Biography
David Harris emerged as a leading figure in draft resistance and antiwar organizing, arguing that conscription was both a moral crisis and a mechanism feeding the Vietnam War. He helped found The Resistance, which encouraged public, collective refusal—especially through mass draft-card turn-ins intended to normalize civil disobedience and make enforcement politically costly.
In 1968, after refusing an order to report for induction, Harris was indicted and convicted in federal court in San Francisco, receiving a three-year sentence. After appeals failed, he served roughly twenty months in federal custody before parole. His imprisonment became central to how he was understood publicly: not simply an antiwar spokesman, but someone who accepted incarceration as the price of noncooperation with the draft system.
An October 1971 Ann Arbor Sun notice describes David Harris as having spent ten months in a Texas penitentiary for draft resistance. This is a rounded institution-specific account; the existing record separately describes approximately twenty months of federal custody overall. The notice does not establish whether its Texas figure covers only one phase, so it is retained without substituting ten months for the cumulative record or calculating new endpoints.
Ann Arbor Sun, issue 19 (October 29–November 11, 1971), and Free John Now supplement.
