Hit & Stay (2013)

Hit u0026 Stay: Directed by Skizz Cyzyk, Joe Tropea. With Rahne Alexander, Joel Andreas, Bill Ayers, Daniel Berrigan. A feature-length documentary about priests and nuns who protested the Vietnam War by breaking into draft boards, destroying draft records, and then waiting around to be arrested. Their actions inspired a movement, which shaped the anti-war movement and helped bring an end to the draft.

“Hit and Stay surveys the Vietnam-era movement to raid draft boards and damage or destroy Selective Service records. The movie focuses on the best known of these raids, Catonsville, while successfully tracing the movement from the first raid, by the Baltimore 4, through Catonsville, Camden, the Media FBI break-in, to the Harrisburg trial. The film makers make use of contemporary interviews with raid participants along with archival footage to tell the story of how the movement progressed from the unique actions of a handful of Catholic clergy and laity, who committed civil disobedience in the mode of Gandhi or the civil rights movement, symbolically breaking a law in order to draw attention to the greater crimes being committed by the state and then remaining at the scene, to become a much more widespread movement of citizens who effected very real damage to the ability of the United States government to draft young Americans to fight an illegal, unjust war. The tactic of Hit and Stay became over the experience of Johnsonu0026#39;s 1967 Vietnam war morphing into Nixonu0026#39;s 1970-71 invasions of Cambodia and Laos and Ramsey Clarku0026#39;s yielding the Justice Department to John Mitchell the tactic of hitting and getting out, as the anti-war movement came to terms with the bankruptcy of the American political and justice system.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn cataloging the various raids Hit and Stay touches on Camden, documented in the excellent Camden 28, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808190/. The filmu0026#39;s interviews show how for years many contemporaries were convinced John Grady orchestrated the Media break-in, when in fact that action was planned and carried out by Philadelphia-area activists, as 1971 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3478510/ expertly shows.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHit and Stay very effectively communicates the breadth of involvement in draft board raids, showing the variety of individuals involved as well as the variety of actions undertaken, gives visibility to the New York womenu0026#39;s draft board raids and the Dow Chemical actions, and gives attention to how the Harrisburg trial contributed to a schism in the movement. It shows how the Catholic Leftu0026#39;s experience with US support for dictators in Central America underpinned Catonsville participantsu0026#39; resistance to the war in Vietnam, and illustrates continuity with present day resistance to militarism by showing draft board raidersu0026#39; work against the war in Iraq. The film is an important contribution to the canon documenting resistance to US empire.”