24 February

‘The United States has indicated an intention to draft my boy into the army ... If you persist by using force, I will have no choice but to acknowledge a state of active war exists between The United States and me.’
Tom Bondhus

Today in 1966, 19 year old Barry Bondhus dumped two large buckets of his and his brothers’ shit over the Vietnam war draft papers at the Sherburne county draft board. The boys had assiduously collected their crap over the previous couple of weeks.

At his subsequent court hearing his father Ted declared war on the United States

‘I believed the propaganda thrust on us during the war with Hitler; when they said there would be no war with Germany if the people had refused to follow that mad man. We now have a mad power crazy feeling in the United States. Now I am going to follow that advice and try to stop the aggression of these power crazy lunatics ...’

’My terms are not unreasonable: the government must not take my children. If you want money or property, take it, but you can not use my children to do your fighting. Fight your own war you cowards.’

Barry’s Big Lake One action became the ‘movement that started the Movement’ with copycat actions around the US, draft records were destroyed by homemade napalm (the Milwaukee Fourteen), black paint (the Boston Two) and blood (the Baltimore Four).

http://www.selective-service.org/barry-bondhus-case.htm