I had been at the meeting down stairs that Jim Oesterreich chaired about the "membership" of the Resistance. Jim later won a Supreme Court case about divinity students. The meeting decided that to be a member, you would have to do something. Before, the only criterion had been handing in your draft cards or, for girls, liking to talk with boys who had handed in their draft cards. Handing in your draft card had always seemed to me to be doing something.

"What are you doing now?"

"We've decided to move out of the city into the suburbs to help serve the needs of the community."

"Why aren't you staying here?"

"Landlord wants us to move. He originally gave us the place for a couple of months and we've been here almost two years. It isn't political repression or anything; he just wants us to move. Besides, there's no one to organize. I can't organize secretaries, businessmen, and cops, can you?"

I had just tried at the police station and I had learned that I couldn't.

"We're moving into more high school organizing. When high school kids see meetings with Marines, radicals, and commies (that's us) that all agree on the war, they understand that there's something wrong with their analysis."

"Is Bill Hunt still here?"

"He says 'Hi' when you pass him on the street. He's not making decisions, though."

Bill Hunt was probably the best speaker in the movement. At Monday night dinners in the Arlington St. Church, he had his own circle around him. That was the one solid thing about the Resistance. It was a community. Every Monday night, the FBI agents with felt hats and overcoats would cross the street from the Common and stand in front of the church. They'd stand by the entrance to the meeting room downstairs and aim umbrellas at you and take your picture, click. The women in the Unitarian church made dinner and about a hundred people ate together off paper plates.

BILL HUNT gave his "Channelling" speech about once a month. He talked about Hershey and his newspaper women in the army he'd draft them. He gave that speech the night the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and sentenced David O'Brien to five years for burning his draft card. David was there and the speech cheered him up. Later, the judge whose decision was reversed decided that no Supreme Court was going to reverse his decision. He suspended the sentence.

Mike Ferber, Bill Hunt, and the community feeling in the Resistance were probably more convincing than the war as reasons to hand in your draft cards. Almost everone later decided that there were better places to fight the war than jail. The people who didn't receive 4-F's or 1-Y's took back their 2-S's. It was easy to say that the whole strategy of the Resistance about filling the jails to end the war was wrong. It was good to have a handy rationalization around.

"Where you going to go from here?"

"We're moving to Mission Hills in two days. Brigham Circle."

"So I really shouldn't pass by any more, huh?" I had just noticed the extent to which the old Resistance office had collapsed. The roof beams were strewn about the floor and plaster and panelling from the walls and ceiling had fallen all over. Only one of the couches with half the springs showing was left, and it was upside down. The usually well-lit office had lost most of its fluorescent bulbs. None of the mimeograph equipment or file cabinets was left. The screen door still hung open from the garage door, and that had led me to assume that all the rest was the same.