University of Virginia Library

Pledges

The device is a pledge card,
obligating the slgnee to do nothing
at all until 100,000 identical pledges
have been collected, at which
point a block of men equal to
nearly half America's state and federal
prisoners would go on an unconditional
strike against Selective
Service, returning draft cards, renouncing
deferments, and daring
the Justice Department to prosecute
or capitulate.

25,000 pledges have been accounted
for so far. They are being
circulated by the National Student
Association, the Union for National
Draft Opposition, the War Resister's
League, and over 1000 contacts
nationwide.

The final statistic, then, is
75,000 more pledge cards.

This we balance against 56,000
promotion hungry career officers,
jostling mightily for a shot at Charly
before The Big Show fizzles
out...the three million pounds of
charred, shattered Vietnamese hamburger
those officers will leave behind...the
concrete and barbed wire
'futures' of the next million or two
South Vietnamese whose ancestral
homes are to disappear beneath
American bulldozers and napalm...the
mile long 'tracks' left by
B-52's over Vietnam and Laos, consisting
of 120 craters, forty feet
across, good only for breeding disease...and
the next five thousand
Americans due to die.