[I sent the message below, via an intermediary, from the hospital wing of the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, CT, where my fellow draft resister Russ Ford and I were being held in isolation from all other prisoners “for our protection” and lest we have some contagious political disease with which we might infect the general prison population. When I wrote this message Russ and I were in separate single-bed hospital rooms, but after a week or so we were moved into a two-bed quarantine room with a double door and an airlock between us and the hospital corridor, to prevent the hospital unit trusty from passing messages between us and other prisoners. Gary Sachs, one of the Boston 18, was being held in another section of the prison. This message was read (possibly by my mother, Marguerite Helen, although I’m not sure) to an anti-draft rally outside the entrance to the Federal prison complex at Danbury which included participants from Upstate Resistance (NY), Ecology House and others at Wesleyan University (CT), the New York and New England chapters of the War Resisters League, several Catholic Worker houses, participants in Plowshares disarmament actions, and others connected with the Atlantic Life Community. Files I obtained later from the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons through the Freedom of Information Act, although redacted, showed that regional and national Federal prison officials took great interest in this rally, perhaps in part be cause of the long history of activism by draft resisters and their allies — including Dave Dellinger during World War II and John Bach and Phil and Dan Berrigan during the U.S. war in Indochina — inside and outside the prison at Danbury, which for many years was the closest Federal prison to New York City. See also my comments 40 years later on the significant but incomplete success of nonregistration as an anti-draft strategy and tactic.]
[Edward Hasbrouck at F.C.I. Danbury in August 1982. I wasn’t allowed ordinary visitors, but Jim Motavalli from the New Haven Advocate got in to interview me, along with a photographer, and later sent me this outtake from that photo shoot. The uniforms we had to wear were, as is typical in Federal prisons, military surplus.]
14 August 1982
FCI Danbury
(By proxy)
To: Participants in Rally
I do not know if you have been allowed to come here today, nor — unless you are very numerous, very noisy, and very nearby — am I likely to know if you are here now. But I am thinking of you today, and I am gladdened by the thought of your presence, just as I am gladdened by the presence here of Russell Ford and Gary Sachs, though I am presently unable to communicate with either.
I hope you will not ask that I be given special treatment as a political prisoner, or that I be freed unless all here are freed. The special treatment — much more comfortable and much more isolated — which I am receiving was neither my choice nor my desire, but was imposed by prison administrators who feared what would happen to them if they allowed anything bad to happen to me, to Russ, or to any other prisoner with as much support and interest on the outside as us. But the status of “prisoner” is an inherently political one, and I hope you will ask, as I do, that all prisons be abolished, all prisoners freed.
I hope your gathering today will be a celebration. That prison administrators fear us and fear nonviolence is sad, is silly, and is a sign of our success. I — you — we are a threat to the government. I have refused to register [for the draft]. You have the right to refuse to register. We have prevented reinstatement of the draft. This is a victory easy to lose sight of, in our fear and (perhaps) imprisonment, but it is a victory nonetheless, to be savored and to be celebrated.
Your right to refuse to register [for the draft] is not a legal right; it is not guaranteed by law. Law is might, not right, and it guarantees legal wrongs. Your right to refuse to register is your illegal right, your de facto right. We guarantee this right to each other by our numbers, by our solidarity, by our speaking out. We have the right to refuse to register. We can exercise this right, and we can assure each other that the government cannot punish any of us for the exercise of this right without our consent.
Exercise your right. Do not be frightened by what has happened to us. We are here for speaking out and not for nonregistration. What has happened to us is not a threat to any of you.
Yours in Peace,
Edward John Hasbrouck
[Edward Hasbrouck and Russ Ford in a song circle outside the Federal courthouse in Syracuse, NY, at the arraignment of Andy Mager for refusing to register for the draft, 30 August 1984. Photo by Bob Mahoney.]
[Russ Ford and Edward Hasbrouck, Big Bend National Park, Texas, 1988.]
[Russ Ford and Edward Hasbrouck on a bicycle trip near Arch Rock on the Oregon coast, 2019. A month together in an isolation cell will tend to make you either never want to spend time together again, or friends for life.]
This page published or republished here 14 August 1982; most recently modified 27 February 2024. This site is maintained by Edward Hasbrouck. Corrections, contributions (articles, graphics, photos, videos, links, etc.), and feedback are welcomed.