of non‑violent resistance . . .

Prosecutor Grable: Were you ever in Vietnam; did you ever serve in the army?

Jeremiah: No. Were you? (No answer)

Grable: Do you believe the end justifies the means. You have stated in writing that your action was 'illegal but legitimate'.

Jeremiah: The end is the means in process.

Morning of April 26, 1972 Jim Martin is telling the jury, ''the individual is not poworless". Hesitatingly, he explains how he grew up in a small town in Michigan, went to seminary at 13, in 1969 enters the Peace Corps, goes to Africa, discovers Africans really cared about each other; they were not going to destroy the world. Returning to this couniry he goes to Michigan State to learn about agriculture so he can help the Africans. That Africa had made him aware of Vietnam; he could picture the same thing happening here, "planes bombing my village". To Washington, May 1, 197 1:

"I was arrested twice on Mayday . . . the purpose of Mayday was to disrupt the government (he is explaining to the jury, ever so gently), to keep it from doing business as usual . . . to try to induce it to take seriously the crisis of war. While in jail in Washington, he meets this friend from the seminary he had not seen in 3 years. Goes with him to New York; they begin to look into international law. Clearly the U.S. is in violation of international law. What then to do? How to make the government act, or react to this fact.

So with his friend he goes back to Washington to arrest Curtis Tarr, National Director of Selective Service. With other Jim went to Tarr's office, charged him with being a war criminal, attempted to handcuff him. Tarr refused to comply, claiming, "I have a job to do." So, says Jim, "we placed him under citizens' arrest". Jim and his friends were forcefully removed from Tarr's office but not, it seems, brought to trial since the government was unsure of itself.

Then to Buffalo.

"If I'm into speaking the truth," he keeps saying to himself over and over, "then I must do it, even if it means going to jail."

Incredible people the BUFFALO. They have put the Court and the country on trial. Reading from my notes I am describing Chuck Darst as flamboyant, assertive without being aggressive; a man who steps forward. Chuck was the one to speak out first in my class last summer, my "Sociology of War and Peace". Chuck and Meaux Considine took the course and presented the 'draft board M‑1 job' as their term project. Only 22, he had been a Peace activist for years; he had burned his draft card at a Pontifical High Mass at Notre Dame on October 15, 1969. Came to Buffalo in December, 1970. Medium build, sandy hair, often with head band, usually dressed in jeans with shirt tail out. In court today (April 25) he is cross examining the FBI agent who arrested him: "You don't mind if I call you Jim, do you?" The agent had struck Darst in the first interrogation last August, but Chuck retained his composure, later engaged the agent in dialogue on "just war", doctrines of Catholicism, etc. Chuck even thought that he had made a chip in the guy's character armour, that he might someday come over to our side. But this Jim was not at all friendly on the stand. Looked straight ahead; tried to act like an efficient FBI man out of a movie. From my notes:

Chuck presses him for his opinion on the war, but agent Jim refuses, hides behind the privacy of professionalism, of ethical neutrality. He was doing a job as a cop; his ideas about the war were not at issue. Earlier, last August, Jim had professed opposition to the war, but now he is afraid to utter an opinion . . . No, that's too simple. Last August he pretended opposition to the war in order to draw out Chuck. Supercop. Or like the Communist interrogators, brain washers we see in the movies, who feign commitment in order to elicit a response . . . My thoughts drift off even in prison the BUFFALO will be free but these agents of the Government, the state, Grable, the cops, the FBI people will never know the freedom of expressed conviction; never have freedom really to express that conviction, therefore will never have a conviction, an honest belief, valued as a truth in itself. These agents could just as well be working for the KGB. In fact, he told the FBI men who came to his house ‑ "if you want to spy why don't you go to Russia. "

Chuck is turning into a good trial lawyer. No, maybe not. He is saying "We can't live in total security". True. But that is just what the jury and the prosecution and the Agents want: total security; the elimination of all risk, all ambiguity in life.

The BUFFALO are creating a document, reading into the record of the federal court the confrontation between the dominant culture ‑ the State ‑ and the Counter‑culture ‑ the resistance community. Agents of the state are frozen into fixed roles but the people of our community flow easily outward toward all people. The agents all have that Nixonian rigidity of body and walk, bereft of laughter, grace, kindness. In his summation to the jury Jim Martin apologizes to the Prosecutor Grable, "I'm sorry if we have done anything to hurt you . . . We've got to give each other room to grow." And you know Jim means it . . . just as you know Grable can't handle it. During the trial the BUFFALO presented gifts to prosecution and the judge. The prosecution refused but the Judge graciously accepted the gift. The prosecution is afraid of contamination by the counterculture.

On April 26 Meaux Considine takes the stand. She begins by explaining that most of what she is is because of family, and the family should extend beyond the single household. The parent makes the child do right; the child also has the same responsibility to make the family do right. The government is a family, a "we", not a "they"; we have the responsibility to see that it behaves justly. She tells of her experience tutoring in urban schools and finding "kids who couldn't do homework because they were hungry". She worked in Appalachia for a couple of summers, told of schools still using geography books printed in the 1930s that talked of countries which don't exist any more . . . 13,000 people in the area and not a single doctor . . . kids dying of preventable diseases. Gradually she came to realize the real problem was "not in the mountains but behind them." During the fall of the year she works on a project for relief to Biafra; visits Congressmen, Senators in Washington, realizes the leaders do not know how to deal with the problems of the country. Quoting directly from my notes of April 26, 1972:

Meaux is explaining to the jury that in spring, 1970 she was in South Bend for a Peace Procession at Notre Dame. She is handed a cross with the name of a Notre Dame student killed in Vietnam. Afterwards, she realized that the name represented a person. She looked up his picture in an old year book; wondered if he had a girl friend at St. Mary's, sister institution to Notre Dame, where she was in school . . . She participated in an institute for non‑violence; began to ask herself what was college worth in comparison to antiwar work. Then Cambodia, and 4 killed at Kent State. How many more would come before the country woke up . . . President Hesburg of Notre Dame himself drafts a petition denouncing the invasion of Cambodia, students are soliciting signatures for this petition on street corners. Meaux is twice spat upon, once a middle aged man turned her over his knee and spanked her. The whole attitude was 'don't bother me' . . . Then Nixon came on TV saying the invasion was his responsibility, and that was what people wanted to hear, "Don't worry, it's my responsibility, not yours" She goes for a long solitary walk that night 'and felt the death of every single person crying for help'. She read to the court a letter she wrote to her parents at that time, expressing her great love for them and her country. She says the Government is not a they, but a we, like a family; we have a responsibility to make the government do right; can not leave it to someone else . . . In the court room the emotion is almost overwhelming. The jury will not understand Mayday, or friendship, or abstract ethics, or international law but they have all been parents; surely they cannot deny Meaux. She continues her talk, gently easing down to a denoucement. She worked in the congressional campaign of 1970 for a democratic peace candidate, who was defeated by big money and a professional football player, Jack Kemp. She tried teaching. But there she found "all moral substance talked away". So finally on August 21, she acted.

Unmoved by her testimony Prosecutor Grable read a statement she had made after the action, which was printed in a Notre Dame paper. Meaux had said the antidraft board movement had passed from the 'show and tell' stage to the 'get and split'. A new strategy had developed in the mid‑west conspiracy, where draft board records liberated in raids would be mailed back to the 'owner' and he himself could decide whether to destroy it, or return it to the draft board.

On the final day, April 27, each defendant spoke briefly. Then Vince Doyle summed up for the defense. The experience of working with the defendants had been 'a form of baptism' for him, opened his eyes. He tells the jury it is impossible to separate the person from the act; the criminal from the crime. You have to be the judge of criminality. Said he hadn't known much about the Vietnam war until now, tends to avoid unpleasant facts, we all do. But now we can no longer plead guilty of not knowing enough. We now know the facts. Is peace ever coming? We go on and on and on . . . on this roller coaster of war. All other forms of protest had been exhausted, Vince is saying.

The action was non‑violent, directed only toward paper. What good did it do? Brings people like the defendants and their supporters together to stop the roller coaster . . . There is something wrong with our generation ‑ us, older people ‑ so in awe of things made of paper and wood, and not of flesh. Vince refers to his own soul‑searching. We have to re‑examine the whole purpose of law. Law is supposed to regulate conduct. Justice is the end; law only a means. The law is not inviolate . . . It is not speeding to try to catch a runaway car. He explains the idea of intent, which is simply purpose; why did you do that. The intent of the action on August 21, 1971 was to make the Government respond to the new 80 per cent of the public opposing the war . . . Our responsibility to make the Government do right (words to that effect). He does not envy the task of the jury; they have to take the risk and act on conscience

Grable then addresses the jury, saying he is not as articulate as Doyle or the five defendants, which is certainly true. The motives of the defendants may be sincere, but war is not an issue in the case. The jury must 'totally disregard what is heard about the war'. The analogy about breaking into a burning house to rescue a victim is an insult to the intelligence of the jury. The actions were planned, not a spur of the moment thing. Good motives never justify commission of a crime. The Government is not on trial for war crimes; only the five defendants are on trial, and not for being Hippies. But for conspiracy, theft and burglary. To the jury:

Sympathy should play no part in your decision; emotion used by the defendants to gloss over the real truth. Did they act with criminal intent, i.e. knowingly do the act. The building is private property, the property of someone else . . . The action of the 5 was an attempt to impose their beliefs on others, therefore a violation of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. On August 2 1, the defendants stopped playing by the rules of the game, violated law and order . . . Grable speaks of the extraordinary arrogance of the defendants, saying that some property has absolutely no right to exist. Vince Doyle had pointed out to the jury that Grable had refused to watch the film in court, and Grable is now saying, "I have a right not to watch that film, ‑ That is an example of the way the defendants are trying to impose their views on others . . . Grable mentions that Jeremiah called the action illegal but legitimate; that Ann Masters refuses to say she is proud to be an American. What is the country coming to . . . The end does not justify the means. 200 million Americans live in peace and harmony because of law. This vast, silent majority . . . etc. . . law and order. Unless we have respect for law there will be no order, and this will happen to American democracy ‑ Grable melodramatically crumples a piece of paper, judge Curtin begins his charge to the jury . . . an indictment is a charge, not a crime . . . deliberation means carefully think about . . . each defendant considered separately.

The counts: (1) On a date prior to August 21, 1971, defendants combined and conspired to commit a crime against the United States by removing and destroying records . . . Conspiracy is an agreement by 2 or more to accomplish an unlawful act . . . whether conspiracy accomplishes its purpose is immaterial. (Does that mean that Phil Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth are guilty of conspiracy even if their plans ‑ fantasies ‑ to kidnap Henry Kissinger never materialized, I wonder); (2) Willingly, knowingly removed documents from Military Intelligence office; (3) Burglary 3rd degree. Then the judge explains aiding and abetting a crime, reasonable doubt . . . verdict must be unanimous. Clerk is instructed to give the oath to the jury. jury leaves.

Ed, a Jesuit in dungarees from Camden, stands up in the audience, asks the Judge to have the clerk re‑read the oath. The oath was re‑read to the spectators by the clerk. Then Ed said that the oath says nothing about conscience.

Curtin explains, if motive was considered in the bank robber who gave to the poor . . . Audience murmurs what's wrong with that? Ed still standing says Jean VaIjean is a hero; stole a loaf of bread and went to jail.

judge says it was our good intentions which got us involved in Vietnam . . . Someone from the audience, "It was our intention to make money which got us involved." Barb Doherty stands, asks the judge, "How are we to stop a badly intended government?"

The question remained unanswered but a spontaneous dialogue had taken place in court between the spectators and the judge.

The defendants had implored the jury to join them. "Because of the war," said Meaux Considine, "we acted last August, out of hope, not despair . . . we came here out of hope with respect for life . . . respect for the sacredness of life . . . you can join us. "

But the time and opportunity for change had already passed for the jury, the prosecutors, the functionaries of the State. They were locked into a rule‑bound system, determined to maintain law and order, even at the cost of collective self-destruction. The defendants who thought of themselves as a counterculture, a new people, a risen people' were seeking to induce a change of rules, a reordering of priorities, a turn from death. Having exhausted the strategy of rational, verbal plea, the defendants turned to the dramatic act of disruption.

In 11 hours the BUFFALO were found guilty. A trial, says Packer in Limits of Criminal Sanction, is a kind of psychodrama where evil is punished and good reaffirmed. So the Buffalo Evening News was pleased with the outcome of the trial. "Law is the only instrument of a democratic society . . . the trial has protected the sanctity of our institutions." On August 21, the Buffalo Courier Express, while deploring the war, condemned the draft-board action for its "disregard of orderly processes."

But to the defendants, the whole antiwar movement by May, 1972 when the bombing of North Vietnam had resumed once more, it was the orderly process of Government which had produced the Vietnam catastrophe in the first place. Moreover, to ask young males to abide by draft laws, which they themselves did not make and which singles out people in the age range 18‑26 is like asking blacks to respect laws made by Southern white segregationists. Thus Jeremiah Horrigan argued that his action was illegal but morally legitimate. To the resistance community, not law but people are the guarantors of democracy. "Law is not order but prison," said Mike Cullen, a former Trappist monk who now calls himself a monk in the world.

A resistance community? A risen people? The community clustered around the BUFFALO numbered several hundred people ‑ over 100 were in the court room every day of the trial. The inner circle literally, physically lived together in the months between August and April. A hundred people gathered each night for a common meal during the trial, and for raps, singing, dancing. They speak of redeemed life, and some of them are involved in a psychedelic form of mysticism; but their ideas of god are rather far removed from institutional religion. Though it was probably their religious origins which gave the BUFFALO a kind of coherence and solidarity that most of the other radicals of the 1960‑70 period lacked.

In the end the contest acted out in the courtroom was one between a culture of encroaching death and a culture of reviving life. A universal historical pattern, says the anarchist Peter Kopotkin: "Primitive tribe followed by village commune; then by the free city, finally to die with the advent of the State."

Yes: death ‑ or renewal! Either the State for ever, (says Kropotkin), crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there . . . death! Or the destructions of the States, and new life starting again in thousands of centres on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.

The choice lies with you.21

State versus Community, this is what the antiwar movement in Buffalo and throughout the nation in the years 1965‑75 was all about ‑ and the outcome is still in the balance.

The custodians of the State acted as if they had blinders on: the Prosecuting attorney refused even to look at a film on Vietnam, claiming the film did not have the sanction of the U.S. Government. The prosecution ‑ and the police apparatus, which is its real constituency ‑ was only doing a job, acting out of neither malice nor hope, merely a job; no questioning of the war, and certainly no questioning of the right of the FBI to spy on citizens, burn peace centers, provoke violence.

Bob Wall, the former FBI agent who testified in defense of the BUFFALO ‑ the man who in fact headed the defense committee of the BUFFALO in the three months prior to the trial, writes of his defection from the FBI:

When I attend anti‑war demonstrations now, I look for my former coworkers and watch them making notes and taking photographs, and I wonder what they are thinking.

I got an answer on May 5, 1971, when I was in downtown Buffalo, New York, observing an anti‑war rally. About thirty or forty demonstrators sat down blocking a street. Without warning, a phalanx of six or seven motor cycle police drove their cycles into the group from behind.

I spotted an agent from the Buffalo office nearby jotting down notes and approached him. I asked him simply, "What do you think about this?"

"You know," he said, "We're not paid to think."22

Yet, some people thought. Vince Doyle, a formerly a‑political lawyer was radicalized. Even Judge Curtin must have been influenced by the trial of the BUFFALO. He almost commended the defendants for their action, saying if other citizens had acted with the same sense of moral outrage the war would have been over long ago. The jury found the BUFFALO guilty; Curtin sentenced them to one year on probation. On May 30, 1972, judge Curtin told a Trocaire College graduating class in Buffalo:

"We must end the war in Vietnam before it ends us. This war has turned all our best ideals to dust . . . Let us think less of losing a war and more about Human life. Let us think less about national honor and more about death and devastation we have caused" . . . At this point one spectator loudly muttered "Communistic lie". (John T. Curtin, "We Must End the War", Buffalo Evening News, May 30,1972).

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