The Trial of the Catonsville Nine Author:Daniel Berrigan On 5/17/1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, nine men & women entered a Selective Service office outside Baltimore. They removed military draft records, took them outside and set them afire with napalm. The Catholic activists involved in this protest against the war included Daniel & Philip Berrigan; all were found guilt of destroying... more » government property and sentenced to three years in jail. Dan Berrigan fled, and later turned himself in.
The Berrigans and their colleagues went on to lives spent struggling against war, poverty and injustice. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine became a powerful expression of the conflicts between conscience and conduct, power nd justice, law and morality. Drawing on court transcripts, Berrigan wrote a dramatic account of the trial and the issues it so vividly embodied. The result is a landmark work of art that's been performed frequently over the past decades, both as a piece of theater and as a motion picture.« less