The Boys Who Said NO!

The Boys Who Said NO! (2020) was co-written and directed by Judith Ehrlich. It's a dynamic documentary about people who resisted the U. S. war against Vietnam.

As the title implies, draft resistance is a key component of the film. However, the movie is also about the hundreds of thousands of people who tried to stop the war by participating in rallies, protests, and nonviolent civil disobedience.

Of course, director Ehrlich shows footage of high-profile resisters like David Harris, and noted antiwar activists like Dr. King and Dr. Benjamin Spock. However, she also gives us interviews with some of the brave--but not famous--people who resisted the draft and went to prison for their beliefs.

This is the best movie I've ever seen about resistance to the war against Vietnam. It's a must-see movie for peace and justice advocates. It's also a must-see movie for people who believe that any war the U. S. fights must be supported.

The film has just been released and has not yet received enough reviews to have an IMDb rating. I thought that it was superb, and rated it 10.

I enjoyed watching "The Boys Who Said NO!". It has the feel of a sort of home movie made by a particular segment of Vietnam draft resisters. While at the beginning of the film the point is made that resisters are focused on stopping the war, and a strong segment around racism follows, halfway through the theme becomes the experience of the young American men portrayed. David Harris speaks to his motivation being solidarity with those other young Americans he'd been counseling to resist.

The title of the film is continually a puzzle. At one point we are shown the "Girls say yes to boys who say no" poster, but there is very little coverage of the experience of couples around the draft other than the prominence of Joan Baez and David Harris. There are no parents and no siblings at all. Several draft resisters make the point that they came from families with no history of left or anti-war activity. One young man is influenced by his father pointing out kamikaze pilots were burned alive. There were other young men who were disowned by their fathers for resisting the draft. I clearly remember strife within my family around the war, arguments with church members, friends, neighbors. Draft resistance had a huge impact on families. Why is there no mention of this?

There is a strong depiction of anti-draft resistance coming out of the civil rights movement, but no mention at all of the New Left or SDS, no mention of SANE, CND and the anti-nuclear movement. When I volunteered mailing out anti-war literature anti-war organizations like WILPF and Women Strike for Peace were sharing the SANE office in Philadelphia, and there was a similar relationship in the Bay Area.

The case for nonviolence around :50 became pretty tedious. There were young men saying "No!" who were not following a tradition of Gandhian nonviolence and who were also not Mark Rudd. I found the Rudd-Harris exchange embarrassing.

No mention of GI strikes, the Presidio mutiny? Late in the film we are told "the Woodstock generation in Vietnam" is refusing to fire their weapons, and that Daniel Ellsberg was inspired by Randy Kehler, but see no mention of draft resisters inspired by GIs.

No mention of Chicago 68? The Chicago 8/7? We see King's assassination but not RFK's? No inner-city riots? We see marchers mourning MLK, however the idea that anti-draft activity was affected by the assassinations is absent.

There was no mention in this film of the young American men who went underground, to Canada, to Sweden, in order to resist the draft and the war. How can this be? How could you produce a film about Vietnam era anti-draft activities without mentioning men going to Canada? Jesse Winchester? I clearly remember conversations with my parents about what course of action my older brother and I might take if the war was still going on when we became draft age, and neither military induction nor recognition of the legitimacy of US courts was something I considered here.

1:07 The Gandhian "the longer you suffer the more pure it is in a way" around Bob Eaton captures the tone of the movie. Boys who said "No!" who saw themselves as resisting an illegal war and followed paths other than non-violent passive resistance or personal sacrifice are absent from this film.

We are shown Catonsville, and an LA draft board raid, but they are as one-offs. There is no mention of the waves of draft board actions. Where is Camden? Rochester?

We are shown a Spock interview, but no mention of the Spock conspiracy trial? The Media FBI office break-in? Of Harrisburg? The massive instances of sabotage within the military and military supply chain? There were young men whose draft positions were influenced partly by nocturnal damage of fuse fittings on bombs en route to Vietnam.

"I only got one year and I think it's because we got through to the judge's heart" suggests, as several of the speakers seem to, that some length of jail time was some sort of win. The legitimacy of American courts trying anti-war resisters at all is not questioned here.

1:09 We are told of a "radical different situation" when a barefoot homemade pants-wearing resister has his charges dismissed, and young Americans who seem to follow an Indian guru smile and cheer. There is no mention here of what was happening in Southeast Asia while these smiling young people were wearing colorful slacks.

1:25 is a brief VVAW demonstration with no explanation of what the viewer is seeing. There were veterans everywhere in anti-war demonstrations. You saw green flak jackets with various patches, guys wearing combat boots. The anti-draft movement seems from this film to have operated in a world without Vietnam veterans.

1:26 There is a very brief clip of canoes blocking a munition shipment - again, no explanation. If the viewer blinked they missed this. The viewer would already need to know what was going on to have any idea whatsoever why they were being shown canoes.

The closing minutes are a hip "resist, resist, resist", "make a difference, stand out. There are times when you have to fight" with "fight" here being a Gandhian sacrifice, a Buddhist self-immolation, after a film which has made clear what forms of resistance are permitted. There were those of us young men who were strongly affected by the Vietnam anti-war movement, by Vietnam draft resisters, and in 1980 refused to register for a military draft when the Carter Administration renewed draft registration partly as a result of the example of Vietnam draft resisters. Many of us were inspired by young American men a few years older than us who resisted the Vietnam draft, and my memory is clearly of the course shown in this film being only one of many threads which were then contemporary.