Refusal to Submit: Roots of the Vietnam War and a Young Man's Draft Resistance

Refusal to Submit reflects on the personal sacrifices necessary to make political change. Author Richard Gould documents the Draft Resistance Movement and a young man’s coming of age during the Vietnam War. He details his decision to refuse to be drafted into the U.S. army and the events that follow—his arrest, trial, and eventual imprisonment in a federal prison in Safford, Arizona. As his story unfolds, the origins of the war and his reasons for opposing it emerge, placing his prison experience within the larger framework of the historical events occurring on a national and global scale. Gould conducted numerous interviews with fellow draft resisters who served time with him in prison, and as such the book contains the stories of those resisters as well his own. Structured as letters to his college-age children, he aims not only to document the confusion, anger, and atrocities of the Viet Nam era, but also to pass the history of resistance on to the next generation of young activists and critical thinkers. The letter format carries the story forward, stitching together historical events and personal experience, becoming an invitation to anyone faced with moral decisions about national policy in our modern times.