In the early morning hours of August 22, 1971, a group of Catholic anti-war protesters broke into a draft board in Camden, New Jersey to destroy draft-related documents. The action was one in a series of similar raids that Catholic activists carried out in the 1960s and ‘70s in opposition to the Vietnam War. The story of what enfolded that morning and the two years following is almost too wild to believe – it’s the stuff HBO miniseries are made of.

Professor Michelle Nickerson, a historian at Loyola University Chicago, has just published a book about the raid, the ensuing trial and all the drama that surrounded both. The book is titled “Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial.” And while the book is a work of academic history published by the University of Chicago Press, it’s also a total page turner. Again, we think the good people at HBO or Netflix need to jump on this. Michelle is an expert in the history of politics, women & gender, social movements, and religion in 20th-century America, and she brought her serious academic chops to the story. Host Mike Jordan Laskey learned so much not just about the Camden 28 themselves, but the history and development of the Catholic anti-war movement in the US. We’re so happy to be able to share some of this story with you before you watch it on a streaming service in, say, 2028.

Michelle Nickerson: https://michellenickerson.com/

"Spiritual Criminals": https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Criminals-Camden-Vietnam-Trial/dp/0226828034

AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.

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