American Radical, Pacifist and Activist for Nonviolent Social Change: David Dellinger Interview
David T. Dellinger (August 22,
1915 --
May 25, 2004), was an influential
American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change.
Dellinger achieved peak notoriety as one of the
Chicago Seven, protesters whose disruption of the
1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago led to charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot. The ensuing court case was turned by Dellinger and his co-defendants into a nationally-publicized platform for putting the
Vietnam War on trial. On
February 18,
1970, they were acquitted of the conspiracy charge but five defendants (including Dellinger) were convicted of individually crossing state lines to incite a riot.
Judge Hoffman's handling of the trial, along with the
FBI's bugging of the defence lawyers, resulted, with the help of the
Center for Constitutional Rights, in the convictions being overturned by the
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals two years later, on
21 November 1972. Although the contempt citations were upheld, the appeal court refused to sentence anyone.
Dellinger was born in
Wakefield, Massachusetts to a wealthy family. His father was a lawyer and a prominent
Republican. A
Yale University and
Oxford University student, he also studied theology at
Union Theological Seminary. Rejecting his comfortable background, he walked out of
Yale one day to live with hobos during the
Depression. While at
Oxford, he visited
Nazi Germany and drove an ambulance during the
Spanish Civil War. During
World War II, he was an imprisoned conscientious objector and anti-war agitator. In federal prison, he and fellow conscientious objectors — including
Ralph DiGia and
Bill Sutherland — protested racial segregation in the dining halls, which were ultimately integrated due to the protests. In
February 1946, Dellinger helped to found the radical pacifist
Committee for Nonviolent Revolution.
During the
1950s and
1960s, Dellinger joined freedom marches in the
South and led many hunger strikes in jail. As US involvement in
Vietnam grew, Dellinger applied
Gandhi's principles of non-violence to his activism within the growing anti-war movement, of which one of the high points was the Chicago Seven trial. He travelled to both
North and South Vietnam in 1966 to learn first-hand the impact of American bombing and later recalled that critics ignored his trip to
Saigon and focused solely on his visit to
Hanoi.
In
1956, he and
A. J. Muste founded the magazine
Liberation, as a forum for the non-Marxist left, similar to
Dissent.
Dellinger had contacts and friendships with such diverse individuals as
Eleanor Roosevelt,
Ho Chi Minh,
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Abbie Hoffman,
A.J. Muste,
Greg Calvert,
David McReynolds and numerous
Black Panthers, including
Fred Hampton, whom he greatly admired. As chairman of the
Fifth Avenue Vietnam
Peace Parade Committee he worked with many different anti-war organizations, and helped bring
Dr. King and
James Bevel into leadership positions in the 1960s anti-war movement. He sat on the executive committee of the
Socialist Party of America and the
Young People's Socialist League, its youth section, until he left in 1943; and was also a long-time member of the
War Resisters League. In
1968, he signed the "
Writers and
Editors War
Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Dellinger appeared at the
December 1971 gathering of music and political views in favor of the then-jailed
John Sinclair.
Anti-war activist, socialist and author for his lifelong commitment to pacifist values and for serving as a spokesperson for the
peace movement, Dellinger was awarded the Peace
Abbey Courage of
Conscience on
September 26,
1992.
In
1996, at the first
Democratic Convention held in Chicago since 1968, Dellinger was arrested along with nine others (including his own grandson as well as Abbie Hoffman's son
Andrew) during a sit-in protest at Chicago's
Federal Building.
Later, in
2001, he led a group of young activists from
Montpelier, Vermont, to
Quebec City, to protest the creation of a free trade zone.
David Dellinger died in Montpelier, Vermont, in 2004.
"Before reading [his autobiography], I knew and greatly admired
Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them." —
Noam Chomsky, from the dustjacket of From Yale to
Jail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dellinger