David Dellinger

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David Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was a renowned pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change, and one of the most influential American radicals in the 20th century. He was most famous for being one of the Chicago Seven, a group of 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 found guilty of conspiring to incite riots but the charges were eventually dismissed by an appeals court due to errors by US District Judge Julius Hoffman.

Far from being the austere, serious prototype of a pacifist, Dellinger was a husky, happy man whom friends often described as a "cheery elf." He was a genial person of boundless energy and uncommon good sense.

Early Life and Education

David Dellinger was born August 22, 1915 in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a well-to-do family. His father was a lawyer who had graduated from Yale Law School. He was also a prominent member of the Republican Party.

In high school Dellinger was an outstanding athlete, long distance runner, and tournament-level golfer. A superb student, he graduated from Yale University as a Phi Beta Kappa economics major in 1936 and won a scholarship for a year of study at Oxford University in England. He returned to Yale for graduate study and to the Union Theological Seminary in New York to study for Congregationalist ministry.

Influenced as a youth by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dorothy Day's Depression-era Catholic Worker movement, Dellinger worked behind the lines in the Spanish Civil War, and then in 1940 refused to register for the draft before America's entry into World War II. As a result, he became one of a handful of radical pacifist prisoners whose Gandhian fasts helped integrate the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut in 1942. Dellinger's colleagues such as Ralph DiGia and brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, and others would also go on to years of peace activism. [1]

Activism

David Dellinger is most identified with the era of the 1960s peace movements in America. However, he had been to court, to jail and to prison long before that time. He supported union organizing drives in the 1930s and civil rights in the 1950s. He had written that he lost track of the times and places he was jailed. "I went from Yale to jail," he said, "and got a good education in both places." [2]

World War II

In preparation for World War II, the U.S. government in 1940 instituted the military draft. David Dellinger became one of its first conscientious objectors, refusing to register for the draft. In reality, he could have had a deferment due to his studies for the divinity at Union Theological Seminary, but he took this stand to make a point.

War, he said, was evil and useless. His alternative to war was brotherhood and the abolishment of capitalism. He offered the courts his critique of the "strategic disagreement" between the U.S. imperialists and the Third Reich.

Dellinger was sent to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut for a year and a day. Upon his release he still refused to register, and was sent to the maximum-security prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he staged hunger strikes and spent time in solitary confinement. Two years later, he was released.

Upon leaving prison he married Elizabeth Peterson and embarked upon a career as a printer, a writer, a peace organizer, and, above all, a radical pacifist.

Spokesperson for the radical left

Mr. Dellinger continued to protest; against nuclear testing, against the bomb, against the Korean War, for prisoners' rights and for Puerto Rican independence. A critic called him "the Kilroy of radical politics," who appeared at nearly all the big demonstrations. In the early 1960s, Dellinger made two journeys to Cuba, reporting enthusiastically on what the Castro revolution had done for the Cuban people.

In 1956, Dellinger, A. J. Muste, and Sidney Lens became the editors of Liberation, a radical pacifist monthly magazine. With a handful of other pacifists such as Bayard Rustin and David McReynolds, they became a key strategic bridge between the nonviolent civil rights movement led by Dr. King and early protests of the Vietnam War. [3]

By the mid-60s, Dellinger had become known as one of the main spokespersons for the radical American left, as young Americans began to protest the nation's treatment of African Americans and the U.S. military incursion into Southeast Asia.

Dellinger made two trips to China and North Vietnam in the fall of 1966 and the spring of 1967. In America he helped in the production of the famed March on the Pentagon of October 1967, which would later be memorialized by author Norman Mailer in his prize-winning Armies of the Night.

He worked with the radical Catholic priests, Daniel and Philip Berrigan to write a "declaration of conscience" to encourage resistance to the draft, and he was one of the organizers of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which staged the huge antiwar marches in Washington in 1970. [4]

Vietnam

In April 1963, Dellinger participated in a "peace walk" in New York City during which those who favored peace clashed with other marchers over the Vietnam War, and Dellinger was cast into the forefront of anti-Vietnam politics. He worked in 1964 with Muste and two radical Catholic priests, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, to produce a "declaration of conscience" to encourage resistance to the military draft.

A year later (August 1965), with Yale professor Staughton Lynd and Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee organizer Bob Parris, Dellinger was arrested in front of the U.S. Capitol leading a march for peace and was jailed for 45 days. Two months later Dellinger became one of the organizers of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam—the group which staged the huge anti-war marches in Washington D.C. in 1970.



Lifelong Protester David Dellinger Dies

By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 27, 2004; Page B07


David Dellinger, 88, a lifelong radical pacifist and one of the Chicago Seven antiwar demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, died of pneumonia May 25 at the Montpelier, Vt., retirement home where he lived. He had Alzheimer's disease.


Mr. Dellinger, who had been protesting since the 1930s, was the oldest of the seven (originally eight) Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot after a massive demonstration in the streets and parks of Chicago turned violent. Among the bearded, beaded and wild-haired defendants, he was balding and wore a coat and tie. He and Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis were convicted of inciting a riot, but the convictions were overturned on appeal.

One of his four surviving children, Michele McDonough, said yesterday that Mr. Dellinger remained actively engaged in issues until just a few years ago. The "last real trip he made," she said, was three years ago when he hitched a ride to demonstrations in Quebec City against the creation of a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere.

"He felt this is one of the most important times to be active," she said. "He was working on a wide range of things: prisoners' rights, supporting a living wage, demonstrating and writing about foreign policy of this government."


He made two trips to China and North Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. He marched on the Pentagon repeatedly. After the Chicago Seven trial, North Vietnam decided to release a few U.S. prisoners of war, and its leaders asked Dellinger, among others, to come to Hanoi to escort them back to the United States, which he did. Lifelong Protester David Dellinger Dies


Dellinger spent much of 1968 travelling to Cuba and preparing for demonstrations at the Democratic party national convention in August. When the Chicago police attacked the demonstrators, the federal government indicted all demonstration leaders (Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner) for conspiracy to cross state lines to incite a riot.

In July 1969 North Vietnam decided, as it had twice before, to release a few U.S. prisoners of war, and Vietnamese leaders requested that Dellinger come to Hanoi to receive them. He and three others, including Rennie Davis, his co-defendant in the aftermath of the Chicago riots, flew to Hanoi in August and escorted the Americans back to freedom.

Encyclopedia of World Biography on David Dellinger


During the 1950s and 1960s, Dellinger joined freedom marches in the South and led many hunger strikes in jail. As U.S. 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.

Dellinger had contacts and friendships with such diverse individuals as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abbie Hoffman, A.J. Muste of the worldwide Fellowship of Reconciliation, David McReynolds of the War Resisters League 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. He was a member of the Socialist Party USA.

In 2001, Dellinger led a group of young activists from Montpelier, Vermont, to Quebec City, to protest the creation of a free trade zone. He died in Montpelier in 2004.



"Our nonviolent action would be more positive if we stressed reaching out with love for our fellow human beings — love not only for the victims, but also for those who defend the existing system, including those who think they benefit from it, even toward the police and other security forces." —David Dellinger [1]

The Chicago Seven

Quote

"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

Notes

  1. Parrish, Geov, June 3, 2004, David Dellinger, Working Assets Online, Accessed February 20, 2007
  2. Sullivan, Patricia, May 27, 2004, Lifelong Protester David Dellinger Dies, Washington Post, Retrieved February 24, 2007
  3. Parrish, Geov, June 3, 2004, David Dellinger, Working Assets Online, Retrieved February 24, 2007
  4. Encyclopedia of World Biography on David Dellinger, BookRags Inc., Retrieved February 24, 2007

Sources and Further Reading

  • Dellinger, David, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter, New York, Pantheon Books, 1993, ISBN 0679405917
  • Dellinger, David, Revolutionary Nonviolence Essay, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, OCLC 92546
  • Gara, Larry; Gara, Lenna Mae, A Few Small Candles: War Resistors of World War II Tell Their Stories, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1999, ISBN 0873386213 - ISBN 09780873386210
  • Hunt, Andrew E., David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary, New York, New York University Press, 2006, ISBN 0814736386 [2]
  • Dellinger, David, "Vietnam Revisited: Covert Action to Invasion to Reconstruction", Massachusetts, South End Press, 1986, ISBN 0896083209 - ISBN 9780896083202 - ISBN 0896083195 - ISBN 9780896083196

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