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The Camden 28 Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: Not Rated Genre: Documentary Theater release: July 27, 2007 by First Run Features Directed by: Anthony Giacchino Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes Cast: Eugene Dixon, Rev. Michael Doyle, Michael Giocondo, Howard Zinn, Joan Reilly, John Grady and Bob Hardy as themselves Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

One of the more compelling events in America's brief timeline likely wasn't taught in many high school history courses. While many of us may have forgotten about things like the Lusitania and Manifest Destiny, The Camden 28—which released to DVD last week after airing on PBS—tells of an historical event that may be completely unfamiliar to you. And it was an event driven in much part by the participants' Christian faith.

Anthony Giacchino's documentary exposes us to a moment we can all admire, and perhaps even secretly wish to have shared. In 1971, a group of 28 people—including four Catholic priests, one Lutheran minister, and 23 Catholic laypeople, ranging in age from 20 to 46—organized a break-in on Camden, New Jersey's Federal Building to destroy draft files, in hopes of wrenching an unjust system out of commission "in the name of that God whose name is peace."

Father Mike Doyle and Robert Good enter court for trial in Camden, NJ

The Camden 28 were members of what the media then called the "Catholic Left," one of the most persistent and inventive forces in the anti-war movement. Between 1967 and 1971, the Catholic Left raided over 30 draft boards and destroyed almost 1 million Selective Service documents, and the Camden 28 were seeking to continue those tactics in that summer of '71.

When one of the Camden 28's members, Bob Hardy, betrayed the group and served as an informant to the FBI, the group was caught in the act when they broke into the federal offices in the pre-dawn hours of August 22, 1971. The members were charged with a variety of felonies, including conspiracy to remove and destroy files, destruction of government property and undermining the Selective Service system—all punishable by up to 47 years in prison if convicted. Though offered a plea bargain reducing the charges to one misdemeanor apiece, the 28, in their zeal to make a point, rejected the offer and opted for a trial.

John Swinglish, a member of the 28, flashes the peace after his arrest

The result was a three-month trial in the spring of 1973 that, to a watching nation, essentially served as a referendum on the Vietnam War itself. Among other things, many of those who testified demanded that the government account for its actions (both in the war and in its rejection of domestic justice in urban slums). At the trial, Hardy (the FBI's informant) ended up testifying against the feds, noting they were so overzealous to nab the Camden 28 that the raid seemingly was orchestrated and funded by the FBI itself. The result: For the first time in five years of Vietnam war protests, a jury found the activists not guilty. All 28 were acquitted.

This documentary is comprised largely of personal interviews with participants as it traces the staging, execution, aftermath and conclusion of the draft board break-in. Father Michael Doyle is the frontrunner in these clips. In his thick Irish brogue, Doyle explains why they chose this particular action in this particular place: in a country fed up with Nixon and the war, pacifism was largely manifested in protest and burning draft cards. The initial group grew frustrated with the ultimate ineffectiveness of this and looked for bigger fish to fry: the original records in the draft board office.

Doyle's wide-eyed recollections, supplemented by quips from several other members, is spliced between black-and-white photos of the same men with bushier heads and more insistent peace signs. Each testimony bears with it a note of wishing, a sorrowful reverence to earlier energy. Eugene Dixon spits out his words as if he can't believe he'd done something so stupid and necessary before his glasses got so thick.

Mug shots of 20 members of the group

The story then takes us to a live reenaction and discussion of the trial. This includes one of the most poignant scenes in the film, in which Elizabeth Good laments the death of her son in the war. In a tone eerily similar to contemporary frustration with the conflict in Iraq, she asks "Did my son die in Vietnam for oil? Tin?" In a unique position of having one son killed in combat and another—Robert Good, who was then just 22—on trial for protesting the war that killed the first, she represents a voice of horrified reason. Snowy-headed, she bends over a script of her original testimony and reads in a crackling voice, "Not one of us raised our hands to do it. We left it up to these people, and now we're prosecuting them for it. God help us."

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