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Catonsville Nine activist at CCBC today
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(Chris Ammann/Baltimore Examiner)
Brendan Walsh, who helped plan the activities of the Catonsville Nine on May 17, 1968, holds a protest placard as he speaks at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville on Monday. He will be speaking at the Essex campus today. It will be 39 years ago this spring since two Catholic priests, two other men from religious orders, a former priest, a former nun, a Washington community organizer, a Baltimore artist and a local midwife entered a Baltimore County Selective Services office. They proceeded to burn several hundred draft files with napalm in the parking lot. The Catonsvillle Nine, as the group became known during its trial, all were found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. However, their protest quickly sparked similar acts of defiance from Camden, to the Bronx, to Milwaukee and Pasadena, and became a defining moment in anti-war activism during the Vietnam War era. Monday, the Community College of Baltimore County invited Walsh, 64, who remains active in anti-war “plowshares” protests and lives at the Catholic Worker Viva House in West Baltimore, to present “When Peace Calls for Action.” Walsh also showed the FBI-seized videotape of the burning of the draft records, shot by a local television news team. “It became a turning point in the anti-war movement,” Walsh said of the protest. Walsh, a conscientious objector, drove priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan to the Knights of Columbus building the morning of May 17, 1968. Walsh created relevance with comparisons to the Iraq War, likening the Gulf of Tonkin controversy to the weapons of mass destruction story, the need to fight terrorism — like Communism — as justification, the inevitable need for more troops, a conflict that expands to other countries and a disproportionate number of poor people killing other poor people. “I think this history is very important,” said Lisa Boone, a Catonsville professor who lives a block from the Knights of Columbus building. “I have three teenage boys that I’m scared to death are going to be drafted.” “I think that in the immediate moment [the Catonsville Nine priests] must have faced a lot of difficult questions,” said the Rev. Rob Carbonneau, C.p., in residency at St. Joseph’s Monastery Parish in nearby Irvington. “But looking back, they seem to have been prophetic voices.” Walsh will share his Catonsville Nine experience today at BCCC’s Essex Campus from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For more information about the free lecture, call 410-780-6638. |
