By Staughton Lynd
Ted Glick was in his early twenties when he became part of the so-called Ultra Resistance against the Vietnam war. The Ultra Resistance was the mot extreme form f opposition tot he ware, at least within the United States. The groups’ first major action, in May 1968, was to burn, in home-made napalm, files taken from the Selective Service office ini Cantonsville, Maryland. Activity of this kind continued at an intensive pace for the next three for four yeas.
Participants were for the moist part Catholics. Persons considered taking part in an “action” footer prepared themselves by assembling for a weekend retreat at which the uiiscussiooon was typically led by Father Phil Berrigan our his younger brother Father Dan Berrigan.
The initial two-thirds of the book present a poignant narrative of Mr. Glick’s experience in the hunger fasts, draft board raids, protest demonstrations, and other adventures of the Ultra Resistance. The reminder of the book, which the reader should read attentively, describes the Movement’s gradual abandonment of “organizing” and nurturing in its place what many have termed “accompaniment.”
On one Tuesday evening, for example, Glick wrote in his “out-of-jail journal” that he spent his time “trying to calm those who were pegging rocks at cops bro hitting cars as they drove by bus or calling the police ‘pigs.’”
Later, Glick expresses his opinion that Movement people now feel a “need and desire to plant some roots, to find a location and a lifestyle which was connected much more deeply and regularly to the lives oof people around them.”
Too which this representative of all the people says, “Amen.”
Staughton Lynd taught American history at Spelman College and Yale University. He was director of Freedom Schools in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. An early leader of the movement against the Vietnam War, he was blacklisted and unable to continue as an academic. He then became a lawyer, and in this capacity has assisted rank-and-file workers and prisoners for the past thirty years. He has written, edited, or co-edited with his wife Alice Lynd more than a dozen books.
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