(audience applauds) 

- Yeah. 

- Right here. 

- They'll each make 10 minute presentations and then we were able to question them by giving questions to the monitors on the sides. First of all, it's Cassandra. 

- Well, first of all, I want to say absolutely a joyous sight to see all of you. It's really lovely. Nothing any of us can say can compare to seeing all of you out here and I think maybe you really can transform this campus and maybe you can transform this part of the United States. I mean, you do more than that and that's pretty good, but even if you do this, and you will with future faces. And it's not only racial injustice, but it's the injustice of people calling themselves president of universities, and all that sort of thing, as an acquired education and it's your education and I think you should teach your teachers how to make an education work. And when I say work, I mean really so you really become some sort of human being, not an American, not a Catholic, not a Communist, but really, a human being and so I think you really have a job to do and that's really to teach your teachers because most of them having their PhDs are really dumb by now. I mean, it's a really very callousing experience. You haven't gotten here yet. Maybe (mumbles) not to and you know, it's really very bad. The more degrees you get, the less you have to say unless you're willing to say it. So I would urge you to sit on the lawn (laughs). I mean (mumbles) much more acceptable. I've been, I saw a teacher up and on all my life and classrooms were tiresome. At best they're tiresome and at worse, they think you learn something in them. Well obviously you really don't. Someone like Socrates, he wouldn't get near a classroom. He was always on the streets of Athens. That was the trouble with Socrates. He was on the streets of Athens, he wouldn't go into academy. Well, I don't think we should go in academy either. I think at this particular juncture of not only American history, but world history, we really have to learn about the social organization of nonviolence and what it means because all over the world, not just the United States, though the United States I would say is the greatest culprit to social organization of violence is the most, somehow, engulfing part of our world. Everyone agrees that we can kill the bad guy. There's just a little disagreement on who's the bad guy and of course, that varies from season to season. I mean, sometimes it's the Cuban who's the bad guy and sometimes it's a German, and sometimes it's an East German, a West German, and sometimes a Russian and obviously the Vietnamese are going to be on your shore any day and you know, that's perfectly obvious. (laughter) But the things that really remain constant and the things that I think that you and I really have to redo battle with and do nonviolence battle with this fear. It's fear that keeps men in uniform. It's fear that keeps men killing each other because you don't kill them, why, something terrible is going to happen. And what has happened is men have gone on killing each other for say, the last 6,000 years in a very organized fashion and we've gotten to the brink of what may be World War three and certainly for the Vietnamese, some absolutely horrifying experience and certainly for the young men, the American young men who go over and suffer and die. Terrible experience with them, but all of them think there is no option. Fighting for what you're sharing on this lawn tonight, there is an option. There is an intelligent, there is a gentle, there is a nonviolent option and I think we have to keep showing that option over, and over, and over again. (audience applauds) And I want to close by saying I want to thank you for letting me come here and you've cheered me lots. (audience applauds) 

- I'd like to just start by saying that I think it's a beautiful sight to see you all sitting out on the lawn and that one of the reasons is that means you're outside of the classroom. I've always had a huge aversion to classrooms, just myself from kindergarten on up (laughter) and I think this is maybe a little rough to say, but I think when there really is a revolution on your campus, you'll be willing to walk off it and just stay off. In the meantime, it's lovely to see you sitting on the grass (laughs). To try to explain one of the reasons I think we find ourselves in the binds that we're in and I would say that Ira, and David, and I have been on a national speaking tour, making ourselves as obnoxious as we possibly can. We even went into Canada and did it there. (laughter) We've been saying that there is a time in your life when you have to say no to certain evils and then you have to take consequences. What we're really hung up about and what I've been hung up about all of my life, as far as I can remember, is the fact that people are willing to go on hurting other people and to try to understand why and the reason we talk about it is that we really think that if something is in all of us doesn't change or make a major change, that I think we're going to blow ourselves off the face of the earth and to try to understand what's happened to us, I can see it. I can try to explain it a couple of ways the way I see it. One way would be to say since birth or maybe even pre-birth, we've been raised to be schizophrenic individuals and that is that on the one hand, as far back as we can remember, people have said be kind to one another, be loving, love your enemy, love your neighbor, even try to love yourself. Be kind to small animals and birds, and so on and so forth. Be a good family man. But then at some point in your life, and it really starts when you're tiny and it's sometimes subtle, other times not so subtle. The least subtle point in your life is when you're 17 and a half and you suddenly realize that you have to make a decision and they go against all the things that you've been taught on the sort of pleasant side of your nature and that is when nation state steps in and says everything is sacrificed to me and your church goes, your synagogue goes, your love for mommy and daddy and their love for you goes and now you have to don the suit of the nation state and go and shoot whoever they say to shoot. And why we've let this go on for years, and years, and years? My guess would be that it's easier than standing up and saying no and you have an idea what it's like here just to stand up and say no really takes some kind of momentum and some kind of something to spur you on to suddenly jolt you out of your day-to-day routine and here you sit. Well, I think something has to happen so that all of us see that we're on the brink of destruction and then we can act differently from the way we've been acting. When we talk about nonviolence, I would say nonviolence may be the most totally misunderstood word in this century and one of the reasons is that it's very young. Organized nonviolence is very young and about Dr. Martin Luther King who was a good friend of mine and I loved him very much, I would say the relationship that Dr. King and I had consisted of a four year argument about what he was talking about when he talked about nonviolence and basically, unfortunately in this country, the word nonviolence came to mean don't slug anybody while the cameras are rolling, and that's why it's very confusing now for people to understand what it is we're talking about and people are ready to say oh well, it didn't work. Let's throw it out. Well, I don't think anybody really went into it at any length at all. What it really means is it's a political word for love and what we say is that for centuries men have been fighting in a very old hat fashion and the fighting has brought about more fighting, and more death, and more misery and we're saying that to really fight, to really bring about revolution would mean to bring about a change and in order to do that, you have to change your manner of fighting. So I'm now a committed nonviolent soldier and I say I will accept suffering, but I will never consciously inflict it on another human being, and that's really all nonviolence means. And then to try to find out more about what's happened in the history of nonviolence. Use the best example and we're thankful for Gandhi. I'm thankful that Gandhi lived, even though Gandhi had his flaws too. And so he's the best person we have to lean on and I would say that nonviolence, that it's a bit like when the earth was proved to be round and nobody could give up a flat earth and the flat earth had nothing in its favor. It had sea monsters at the edge so you couldn't go fishing too far and you couldn't go sailing too far, and you couldn't go exploring. But when the earth was proved to be round, men couldn't give up the flat earth and there was even a society left in England called the Square Earth Society and all that means, I guess, is that somehow when we have a psychological vested interest in something, even though it's worthless, it's difficult to give it up and that seems to be where we've reached with violence. Violence has nothing to show for itself except more violence. I mean, nothing. Here we sit on the verge of World War three and we still say oh, if anybody brings up the subject of something new, they say, "Oh, but you're very naive "and that's not practical." Well, I would say to think that we can continue the way we've been going for the last 6,000 years is highly impractical and very idealistic and I think that my appeal to you is that you turn, as apparently some of you have done at this point, to your conscience. If you don't like the word conscience, individual responsibility because I think that in order to keep this world revolving with any human beings on it, it really is up to you. It's up to each of you and not up to a daddy figure anymore. Thank you. (audience applauds) 

- I guess, can people hear? I'm going to have a little trouble because I have a throat infection, so listen hard. I remember being at Duke a year and a half ago when I was here to speak. I was afraid you were all going to sit in my room (laughs). It's nice to see you chose someplace else a year and a half later. But what I'd like to talk about is the draft. But before I talk about that, I'd like to begin with an assumption, an assumption which many of you of having a sit in maybe, or having sat in may be well aware of. An assumption that I want to begin with is that what you and I possess as a tool and the question of what it is we have is an instrument with which to do change and with which to bring about a new world. And the assumption I want to begin with is that the instrument that you and I possess is really the instrument of a life, something beyond political programs and beyond a political slogan, that what matters is really how you live from day, to day, to day, to day and as you pursue a life from day to day, you really build the terms that that life is lived in and as you and I try to understand what's happened in modern America, I think it's a mistake to say that the wrong politician has made the wrong move at this point or to say that somehow we've gotten on to the wrong policy. I think what we have to understand what's happening in this country, and what's happening in Vietnam, what's happening around the world as a foreign policy, what's happening in American ghettos, and probably most clearly to you, what's happening in the American university. It's not that there's simply been a mistake, but that what we see coming to fruition is that basic way we've organized the society, that basic set of logic that American society is is coming into fruition in front of our eyes and that fruition and that logic I think are very clearly at this point in direct contradiction with any notion of humanity, so the task that you and I have in relationship to this country and in relationship to the world is not a small one. It's not simply a question of finding a new person to elect or finding a new policy to support. What you and I must do with our lives is really begin to construct a whole new consciousness and a whole new logic for this society and for the world, and that's a question not at great, dramatic moments, but the less dramatic moments. It's a question not of just today, but of tomorrow and all the days after it also. And I think what you and I can try and find is to coach into meaningful statement for the present state of being of the world and I think the only state that I can find that has that kind of meaning is a very simple statement. That very simple statement is that all men are brothers and that the only worthwhile society is a society built around that principle of brotherhood. And that what you and I must do with our lives is build that brotherhood into a social reality and I think for anyone concerned with that kind of problem, anyone that really feels that their lives must be used to better the lives of their brothers, but any young man facing that runs immediately into a particular social institution, and that's what I want to talk about now. That institution is the institution of the military conscription of the Selective Service System. I think as we try and live lives, what we can try and understand is what those things we participate in mean. And I want to deal with, I think, three basic assumptions that you build with your lives as you participate in military conscription. The first of those assumptions is a very clear one. That is that the lives of every young man in this country between 18 and 35 belong not to those young men at all, rather those lives are tools of the state. Those lives are the possession of the state to be used whenever the state decides a new policy of international murder. I think the second assumption is perhaps not quite as obvious and may be the most frightening thing about military conscription, and that assumption has to do with teaching. For a moment, I want you all to think of your draft cards as a teaching mechanism, that you were given a draft card not basically because they wanted you in the Army, but because they wanted to teach you something, they wanted to teach you a way of looking at your life and a way of looking at the lives of people around you and a way of living that life. For a brief moment, I'd like to describe a phenomenon of channeling, which is a basic part of the Selective Service System. And this idea of channeling was best described by the Selective Service System itself in a paper, peculiarly enough, entitled Channeling. And they laid out this basic phenomenon, that the Selective Service System's primary purpose did not have to do with procuring manpower, but had first to do with controlling the lives of young people and channeling those lives into activities that would promote the current set of values and current social arrangement in America. And the way that's done is very simply. You create a broad context of pressure on people's lives and they admit those lives will be disrupted and taken into the military. In that context of pressure, they establish a number of different niches or deferments. Those deferments or niches are specifically designed to meet the ends of the nation's status, elective service season. Through the use of that pressure, you force people to pick up activities with their lives that are not found in those lives at all, but are rather found in the pressure of the Selective Service System. You force people to pursue activities which in the end, in social reality, amount to making sure that America exists 20 years from now as it now exists. And I think the most fundamental thing it teaches has to do with emotive energy of a life and I think what has taught young people in this country is how to live under the auspices of fear, how to continually make decision, after decision, after decision not because of what you find in those decisions or what you find in your lives, but rather because of what you're afraid of. In this society, I think we can generally characterize as being motivated by that kind of fear and I think you and I have a particular responsibility to say that we refuse to live under the auspices of that fear any longer, that our lives will be used for something other than building fear into a social mechanism and into a society. And I think the third assumption of military conscription is perhaps the most obvious and that is that 80% of the people of the world today live in misery. One of the primary instruments in terms of maintaining that misery is the American military. The American military is fed by conscription. I think what you have to realize at this time in history and for the rest of your lives is that those people that now live in misery are your brothers and that you have a responsibility to those people and you have a statement that you have to make to their lives, and that statement is going to be made by you taking on a task with your life, that you're taking on something that you're willing to build which offers a hope for them because that's what they ask for and they ask each of us what is it that we are doing from day, to day, to day that means, perhaps, their children will not starve to death. It means, perhaps, that they may enjoy a roof over their head. It means, perhaps, that they won't have to worry about the next week or the week after that when they may be murdered. I think that's the kind of statement that you and I have to make and in reality, it's a very simple statement, although the world that we deal with is perhaps a very complex one. And I think if you made that statement of brotherhood, it means that there's no way that that statement can coexist with military conscription, that none of us can serve two gods at one time, and if you decide you're going to serve the God of military conscription, then you may as well forget about the God of brotherhood because the two cannot coexist, and you have to make a decision about the priorities. The priorities are simple. If you take that stance of non-cooperation, you're going to become criminals. All of you are going to face up to five years in a federal prison. I'm presently on trial in the city of San Francisco for having refused induction into the Army after sending my draft cards back a year and a half ago. What I'd say is I kind of dig it (laughs). I mean, there's nothing I'd rather be in modern America than a criminal. (audience laughs) (audience applauds) The whole time I was growing up, I knew I was growing up to be something, and finally I found it. (audience laughs) It's a great feeling of satisfaction involved in that. (audience laughs) But I think that's the price and prices are put on things for a specific reason, and the price of going to jail is put on that draft card because they're sure the people that put prices on it, that you will choose all the day to day, mundane pleasures of America, you know, walking to between the 19 cent hamburger stands and across the alley to the next gasoline station before you'll choose something vague and abstract and far off like brotherhood. And the assumption that we make is really the opposite one. We feel that what's involved here today and what's involved in the lives of young people all around this country is you're really looking for a way to make your lives have meaning, and that you're going to choose that meaning before you'll choose all those particular pleasures of day-to-day America. I think however you choose, you have to understand that you make a choice, that every day you carry a draft card, you decided to lend your energies to a whole set of social forces in America and I think the social forces divide very easily into two camps now. That is, you either stand with death and oppression or you stand with life and brotherhood. And those are the two camps you have to choose between and I think as long as you carry a draft card, you've made a choice and you decide that you're going to lend the energies of your life to death and oppression. And I think there's another choice available to you, which is you can stand up today and you can stand up tomorrow, and you can stand up for the rest of your lives with your brothers, and you can say my life has no meaning outside of their lives, and that if we're going to make it in this world, then we're going to make it together and that that's the obligation that I feel and that's the task that I have to begin with my life today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and that we will never stop until that brotherhood is built into a social reality and whatever the prices and whatever the penalties, they're nothing compared to the rewards and they're nothing compared to the brotherhood that we decided to live in. (audience applauds) 

- Now there is a standing ovation on the main quad for the speaker. (audience applauds) 

- I wanted to double check. Let me make an announcement about that. One of the things it takes to do this kind of work is money. (audience laughs) And at this point, people from the resistance are going to be passing a hat, the results of which are going to be used to keep a few more resistance organizers alive and fed for a little while longer. So I guess we'll take a little break while those are, while those hats or whatever they are that's going to be passed are passed and then we'll have a period of questioning where we can rap back and forth with you. 

- The people who are going to pass the hats, are they the row monitors. Just walk down your rows. (audience laughs) Right, okay. 

- As you can hear, at the present time, a hat is being passed to collect money for the demonstrators here on the main quad of Duke University. During this interim, let me take this opportunity to fill those who are listening in who were not listening earlier this evening in on the progress of developments. The most specifically significant thing that happened was that a strike was called at four o'clock this afternoon here in front of the crowd by the Duke University dining hall workers, and that strike went into effect at four o'clock. Now also, it has become, the situation is not entirely clear at this time, but it has become apparent that President Knight is not at this time in control of university policy regarding what is going on here. The chairman of the board of trustees, Wright Tisdale, has come in. ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ This is Ms. Baez. We'll cut to her. ♪ Kumbaya ♪ 

- Sing. ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Oh Lord Kumbaya ♪ 

- Fight for justice. ♪ Fight for justice Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Fight for justice Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Fight for justice Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Oh Lord Kumbaya ♪ No more drafting. ♪ No more drafting Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ No more drafting Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ No more drafting Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Oh Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ Kumbaya ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Kumbaya my Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪ ♪ Oh Lord ♪ ♪ Kumbaya ♪