BDRG Is Broader

The dispute over the most effective use of the draft as an organizing tool is nationwide. In Boston, the broader approach is embodied in the Boston Draft Resistance Group (BDRG). The Resistance wants persons to dissociate themselves from the Selective Service; BDRG just wants them to avoid it.

Although it is not listed in the yellow pages (after "Dowels and Dowel Pins" comes "Draft Controls, see thermometers"), BDRG has a full-fledged and publicly-acknowledged existence at 102 Columbia St., Cambridge, two blocks off Central Square.

It is the only anti-draft office in Boston and is always filled with 30 or 40 heterogeneous people, from white Harvard teaching fellows to black Roxbury drop-outs and elementary school teachers. Somehow, they all work together to handle Boston's four sustained anti-draft activities: counselling, induction center protests, speaking, and high school and community organizing.

Members of the Resistance, like recently arraigned graduate student Michael Ferber, also work through the BDRG office. In fact, the only continuing Resistance activity, a Monday night dinner, is held at the home of Harold Hector, Jr., one of BDRG's three paid employees.

Individual draft counselling is what the BDRG office originally was meant for. There are seven counsellors who confer with an average of 15 persons a day, six days a week. Before the recent Spock indictments, the number who requested advice was less than half that many. According to Hector, a majority of those who come in already have deferments lined up, and most of the rest of them find one through the counselling. "Only two have actually gone on to face induction," Hector said. "We usually never see a person more than once," he added.

But as the draft calls increase, the pressure on potential draftees is more intense. "The first question we ask is whether the person would go to Canada, to jail, or into the army," explains William A. Hunt, a teaching fellow in Social Studies and a regular draft counsellor.

The counsellor's first job is to see if the person is eligible for one of the 13 Selective Service deferments. If not, Hunt recommends a multi-issue approach for several months before the probable induction date: make a claim for conscientious objection (even if it is unrealistic it will waste time and tends to lessen the jail sentence if you eventually refuse induction), begin seeing a therapist and complain about your fears of entering the army, engage in anti-war activities, write a series of indignant and inflammatory letters to your draft board.

Homosexuality Deferment

The central question is how much indignity a person a person is willing to undergo to avoid Canada, the army, or jail. "I knew a person who after months and months succeeded in getting a 1-Y deferment for homosexuality but in the process just about ruined his life," says Hunt. An individual can move in with a welfare mother to get a III-A dependency deferment.

"This is where we need our subversive ministers and social workers to write the necessary applications," says Hunt. The counsellors also have at their disposal a Psychiatrist Referral Board, which has produced a "substantial number" of sympathetic recommendations to draft boards.

If the worst happens, and an individual is inducted, he can always punch the sergeant in the nose at the pre-induction physical or refuse to sign the loyalty oath at the induction, a move which usually means a five-month delay.

Every month each draft board sends between 30 and 90 of its registrants to be inducted. The BDRG organizes "bussing teams," which meet the inductees at 6 a.m. while they are waiting for the bus in front of their local draft boards. "The first thing we ask is how many want to go to Vietnam," says director Mike Mickelson, "and usually no more than one or two will raise their hands." The BDRG teams advise them on the possibilities of avoiding service and often able to enter the bus with the inductees.

"Disappointingly few have refused induction, but the effort is still having an appreciable effect," says Mickelson, a 21-year-old Dartmouth graduate.

Because there is only one anti-draft office, and so much anti-draft opinion, an enormous speaking calendar is a patriotic duty that BDRG must perform. Neil Roberston, Hunt, Ferber, Hector, and Grizzard meet most of the requests for speakers on the draft.