Walzer hopes that if the CNC can collect several thousand signatures, Congressman O'Neill might agree to public hearings in spite of his hawkish stand on the war. Several of Walzer's group recently conferred with O'Neill and reported him to be much more dovish in private than he has been in public.

But a spokesman for Vietnam Summer national headquarters said recently that "No one really expects O'Neil to hold the hearings."

It doesn't really matter that much anyway. The petition provides a convenient issue for approaching people, but a Vietnam hearing is only the secondary goal of the CNC. The prime purpose is to activate politically anti-war Cambridge citizens, and mold them into an effective bloc. As Walzer puts it, "We want to stir up as many people as possible."

What to do with these people once they've been stirred up is a question no one's trying to answer at CNC headquarters. Walzer expects the local residents to learn how to flex their own political muscle. Neighborhood residents mobilized by the CNC have already formed two research committees to discuss possible courses of action.

The electoral politics committee is now weighing the advisability of running CNC people for School Committee, City Council, Democratic and Republican committemen, and delegate to the national party conventions. Another committee is studying the effect of the war on Cambridge residents--for example, its effect on local industry and welfare payments--in order to arm CNC endorsed candidates with arguments against the war that hit home...literally.

The orientation of the CNC toward electoral politics contrasts sharply with the stated aims of a second Cambridge peace organization, the Boston Draft Resistance Group. The people of the Draft Resistance Group are so filled with revulsion at the war that they have settled on a more immediate, direct, and personal "No!" They have all publicly announced their determination never to enter the military while the U.S. is fighting in Vietnam. In the Boston area, more than 400 have already taken the pledge.

With $1000 of Vietnam Summer money, about 30 of the resistors opened an office at 138 Rivers Street, Cambridge, where they counsel young men in methods of avoiding the draft. They are also thinking of working more closely with the CNC, whose canvassers generally keep records of which Cambridge families have draftage sons. The Draft Resistance Group may send people around in the wake of the CNC to offer their services to these families.

There is a federal law against advising anyone how to avoid the draft, but the resistors have not been deterred. They are quite open about what they are doing. Ray Mungo, a member of the group, describes their activities in these terms: "We are unabashedly using every means possible to inhabit, retard, and be dishonest with the Selective Service System...Our position has been philosophically anarchistic. That is, we make no moral judgements about why a kid wants out. If he wants out, we get him out the best way we can."

Most people who seek help from the Draft Resistance Group are not interested in trying to prove they are conscientious objectors to war. The few who want to try for C.O. are referred to the Americans Friends Service Committee in Harvard Square, which has a staff more experienced in the intricacies of the C.O. procedures.

The Draft Resistance group specializes in loopholes. "There are 14,000 different ways to get out," Mungo proclaims. It is perfectly legal, for example, to refuse to sign the security oath at the pre-induction physical, and you don't even have to give a reason for refusing. The army generally doesn't want anything to do with non-signers and classifies them 1-Y, Mungo explains.

Mungo also claims that many more people can be saved from the draft on the grounds of physical disability. He said that many young men who are eligible for 4-F miss out because they don't bring medical documentation to their pre-induction physical.

At Army Base

The resistors spend a lot of time at the Boston Army Base leafletting the men undergoing their physicals. They tell the pre-inductees, among other things, that they still have 21 days after their physical in which to present new evidence of eligibility for a 4-F deferment.

The Draft Resistance Group can offer free legal assistance. Victor Rabinovitz, a prominent left-wing lawyer, has agreed to send up a man from his firm, Mungo says, whenever a client of the Group faces trial. So far, two have been put on trial for refusing induction and one of them has already been sent to jail.

Mungo says that most men who seek help from the resistors are working class people, and he believes this is very significant. "It's nothing new for intellectuals to protest wars," he said, but he called the evidence of dissent among "plain ordinary guys" an "unprecedented movement." Yet, he admitted that this "movement" is still infinitessimally small. His office has aided a few more than one hundred people.