Educate, agitate, and organize against the draft
Anti-draft actions and organizations
[Front ranks of the West Coast mobilization against draft registration on Market St. in San Francisco, 22 March 1980. Photo by Chris Booth for Resistance News.]
Things you can do now to help end draft registration and prevent a draft:
- Educate yourself about the issue. Start with our FAQ (version en español) and Advice about Selective Service registration. We also have leaflets, videos and podcasts, posters and art, graphics for social media and other resources on this Web site. More info is available from the other organizations listed below. Sooner or later, Congress will have to decide either to end draft registration or to try to expand it to women as well as men.
- Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter for news and updates about the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance.
- Tell your friends, family, classmates, teachers, religious groups, and others. Most people, even people who care about peace and war, have no idea that the government is carrying out ongoing planning and preparation for a draft. Share information and links to this site on social media and Web sites.
- Organize a meeting (online or in person) with your friends, classmates, etc. The organizations listed below can help with resources to inform your group and facilitate discussion of what you can do individually and collectively to stop the draft and, by doing so, use people power to help limit war-making.
- Invite a speaker (in person or remotely) to talk to your group, student organization, or class about the draft. Congressional debate on Selective Service, and the choices faced by young people, are teachable moments for discussion of peace and war, freedom and justice, personal responsibility, and feminism. What’s happening with draft registration is a timely topic for high school, college, university, and law school courses in peace studies, military policy, gender, and civil liberties, as well as for student organizations, debate clubs, etc. The organizations listed below can help find appropriate speakers for your group or event.
- Speak out! Write a letter to the editor or an article for your student or community newspaper or Web site. Post a comment online, on social media or in your blog. Post a quick #iobject #iwillresist #nodraft video on TikTok or whatever platform you prefer, stating why you oppose the draft. Let the world know that you oppose the draft and draft registration, that you will resist if drafted, and that you will support and defend others who resist. We especially want to hear from women who plan not to register with the Selective Service System when you turn 18. We can publish your resistance statement, with your name or anonymously, or link to your statement or video. You can reach us at resisters@hasbrouck.org. Your statements will help encourage and empower others.
- Tell Congress to end draft registration, not try to expand it to women. Support legislation to end draft registration. Oppose legislation to expand draft registration to women. Ask your U.S. Representative and Senators to reintroduce the bipartisan Selective Service Repeal Act of 2021 (H.R. 2509 and S. 1139) and to support amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to end draft registration or at least to put the Selective Service System into standby. Several organizations have created forms you can use to contact Congress. Use whichever you like, or write your own message:
- Expose your local draft board. Most people don’t know that a draft board has already been appointed in their community, trained and prepared to administer a future draft. Find out who they are! Researching your local draft board can be a consciousness-raising project for activists and the entire community that makes the threat of a draft visible. We’ve already obtained and posted a complete list of draft board members throughout the U.S., along with suggestions on what you can do with this information.
- Think about what you would do if you were ordered to register for the draft, or if you registered and then were ordered to report for induction into the military, and how you can be an ally to those who face this choice. Young men are making decisions every day about whether to comply with Selective Service requirements, and young women (up to age 26) may soon face the same maze of procedures and array of choices. Don’t wait. Be prepared! See our advice about Selective Service registration for both registrants and nonregistrants. The organizations listed below can help put you in touch with draft counselors who can help you understand your options and decide what to do. The ultimate decision with respect to the draft — and the wars it enables — will not be made by Congress or the Commander-In-Chief. It will be made by those who, when they are ordered to fight, decide whether to say yes or say no. As of today, quiet but widespread and persistent noncompliance has rendered draft registration unenforceable and is preventing a draft.
- Support young people who refuse to register for the draft. Parents and other older people can be allies to young people in their resistance. Let them, and the public, know that you support them. Amplify their voices. Center their concerns in your work. Ask for, listen to, and accept their guidance as to what you can do to help them achieve their goals. Follow their leadership.
[Karen Beetle of Upstate Resistance outside the U.S. Court House in Syracuse, NY, during the trial of Andy Mager, 8 January 1985. Photo by Paul Pearce, some rights reserved, CC BY-NC 2.0.]
Draft resistance and anti-draft organizations and Web sites:
- American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
(“It’s time to end — not expand — the Selective Service System.”)
- Center on Conscience and War
(“The draft has met with serious resistance from communities of faith and people of conscience throughout its history. The Center on Conscience & War was founded in 1940 to protect the rights of Conscientious Objectors…. The time is also ripe to challenge the Selective Service registration itself.”)
- CODEPINK Women Against War
(“CODEPINK, a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, strongly opposes expanding draft registration to women, and strongly supports ending draft registration for men, as well as ending all penalties for past failures to register.”)
- Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft
(“COMD is an anti-militarism organization that also challenges the institution of the military, its effect on society, its budget, its role abroad and at home, and the racism, sexism and homophobia that are inherent in the armed forces and Selective Service System.”)
- Courage To Resist
(“No recruitment. No draft. Support GI resisters. An army of None!”)
- Feminists Against the Draft
(“Feminists Against the Draft is a coalition of intersectional feminists and feminist allies who raise awareness about the military draft and oppose any attempts to expand Selective Service registration, with the ultimate goal of abolition of the draft. We believe a person’s desire to enter or oppose the U.S. military is hugely personal, we advocate for the rights of women and children domestically and abroad, and we emphasize the need for progress rather than ‘inclusion’ for marginalized groups in unjust systems. As an organization started by and made up primarily of young people, we are importantly committed to lifting up the voices of young women and girls, queer people and BIPOC, and working class people. We particularly emphasize the importance of students and young people in building an inter-generational movement to end the draft that targets them. We also consider the over-recruitment of low-income Americans a disturbing iteration of the draft—the poverty draft—targeting marginalized and vulnerable people, and we push against military recruitment in our schools and communities. This group began at Dartmouth College in 2021”)
- Friends Committee on National Legislation
(“FCNL advocates for an end to compulsory registration for Selective Service, for an end to all civil and criminal sanctions (such as denying… drivers licenses to those who do not register for the draft), and for the repeal of the Selective Service Act.”)
- National Lawyers Guild - Military Law Task Force
(“The MLTF will use every resource available to us to defend the rights of those who refuse to participate in war.”)
- National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
(“Draft registration is one of the ways that all young men — and possibly soon young women as well — have to interact with the military and think about their relationship to military ‘service’.”)
- National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC)
(working to resist the conscription of our tax money for war)
- NoDraft.org
(Information about the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance from nonregistrant and draft resistance organizer Paul Jacob.)
- On Earth Peace
(“On Earth Peace, ‘Building Communities of Justice & Peace’, helps people use the tools of active nonviolence, conflict transformation, and community building to overcome violence, oppression, and war. OEP is an agency of the Church of the Brethren, a Historic Peace Church.”)
- Resisters.info
(This Web site of information about the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance. Based in part on material originally published in Resistance News and by the National Resistance Committee, updated and maintained by Edward Hasbrouck.)
- Stop Recruiting Kids Campaign
(“Our goal is to protect kids from military recruiting.”)
- Truth in Recruitment
(“Truth in Recruitment is a student advocacy group based in Santa Barbara, California. We work with students, families, and schools to ensure students understand the consequences of a military career and their alternative options so they can make educated choices about their future.”)
- War Resisters’ International
(“War Resisters’ International exists to promote nonviolent action against the causes of war, and to support and connect people around the world who refuse to take part in war or the preparation of war.”)
- Countering the Militarisation of Youth (a campaign of War Resisters’ International)
- War Resisters League
(US affiliate of War Resisters’ International. “The War Resisters League affirms that all war is a crime against humanity.”)
- Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND)
(“Expanding Selective Service registration to women is not feminism…. Expanding the draft would merely expand a burden that has been unjustly placed on men for decades. The Selective Service takes away personal choice…, rewards militarism, punishes pacifism, [and] reproduces inequality.”)
- World BEYOND War
(“World BEYOND War is a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace.”)
Anti-draft social media accounts:
“We need you. What has to be done can’t be done without you. You’re the ones that can rescue democracy…. It’s not me that’s going to do that stuff that needs to be done…. I’m too old for that shit now. I’m not around for much longer, relatively…. Resisting evil takes an enormous amount of energy. And while I’ve got energy, I don’t have the kind of energy it takes to do that kind of organizing; I’ve done that. I don’t think there’s anybody that would dispute that I’ve done my bit. And I obviously want to be of whatever use I can be. But I think we need some 20-year-olds to grab this thing by the scruff of the neck and go for it.”
[David Harris, imprisoned for resisting the draft during the U.S. war in Indochina, interviewed in 2019]
This page published or republished here 20 May 2020; most recently modified 12 January 2024. This site is maintained by
Edward Hasbrouck. Corrections, contributions (articles, graphics, photos, videos, links, etc.), and feedback are welcomed.
