February 24, 1966: Hell No!

By Jeff Stevens, Eat The State!

Along with growing protests against the Vietnam War, resistance to involuntary conscription for U.S. military service gradually became a hot topic nationwide as combat operations began to escalate in Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s. At first a brave few draft-age American males risked jail time and/or ostracism by openly refusing induction. By the end of the decade, many were brazenly burning their draft cards and seeking escape to Canada, among other popular draft resistance strategies.

Seattle’s formal introduction to the draft resistance movement occurred on the date in focus here, when Russel Wills, a University of Washington philosophy graduate student, became the first Seattle citizen to refuse induction in protest against the war. The consequences of his actions would become apparent the following autumn, as the U.S. government began to legally crack down on draft resisters in earnest. In Wills’s case, he would be sentenced to five years in prison that September.

Wills’s draft resistance actually began on October 16, 1965, when he wrote a letter to his draft board stating that he was so opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam on both legal and moral grounds that he had destroyed his draft card. One week later, he was given an A-1 draft classification (i.e., first choice for induction, thus canceling his student deferment), with no explanation. He did not receive a notice explaining the grounds for reclassification until January, after the date of possible legal appeal had expired. With conscientious objector status not available to him, he had no course but to refuse induction–a very bold decision to make at the time.

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