[2 articles]
'Catonsville Nine' protester: Past problems are alive today
http://www.sctimes.com/article/20100129/NEWS01/101290015/1005
By Dave Aeikens
[email protected]
January 29, 2010
George Mische finds many of the issues he confronted as a peace
activist during the Vietnam War era appropriate to today's discussion
about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mische is a former St. Cloud City Council member and a Cathedral High
School graduate who became nationally known as a member of the
Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic men and women who in 1968
marched into a draft board office, removed hundreds of files and
burned them on the street. The trial of the Catonsville Nine became a
movie and a play. The California-based The Actors' Gang will perform
it this weekend at St. John's University.
"If you take out the draft files and you take out Vietnam, all the
issues you see are exactly the same issues confronting the country
right now," Mische said.
Mische, 72, still travels the country talking about Catonsville, a
Baltimore suburb not far from Washington, D.C. He plans to be at St.
John's Saturday night.
The events in Catonsville more than 40 years ago are something in
which Mische still takes great pride. He and his friends risked their
liberty to challenge the U.S. government. The group included three
Catholic priests and two women and they sought to bring attention to
the Vietnam War they believed was wrong. Four of Mische's five
children are named after Catonsville Nine members.
The group spoke out against the country's foreign policy and against
the Catholic Church, which Mische said was
supportive of the war.
At the time of the incident, Mische had a 1-year-old daughter.
"We wanted to identify with the youth because the youth were being
put down by the Johnson administration," Mische said. "We wanted to
be people whose backgrounds couldn't be challenged."
Mische had an impressive background. He graduated from Cathedral in
1955 and joined the Army. He attended Gannon University in Erie, Pa.
When he graduated in 1963, he worked for the Kennedy administration
in Latin American. He quit in 1965 during Lyndon Johnson's presidency
because he believed Johnson was supporting Latin American dictators.
Mische moved to Chicago and pursued a change in U.S. foreign policy
in Latin America. That's where he met his eventual wife, Helene, and
discovered that many of the issues in Latin America were similar to
those in Vietnam. He got married, moved to Washington, D.C., and with
some friends, set his sights on Southeast Asia. Mische and Helene
lived in Northwest Washington, not far from the White House, with
five members of the Catonsville Nine. The incident was planned from the house.
Catonsville
On May 17, 1968, the nine protesters alerted reporters then entered
the draft board office in Catonsville. They used wire baskets to
gather draft files while the three women who worked there watched.
The group took the files outside and burned them with homemade
napalm. Mische said it was gasoline and soap suds.
"It mixes a goo just like napalm did when (the government) dropped it
on people. It was better to drop napalm on draft files than human
beings," Mische said.
The nine men and women waited for the police to arrest them. They
were refused bail and spent eight days in the county jail. They
prepared to go to court and make a larger point that people need to
speak up when their government does wrong.
"We decided to have a political trial," Mische said.
Mische and the group were forbidden from traveling, but they did it
anyway. When they were convicted and the U.S. Supreme Court refused
to hear the case, Mische was ordered to report for incarceration in April 1970.
"My wife and I decided we were going to keep going," Mische said.
A Jesuit friend read a statement in New York saying they would not be
turning themselves in. Mische went underground in Chicago. The FBI
caught up to him in May while he was staying with a friend. They came
smashing through the doors, guns ready and swooping in through
windows on ropes, Mische said. He was taken to a maximum-security
prison in Pennsylvania. He served 25 months.
"We knew we were going to get caught. We weren't leaving the country.
It was just a symbolic thing. We were going to keep things going as
long as we can," Mische said.
Back to St. Cloud
Mische got out in 1972 and returned to Washington, D.C., where he
turned his activism against the federal prison system.
He returned to St. Cloud in 1976 after he fell seriously ill with a
blood disorder. He and his wife opened a political bar on the East
Side called Lincoln Station. They owned it for two years. Mische went
on to be a local labor organizer and ran for City Council in 1978.
His political activism and his arrest became an issue in the race.
Local veterans worked against him. Mische showed the "Trial of the
Catonsville Nine" movie at a local Catholic church to dispel some of
the rumors about his past.
Mische narrowly won the council seat. He lost a bid for mayor in 1980
and in 1982 local barber Chuck Winkelman defeated him in his bid for
re-election. The couple moved to Columbia Heights in 2000.
Mische said he still sees some similarities to what is happening
today to when he was working as an activist.
"I've spent a lot of time lecturing on campuses. The response and
turnout at these places, the comparison to the way things were on
campuses in 'Nam are building up on campuses now," Mische said.
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War play to reveal historic true story
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2010/02/02/war_play_to_reveal_historic_tr.aspx
February 2, 2010
By Robin Tilley
In 1968, George Mische joined eight other peace activists to burn
hundreds of Vietnam War draft files in Catonsville, Md.
Forty years later, in the midst of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
play "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine" provides "obvious
parallels," director Jon Kellam said.
"It's a different war now, a different age ... but it's something
that we just felt like was important to bring to the consciousness of
the audience, to the public," Kellam said.
The Actors' Gang of Los Angeles will perform "The Trial of the
Catonsville Nine" tonight at the Eisenhower Auditorium.
The play outlines the story of the "Catonsville Nine" and their fight
with the Supreme Court. Ninety percent of the play is from actual
courtroom transcripts from the trial.
When Mische helped gather the rest of the "Nine" in the late 1960s,
he said they weren't "long-haired, yellow-bellied, dope-smoking
creeps" -- each person had impeccable records and strong professional
backgrounds.
"They couldn't say, 'These are deadbeats' -- they had to take us
seriously," Mische said.
Their goal was to do something based more on action than symbolism,
in contrast to the hundreds of demonstrations across the country.
They wanted to take a direct action to try to stop the war, Mische said.
"I had found out the U.S. government had no duplicate copies for
draft files, and if something happened to any of the files, then
those people would no longer exist in the draft," he said.
But the act of burning the files itself isn't the only memorable part
of the story -- what came after is important, too.
Mische said he and several other members of the Catonsville Nine went
"underground," hiding in an attempt to delay their inevitable jail sentences.
He and his wife traveled the country in secret, organizing more protests.
"The FBI caught me in Chicago while I was staying with an ex-priest,"
Mische said. "They came in and smashed the doors off the apartment,
and some came down off the roof with their guns."
But the fight didn't end there. Mische said the protesters appealed
to the court system that the war and the draft were illegal because
Congress had never officially declared war.
Mische spent 25 months in jail, he said, which was the maximum sentence.
"What's interesting is it was one of the first known acts of civil
disobedience that, in the sense of the publicity, really galvanized
the anti-war movement," Kellam said.
The Catonsville event sparked many similar movements that same year.
Kellam also finds it interesting the Actors' Gang began producing its
version of the play just after the 2008 election.
"It turns out that whoever's the president is going to explore going
into Afghanistan, and we wanted to do something that dealt with that
issue -- anti-war civil disobedience at that time -- because we felt
like it was important to show the
comparison," Kellam said. "It's really similar."
Laura Sullivan, director of marketing and communications for the
Center for the Performing Arts, said there will be a talkback session
following the play to answer any questions that the audience may have
about the play and the event itself.
Sullivan said she thinks the play could have a significant impact on students.
"It's a retelling of an actual historical event, so anytime that that
happens, it's a different way of grasping the history -- to see it
live through performance instead of reading it," she said.
.
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