SYNOPSIS & PREVIEW TRAILER

The Boys Who Said NO! is the first documentary film to profile the young men and women who actively opposed the military draft in order to end the Vietnam War – the largest refusal to fight a war in American history. The film shows how their personal and collective acts of nonviolent resistance, risking arrest and federal imprisonment for up to 5 years, were a critical part of the antiwar movement, intensifying opposition to a tragic war and eventually forcing an end to both conscription and the war.
 

During the 1960s and early 1970s, resistance to the American war in Vietnam grew to unprecedented levels. An estimated 500,000[1] draft age men resisted or evaded the draft. Claims for conscientious objector draft status soared. American soldiers in Vietnam increasingly refused to follow orders and risked court martial and prison for organizing inside the military. Millions marched against the war.
 

The massive scale of draft resistance overloaded federal courts, with 10,000 men indicted and 4,000 imprisoned for their actions. 
 

The Boys Who Said NO! draws on original interviews with more than thirty male and female activists and several historians, illustrated with dynamic archival footage.

 

The film features a roster of high-profile resisters, as well as the unsung heroes whose courageous actions helped build a powerful movement. We see Martin Luther King, Jr. as he takes a dangerously unpopular stand against the war, and later supports Muhammad Ali after he refuses induction. We follow the story of resistance leader David Harris who marries folk diva and peace activist Joan Baez. Their baby is born while Harris is imprisoned for 20 months.

 

Among the other better known people featured in the film are:
 

• Daniel Ellsberg, the Washington insider who, inspired by draft resisters, risked up to 115 years in prison to release the top-secret Pentagon Papers that detailed decades of government deception about the war;
   

• Randy Kehler, a draft resister, and later a national leader against nuclear weapons, whose decision to resist the draft inspired Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers;
   

• Mark Rudd, a key leader of Students for a Democratic Society and the violent Weather Underground, who later became a proponent of nonviolence;
   

• Michael Ferber, leader of the Boston Resistance and co-defendant with Dr. Benjamin Spock in a major conspiracy trial;
   

• Cleveland Sellers, co-founder of the civll rights group SNCC and an early draft resister.​
   

The Boys Who Said NO! explores the influence of the Civil Rights movement on Resistance members, a connection illustrated in part with footage of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting Joan Baez and others jailed in Santa Rita Prison for blocking the Oakland draft board in 1967.
 

The film highlights the prosecution and trials of war resisters. Smuggled film footage shows resisters serving time in Federal prison. News footage captures anti-war demonstrations and marches, anti-draft meetings, and people of all ages speaking out in support of the resistance movement.

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The Boys Who Said NO! is a definitive, overdue account of the powerful nonviolent resistance to America's most problematic war and an important example for today's social movements.

 

[1] Baskir, Lawrence M. and William A. Strauss.   Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf.  1978.