Draft Resisters To Rally, Picket, and Pray Monday

New England draft resisters will hold a special "Service" in Boston's Arlington St. Church after a rally in the Boston Common on Monday.

About 2000 people are expected to turn up, according to Michael K. Ferber, a graduate student in English and one of the protest's organizers.

A number of Harvard anti-draft students will picket classroom buildings on Monday morning. They will urge fellow students to stay away from classes and attend the service and rally. Divinity students will also attend and plan to give up their 4-D exemptions at the service.

"The Resistance Service," a New York based group, has organized a nationwide day of draft resistance with activities in over 35 cities across the nation.

Monday's activities will be the first part of an Anti-Draft Week which will conclude on Saturday, Oct. 21 with an anti-war mobilization in Washington, D.C.

During Monday's service, draft resistors will be called on to hand in their cards at the altar to members of the clergy. Those who wish to burn their cards may do so with an altar candle, Ferber said. Otherwise, the cards will be taken to Washington where Dr. Benjamin Spock and Resistance members will hand the cards to the Justice Department. The cards will be handed in on Friday, Oct. 20, with an expected 2000 from around the nation.

Both the clergy members who receive the draft cards during the services on Monday and the people who hand the cards to the Justice Department are according to Ferber subject to arrest.

"This is going well beyond the-individual romantic gesture of the past few years," Ferber said before a small meeting of draft resistors last night. "We've been told by government prosecuting attorney through mutual contacts that the Government doesn't have enough facilities to prosecute the several hundred guys now who might have been brought in for Selective Service law violation, much less the 15 to 20,000 men we hope to have by next spring."