The Minnesota 8
"Resisting Illegitimate Authority!"
1970's Selective Service draft board raiders
Using lessons
from the past to respond
to peacemaking needs of today!
2015: This site supported the play, "Peace Crimes" (2008), and remains here for historical and research purposes.
| Theatrical play "Peace Crimes": the Minnesota 8 vs. the war" - ensemble docudrama perfect fit for colleges and universities Who
are the Streaming video: Listen to radio interviews. Read print coverage. Pictures: A "Thank you!" from Joe whose draft file we destroyed |
Nadja Leonhard-Hooper 2011
2008:War talk dominates media, classroom and dinner table discussion as we engage in the most controversial military policy in forty years. Regardless of political affiliations or service history, all Americans are being challenged to make informed and critical moral and political decisions about war-making and peace-making policies and obligations.
War is conducted by and waged against human beings, so the conversation needs to move beyond numbers of troops and calendar dates to engage with universal human values. A broader and deeper public conversation about the moral landscape of war and peace-making is crucial and way past due.
How to involve and enable this generation's youths' participation in the public discussion? Through an entertaining play, "Peace Crimes," and a campus-based educational event, "Peace and War in America." (PWA)
"Peace Crimes" is based on the trials, transcripts, memoirs and public records of the draft raids and trials of the Minnesota 8. It is about young people resisting the illegitimate authority of their government.
PWA tells a complete and comprehensive story of how present moral, political and cultural conditions and challenges are rooted in the choices made by previous generations.
Since every individual makes moral decisions using different information - some decisions may be grounded in historical analysis. Or influenced by political interpretation. Or compelled by religious beliefs - a series of campus-based free public events employ various communication modalities (lectures, small group discussions, panels, etc.) to address eight decision influence sources: history, politics, law, religion, science and the experience or fact of being young, a woman or a veteran.
PWA produces free public events that promote personal engagement with the complex intellectual issues and moral terrain of war and peace-making.
| Campus-based events What happened at "Peace and War in the Heartland"?
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| Screenplay, novel and websites: |
"Dove and Dragon" — a screenplay |
| "Kill the Dove!" — a tale of the revolutionary 1960s |
Earthfolk— a vision of living peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth. |
Outlaw
Visions
—writings
of Frank Kroncke
"The Burning of paper instead of children" by Hillel Arnold
Still Resist!ing and committing "Peace Crimes": WAMM &
