They attacked a draft board office to protest the Vietnam War.
Fifty years later, the fallout continues.
The three young men, dubbed the Silver Spring Three, poured
blood on draft cards in suburban Maryland.
Leslie Bayless is pictured May 21, 1969, tipping over a file cabinet inside the Silver Spring, Md., draft board. His brother John is in the background. (Washington D.C. Historical Society)
By Diane Bernard
May
22, 2019
They thought their protest against the Vietnam War
would have short-lived repercussions.
Early that sunny morning 50 years ago, Les
Bayless, who was 22, his brother, Jonathan, 17, and Michael Bransome, 18,
entered the empty offices of the Silver Spring, Md., draft board. They turned
over file cabinets, emptied their contents and poured buckets of paint and
blood, including some of their own, over draft registration documents.
In preparation, they’d had their blood drawn the
day before by Mary Moylan, a registered nurse and a member of the radical
Catholic draft resistance group, the Catonsville Nine, led by renowned priests
Philip and Daniel Berrigan.
When the three finished demolishing the draft
records, they wrecked the office equipment, throwing typewriters out the
windows. The destruction on May 21, 1969, took about 20 minutes.
Then they patiently waited for the police to come.
“We did the most radical thing we could think of
to help stop the war in Vietnam,” Les Bayless said in an interview.
Bayless said his group, which was soon dubbed the
Silver Spring Three, notified a few reporters affiliated with the radical
publications Ramparts and the Guardian. The journalists took photographs of the
Bayless brothers and Bransome ransacking files and pouring blood and paint in
the office.
It took almost an hour for the police to arrive,
followed by the FBI, who arrested and handcuffed the three, sending them to a
federal jail in Baltimore. Jonathan Bayless, at 17, was considered a juvenile
and was released. Les Bayless and Bransome remained in prison.
“I was very scared,” Bransome in an interview. “I
knew there would be dues to pay.”
Michael Bransome destroys draft files at the Selective Service office in Silver Spring. (Washington D.C. Historical Society)
Michael Bransome is led away by police after he and two others ransacked the Silver Spring, Md., draft board and then waited for police to arrive. (Washington D.C. Historical Society)
The 18-year-old had just dropped out of Einstein
High School in Kensington, Md., to live in a D.C. commune filled with antiwar
protesters, joining Les Bayless, and members of the Catonsville Nine, who were
awaiting trial for torching draft files at a Selective Service office in
suburban Baltimore. The two young men soaked up the nonviolent teachings from
the Catonsville group along with writings by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
and Gandhi.
Bransome figured he’d serve about two years in
prison, like other protesters he knew who were arrested for similar actions.
“You have to understand that between 1968 and
1969, thousands of young men were being drafted every day to fight and die in
Vietnam,” said Bayless, who is now 72 and lives in Baltimore.
By 1969, the number of American military personnel
in Vietnam had reached more than 500,000, and those killed had soared
over 30,000. Just one day before the Silver Spring Three attacked
the draft board office, American troops fought for 10 days to capture Hamburger
Hill, one of the most famous battles of the Vietnam War.
“The war was raging all around us, and we were
angry,” Bayless said.
The Silver Spring action was part of an antiwar
movement called “Hit and Stay,” which the Catonsville Nine pioneered.
Participants destroyed war-related offices or
equipment, and then waited for the police to arrive to arrest them. The
strategy was to use the arrest and ensuing trial to gain publicity for the
antiwar cause.
In 2013, Maryland filmmakers Joe Tropea and Skizz
Cyzyk made a documentary about the movement called “Hit and Stay.” To
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Silver Spring Three protest, the AFI
Silver Theater in Silver Spring will be screening the film Wednesday
evening. Les Bayless will join the filmmakers at the screening.
In the days before copiers and computers, local
draft boards kept Selective Service registrations on 3-by-5-inch index cards.
There was no central registry in the United States, Bransome said.
“If you managed to spirit away or destroy the
cards, you could keep someone from getting drafted since there was no backup system,”
he said. “These actions had a very real impact on the draft.”
After their incursion, the Silver Spring draft
board was closed for six to nine months, Bayless said.
The Silver Spring action was considered small by
the movement’s national standards, said Kara Speltz, who lived in the commune
with Bayless and Bransome. “But who knows what other person heard about it and
said, ‘I can refuse to fight, too, I can stand up, too.”
After months in jail, Les Bayless and Bransome
were tried separately. Bransome pleaded no contest in the fall of 1969 and was
sentenced to three years at Robert F. Kennedy Youth Center, a federal prison in
Morgantown, W.Va.
About 50 young people attended the trial of Les
Bayless to show support. After he received nine years in prison for draft
evasion, three felonies and mutilating government documents, the maximum
allowed by law, U. S. District Judge Roszel C. Thomsen, who also presided over
the Catonsville Nine trial, asked Bayless if he had anything to say to the
court.
“Yes,” Bayless said, and he proceeded to throw his
courtroom table in the direction of the judge. Guards jumped on Bayless and
protesters chanted, “Right on!”
“My sister started kicking at the guards, saying,
‘Don’t hurt my brother!’” Bayless said.
Bayless was sent to a maximum security federal
prison in Lewisburg, Pa., and ended up on the same cell block as Jimmy Hoffa.
Plundered draft board files at the Selective Service office in Silver Spring. (Washington D.C. Historical Society)
Meanwhile, Bransome said he believed his life was
in danger at the youth center in Morgantown. Two inmates
accused him of being a communist and threatened to kill him just before he was
to be paroled for good behavior. Bransome didn’t think the authorities could
protect him if he told them about the threat. He went out on furlough two weeks
later and decided to not go back.
“I was only 18, just a kid, and I just knew I
couldn’t go back there,” Bransome, 68, said.
Bransome, who was raised Catholic, reconnected
with the Catonsville Nine clergy who housed him in different cities around the
country. While in a safe house in Cleveland, he dyed his hair blond, put on a
priest collar and robe and began calling himself Father Richard Murphy. In this
disguise, he crossed the border into Canada, then made his way to Stockholm in
1971. He was granted asylum in Sweden a few years later.
Bransome has been an exile in Sweden for almost 50
years now, and he has built a life there. He learned the language, went to
college and eventually became a psychiatrist, treating survivors of rape and
torture from around the world. And he and his wife have six children.
“For years, I missed the United States. It was my
home country,” he said.
Yearning to see family and friends, Bransome
unsuccessfully sought pardons from Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and
Bill Clinton.
“I just never thought that our small action in Silver
Spring, Md., would lead me into permanent exile,” Bransome said.
“But I still think it’s the best thing I ever
did,” he added.
Bayless agrees. After serving four years in
Lewisburg, he was released from prison in 1973 when the war was ending and he wasn’t
a threat to the government anymore. He became a trade union activist and
retired 10 years ago after serving as an organizer and steward for 1199 SEIU
United Healthcare Workers East.
“I have no regrets,” Bayless said. “I stood up and
said I will not go to an immoral war. I took a stand, and I’m proud of that.”
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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