Interview with John Braxton, September 13, 2022

Wood: All right. My name is Thomas Wood and it is September 13th. And I'm sitting with John Braxton about an interview on his activism during the Vietnam War. I'm here on behalf of the University of Kentucky in West Chester. And let's get started, shall we? Good. So where were you born and raised?

Braxton: I was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, which is Montgomery County. Yeah. And I was raised there until, uh, going to Swarthmore College in 19-- fall of 00:01:001966. Seeking to get a good view of the rear end of a cat in there. She'll probably move soon. Well, you know, we come over here.

Wood: So you were. You were raised in Lansdale?

Braxton: Mm hmm.

Wood: And you said you went to a Quaker school growing up?

Braxton: Yeah. My parents were Quakers, and I was raised as a Quaker. And my dad actually taught at the William Penn Charter School in Germantown, um. And so I don't think he would have been able to afford to send me there necessarily. But as a teacher, he got a pretty good discount, I think maybe total tuition, I'm not sure. But at any rate, he didn't have to pay full freight. So, yeah. So I went to school there from ninth to 12th grade.

Wood: One of the angles I want to explore over the course of this interview is how you're Quakerism-- Obviously, being a Quaker had a large impact on your activism, but I really want to hone in on that aspect.

Braxton: Okay.

Wood: So you you were raised as a Quaker in this school. Can you tell me a little bit about what that meant to you as a child?

Braxton: Yeah, I'd say the Quaker influence came more from my parents and the Quaker meeting that we went to, going to meeting near Lansdale. And and so that was the major Quaker influence. Penn Charter is is a Quaker school. But I think I think the values came more from my parents. And um, and yeah, so I, I grew up just thinking, you know, understanding that war is really wrong. And I think the assumption was that if a war came along in my time, that I would be a conscientious objector. And uh and that and that the Quakers had a long history of conscientious objection that the government had recognized. So I, I think I 00:03:00was fairly certain of getting classified as a conscientious objector if that was the route that I chose. So it wasn't, and it wasn't something that I spent a lot of time thinking about growing up. It was just kind of like that was sort of like the path that was laid out in front of me. Yeah.

Wood: Did you know conscientious objectors growing up? People who had been conscientious objectors during World War II or Korea?

Braxton: You know, I. I did, but I don't think I heard much about that from them. It was it was just kind of um they were around. But I don't really remember people talking about that much. Um. Yeah, it was. It was just. They were just kind of gentle men who just could not see the idea of killing another human being. And it just um in some cases, it was, you know, it was also 00:04:00political. But in in most cases, it was just more of a personal stance. You know, I just I can't do this sort of thing. I it's it's wrong. I didn't hear a lot of judgment. It wasn't like I heard people saying and those people who do join the army or bad people or anything like that, it was more just, we don't think this is the right way human beings should treat each other and and we think we can do better than that.

Wood: This is what's so interesting about Quakerism to me is that it almost seems like, for lack of a better word, religious extremism, but at the same time it's the antithesis of that because it's so non-judgmental.

Braxton: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's really true. Um, it's, you know, from the very beginning, uh, Quakers were urged to be nonviolent. Um. And, 00:05:00you know, the basic tenet of Quakerism is there is that of God in every person. And so that includes people who, who fight and kill other people. And so, yeah, there is a basic, a very strong sense of we're going to try to not engage in this activity. But there wasn't that it wasn't hostile to other people, um, who who do decide to be in the military.

Wood: Okay. So you you were going to William Penn Charter School and also going to Quaker meetings at the time. And what year did you graduate?

Braxton: 1966. Yeah.

Wood: So you were graduating? Well, the draft was in order.

Braxton: Very much.

Wood: Was that a factor in where you were deciding to go to college?

Braxton: No. I mean, that was also part of the path that was laid out was my 00:06:00parents. My parents were the first in their generation, in their families to go to college. And they both grew up on farms and were pretty poor growing up. They didn't feel poor because everybody around them was in the same boat, but they in fact didn't have a lot of money. And, you know, in my dad's case, his brother, his older brother, it was clear, was going to stay on the farm. And the farm wasn't really big enough to support two new families.

Braxton: So my I think my dad figured the route for him was to go to college and have a a different career. And and my mom also went to college. And and she, my dad was from a long line of Quakers in North Carolina. My mom was not from a line of Quakers, but she she ended up at a, she grew up in Indiana and ended up at Earlham College, a Quaker college, in Indiana. And that's how she got exposed 00:07:00to Quakers and had a huge impact on her. But I think that meant that they were very much of a mind, like college is what you do after high school because it gives you lots more options than if you don't have a college education. So I wasn't thinking I'm going to college to avoid the draft. It was just that's that's what I was going to do.

Thomas: What was your major when you went to-- You said you started at Swarthmore, correct?

Braxton: Yeah. Yeah, I went to Swarthmore and I was very on very early on, interested in biology and in particular in plant biology and botany. So my major was biology with an emphasis in botany.

Wood: When I think of activists, I don't tend to think of the hard sciences. I think of more like the humanities.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: Activist. So tell me about how you married those two things.

Braxton: Yeah, it's that's an interesting observation. Yeah. I think most most people would have assumed that I majored in political science or sociology or something, or maybe philosophy. But I was always interested in science, while my dad was a physics teacher. So that influenced me and my mom, She, I think she majored in English with a minor in biology. And so she was very interested in biology. And they ran a summer, a Quaker summer camp that I went to as a kid. And she used to walk around with me and say, Now this is a white oak tree and this is a this is a red maple. And here's the spice bush. And she would she it's 00:09:00interesting. You know, she, she really retained I think, you know, unlike many of us, including me some of the time, you know, I think after 12 years of high school and then college is just what you did after high school. I mean, I wasn't that sort of out of it. But on the other hand, there was a certain feeling like, well, you just have to do this. But I think for her it was like, wow, I get to I get to learn about all this stuff. And so I think part of her mission was that she learned a lot of it and she was going to pass as much of it on as we could stand. So she was often giving little, little talks about about nature. And and I, I really did absorb a lot of that. And I think I'm a biologist. I think I'm a scientist because of my dad, but I think I'm a biologist because of my mom.

Wood: Okay. So how do you factor that in or is it two separate things, your 00:10:00activism and your.

Braxton: So they really, they started out being very separate, I would say. Yeah, they were just I had a, a professor once I got to be an activist and I was, you know, often going to meetings at night to try to figure out what was the next action we were going to do. And and then I had a professor in botany and there weren't too many people interested in botany at Swarthmore. So I had him over and over again for courses and, and he liked to have 8:00 classes in the morning. And I would often stumble in kind of late looking sleepy and, and he would say, with a twinkle in his eye. He wasn't he wasn't judgmental. He'd say, "John, I'd say, your interests are severely bifurcated." Now, it's interesting, though, in recent years, once I, you know, eventually got a 00:11:00master's in ecology from Rutgers University and in looking into ecology. Then ecology and politics start to come together. So now it all feels like it's very much of, of a piece of the same cloth.

Wood: Do you think that's a change specific to yourself or do you see that as more of a generational or technological sociological change?

Braxton: Yeah, well, I do think you know, I do think that one of the problems in the world is people get you know, they get so specific in their fields that they don't think about the big picture. So, so I think there are more and more people that are realizing that. I mean, actually, the field of ecology was really pretty much unknown to most people 20 or 30 years ago; at least, or 30 or 40 00:12:00years ago. Um, and, and partly it developed because many scientists, you know, they were, they were looking at their specific thing. Like, well, we've discovered a chemical DDT that kills mosquitoes. Who's going to argue with killing mosquitoes? And so there was this narrow focus and it wasn't until Rachel Carson came along and said, "Hey, you know what, that DDT is killing the birds." And it has, there is magnifying effects that go way beyond that first thing. That was your intention. And so I think ecology as a field is this is interdisciplinary in its nature. But I think a lot of other fields have also. Started to recognize that, you know, we need to give people-- People do need to narrow down because that's where a lot of the work has to get done. But they 00:13:00need to have a big enough picture that they can see how it really fits in.

Wood: This is a delightful rabbit hole. Thank you. Back to the main story. So you said you graduated in 1966. Obviously, the war. The war is raging or escalating.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: In time. Yeah. So when you were at William Penn Charter, what were you hearing about the war? What were you seeing about the war?

Braxton: You know, it's interesting and I'll give a little, I'll go back a little bit. Um, I guess, you know, in my early years at Penn Charter, maybe ninth grade or something like that. Somewhere around in there, um, my mother started talking about the Vietnam War and, and how what a shame it was. What a terrible thing it was. And as a young teenager, I was prepared to think that whatever my mother said was probably wrong. You know, I was going to rebel against it. And, and I thought I'd also read, I had enjoyed reading a book, at 00:14:00least one book by a guy named Dr. Thomas Dooley, who was a Catholic doctor who was practicing medicine in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indochina. At any rate, I'm not, Laos, I'm not even sure which country it was, but in that region. And I was very moved by, you know, his interest in trying to take what modern medicine could offer, what western medicine could offer to those people. And he was a, he was a Catholic. He was a staunch anti-communist. And so and I grew up, you know, I grew I was born in 48. I was a child in the fifties. It was like the heyday of of American democracy was was the story. And so I was kind of predisposed to 00:15:00think, well, you know, we got to stop communism. And, and also this there's this kind of rebellious streak of kind of like my mom's probably naive and, and I, you know, I got to start my own path. And at one point she said, "Well, here's this little booklet by the American Friends Service Committee," which is a Quaker organization based here in Philly. And, "You know, maybe you should take a look at it." And I thought to myself, I remember thinking this. Yeah, you're darn right I'm going to read it. And then I'll I'll understand all of their arguments and I can shoot them all down. So I read the darn book. And lo and behold, it made a whole lot of sense because they weren't just saying, "All war is wrong and this is a war, so it's wrong." They were saying that that's our 00:16:00position as Quakers, but they also went into the details about this particular war. And it was just appalling to me to know that, you know, that the two parts of Vietnam were separated at the end of the French colonial era, and the US came in and stopped elections that were going to be held. Because the all the US intelligence said Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, was going to win overwhelmingly. He was like, he had from like the 1920s, he had fought first against French colonialism, then Japanese imperialism. Then the war ended and he assumed, "Oh, you know, this war is about democracy. So surely the United States 00:17:00and France will now recognize us as, a as a people. We can choose our own leaders." But France wanted to continue being a colonial power. So he was then, you know, opposing the French. And then the US stepped in and, and really picked up where the French had left off. And so he was opposing them. And so he was seen as is really like the George Washington of the country and even people who were not communist had huge respect for him. So he was going to win the election and the US stepped in and says, "We're not having an election." And so that was a huge eye opener for me because again, in the fifties it was like the United States was the beacon of democracy. It could, could do no wrong. And here we were clearly state, we were stating the government was stating we're defending 00:18:00freedom and democracy but not letting a vote take place. And in putting into place a series of governments that really were puppet governments; they just had no popular support. I mean, not no popular support is not true. There were, of course, certain people that did support, but the level of support was extremely low and everybody knew that.

Wood: I think it's interesting that you identify Dr. Dooley and the Catholic anti-Communist sentiment is as a outside force compared to your, your growing up as a Quaker. Was, was there more to that that you saw, like the Catholic anti-Communist lines?

Braxton: Um, let's see if I, if I, if I understand your question and if I don't, you know, tell me and we'll talk some more. But I didn't, um, I didn't hear a lot about communism one way or the other, as a Quaker, I think. Um, there was, 00:19:00you know, what I would hear about is the Russians are people too, and, and nobody is our enemy. Um, but there wasn't, there certainly wasn't sympathy for communism within the, within the Quakers that I grew up around. So. So I grew up kind of on the assumption that communism was really bad. And, and now I have a very complicated view about what communism would be or what communism was at that time. And there aren't too many countries that still call themselves communist, but, and some of them that are I'm not sure that they deserve to be called that, but. But at that time, my assumption was that communism was wrong, um, but that it didn't make sense for that the people had a right to choose their, their leaders. And it just didn't make sense for us to, to be killing 00:20:00thousands and thousands and ultimately, really millions of people in order for us to impose our worldview, even if communism was wrong.

Wood: I guess my my question is more about the tension between specifically Catholic anti-Communist propaganda and the Quaker neutrality, I guess is the best word to describe it? Or is this just a very limited exposure you had to this?

Braxton: I think it was very limited exposure. I don't think I knew that much about Catholicism or. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was more just, just I respected this man's interest in helping out humanity, and he was anti-communist. So that was my-- and, you know, everything growing up in the fifties, uh, in this country, you know, it was the Cold War. And so everything communist was bad. That was, 00:21:00that was the assumption when we, we did a pledge allegiance to the flag every day in school and, yeah. And so that was, this the symbol of freedom and democracy.

Wood: So your mom was thoroughly against the war from the outset or exactly as you remember? Did did, she do any, any anti-war actions or--

Braxton: Not really. She, she was not, uh, she was not particularly political. She, she strongly believed in the United Nations. Um, and that, that was, you know, she had hopes that the United Nations could have enough influence. That diseases could be eradicated and poverty could be eradicated, and that wars could be ended. But she wasn't, she wasn't particularly political about it. I think she became somewhat more political as a result of being influenced by me ultimately.

Wood: So when did you make the transition from to to political action?

Braxton: Um, I started in high school. There was a, I don't remember, it might have been in the spring of 66, but I'm not positive. But there was a, um, a demonstration in Washington against the war, and I went down to that and, um. And that was, um, I was one of the only people in my class that was interested in anything like that. Um, so that was, that was very interesting. I, um, you know, that was my first exposure and, and it wasn't a humongous demonstration by standards that developed later. But there were, probably a couple thousand people there or something like that.

Wood: Was this a Quaker demonstration or who was the group leading it?

Braxton: No, I'm not sure exactly who it was. It might have been-- There was a group called the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. It might have been them. It might have been a series of groups. I think that Students for a Democratic Society was probably involved in it. I'm pretty sure that that's true. I know one of the speakers was somebody named Norman Thomas from the Socialist Workers Party. So I think it was probably a conglomeration, and some Quakers, I think. I'm sure I heard about it through Quaker circles. So probably the American Friends Service Committee was encouraging people. I don't really remember what the institutional Quaker connection was there.

Wood: In my conversation with Peter, he mentioned a tension, not necessarily a strong disagreement, but a tension between how Quakers wanted to see protest done and how other groups... Could you tell me a little bit about that?

Braxton: Yeah, well, it would, it would manifest itself to some degree in the decision making process, if there was a coalition. Quakers believe in consensus and they'll talk and talk and talk and talk. So in that sense, it's very inefficient. But on the other hand, it means that everybody gets heard. And often by the time they, and they wrestle with each other, they often use that term, "When we're wrestling with the spirit of God." And what you know, what you know, what does the inner light tell us we should be doing? And, and so when they come to a decision, then it's like, okay, we're all behind this. And most other organizations say, well, let's take a vote. And it's at 6040, that's a 00:25:00majority. And 40% may be really disappointed, but tough luck. So some of it was around that, certainly at a later time-- I don't think the early demonstrations this was an issue. But Quakers would certainly argue that we're going to use the principles of nonviolence in this demonstration and there will be no violence. In the early days, none of the groups were advocating violence. But later on there became sort of a sense of, you know, there were streams of leftists who thought the police were pigs. There were people, you know, at certain points who would refer to soldiers as baby killers. And although I think that's been overblown a lot. You know, there are, I think it's a myth that people came back. I mean, it may have happened somewhere, but I don't think there's been a single 00:26:00case documented where somebody got spat upon because of their participation in the war. Somehow that myth got spread around. And I don't think there's a single case where we've documented that that happened. It could have happened. But, but certainly, you know, Quakers wanted nonviolence to be very clear up front, and others would say, "Let's just not worry about that philosophical stuff." And then there was a question, do we, do Quakers participate in it? If the whole if it's not explicitly nonviolent. And ultimately, the American Friends Service Committee played a huge positive role in the antiwar movement, and they cooperated with a lot of people who were not philosophically pacifists. There were communists, there were socialists, there were anarchists. But as long as 00:27:00the tactics of the demonstration were not going to be violent, they didn't necessarily insist that there be an explicit kind of philosophical agreement about that.

Wood: Did you-- Did your your big action or, sorry. Let me rephrase that. When did you or did you get involved with the American Friends Service Committee?

Braxton: Ultimately, I did my first involvement. And all of this comes, I think a lot of things that we do often have to do with random events that occur. You know, who you happen to know. And some of my first interest in well, that led me into activism. It was a connection to activism. I went to a Quaker a week long or maybe four or five days long, I guess. I don't know what you would call it, a 00:28:00seminar or something, at a Quaker camp. At the end of the summer. My mother wanted me to go. I kind of didn't want to go. Maybe she just wanted to get me out of the house for a little while. But mostly, but I think she thought you might really, you might really decide that you like this. And so and the topic was civil disobedience, and that would have been about 1963. So 60-something, like around that time period, civil rights, civil disobedience was very much on some people's minds. I don't know that it had crossed my mind, although I do remember some people speaking at a Quaker meeting that I went to, who had been involved in civil rights demonstrations. And that interested me a lot, but I 00:29:00didn't pick up on it. I was, you know, 14 or 15. And I think I asked them, well, what can I do? And they didn't really know what I could do. But one of the leaders of this group was a man named George Lakey. And then when the Vietnam War started, he and some other Quakers started a group called a Quaker Action Group. And they started it because the American Friends Service Committee, which clearly - and they were the ones that had written that book, Peace in Vietnam, that had influenced me - so much there, no question about their opposition to the war in Vietnam. But they, they were not willing to participate as an institution in civil disobedience, partly because, at first partly because they were afraid that they would lose their tax exempt status. That, that would be seen as like a political stance. And then people wouldn't give money to them 00:30:00because they wouldn't get a tax deduction. And so a Quaker action group, and maybe also just sort of the American Friends Service Committee was formed in World War I. And so institutions developed a kind of a bureaucracy. And I think there was a sort of a conservative influence that that bureaucracy had. And so they formed a Quaker action group in order to take more direct action, nonviolent direct action. And George spoke at a Quaker conference that I was at and said, "So we're planning some civil disobedience around the war. And one of the things that we're planning that we're hoping to do is to send a bunch of activists, some Quakers, some non Quakers, to North Vietnam to try to serve as a 00:31:00deterrent to bombing North Vietnam." (More than that was already being bombed.) Whether the sort of deterrent is anybody's guess. But I was very interested in that. I thought by now-- I was like, really? So this was the, this was the beginning of my freshman year in college when I learned about this group. And I really I was, I really was was distressed about the war. It was like a major thing on my mind. It was like, this is not what America is supposed to be and it's just wrong and we should just do everything we can to stop it. So I thought, I'll go to North Vietnam if that's going to happen. So I applied for that. Well, the the North Vietnamese really didn't want a bunch of Americans living over there. You know, for one thing, I think Americans are used to a 00:32:00pretty lush lifestyle compared to what peasants in a war zone are used to. And they didn't want to have to take care of them. They were probably also worried that some of them might end up being spies. So that didn't really go anywhere. But then somebody came up with the idea of, well, at least we could send medical supplies to North Vietnam and help out people who've been hurt by the war. Well, the government said that's illegal. They said it violates the Export Control Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act. So even though there was no declared war, North Vietnam was listed as one of those countries that you couldn't trade with. And we said, we're not trading, we're donating. But they said, that doesn't matter. You can't do it. First they started sending supplies through Canada, 00:33:00because we couldn't ship anything directly from this country. Then the government froze a Quaker action group's bank accounts. And so then, somebody came up with the idea - and this is kind of interesting because, you know, Quakers have a long history of opposing war. And during the Cold War, there were, there was a group of people who had sent a ship into the atomic test zone in the Pacific to protest testing in the atmosphere. We didn't even realize at that time how terrible that was for the ecology. It was more of a protest, you know, it was like we shouldn't be preparing more nuclear weapons and preparing for use of them in nuclear war. And some of those people were Quakers; and one 00:34:00of them, George Willoughby, was involved in starting a Quaker action group. So he was on a ship called the Golden Rule. I don't know if it was named that before it had this mission, but they attempted to sail into the test zone as a protest and they got arrested. And at that time there was a Quaker family that was sailing another sailboat around the world. They were taking like a year and a half to sail around the world. And the man in the family was Earl Reynolds, and he actually-- they were based in Hiroshima. He was an American, but he was living in Hiroshima, studying the effects of the bombs and Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the population. He was trying to find out what kind of diseases did they have, what was the long term effect. So he knew a lot about that and was 00:35:00very upset about this. And, but it also irritated the hell out of him that as a sailor, that the US would say, "You can't sail in this part of the world." It's, you know, the oceans are everybody's. So it was some combination of the two. And it happened that that boat was in Honolulu when the Golden Rule was there. And so the Golden Rule influenced them. And then he sailed the boat into the test zone and he was arrested, and they were arrested. So somebody then said, and, you know, all this was like circulating around in Quaker circles; and so somebody said, "Hey, I wonder what Earl Reynolds is doing with that boat now? Maybe we should," they won't let us send medical supplies to North Vietnam, not even through Canada. "Maybe we should sail the boat there." So they got in touch 00:36:00with Earl and he said, sure. So in the January or early in '67, a group of mostly Quakers were sponsored by a Quaker action group, went to North Vietnam and they came back. And they took with them a film crew from a Canadian broadcasting company who made an hour long documentary film about this trip. And, and so I heard about all this, but I was in college, so I was just sort of assuming that I would just keep going in college. And then they decided they wanted to send a second trip to North Vietnam. And one of the things they learned of the first trip was they had too many people who were middle age or older, and this is a 50 foot wooden sailboat. It bounces around a lot. There's a 00:37:00lot of physical work that needs to be done. You have to have some strength and agility to do that work. And so they were interested in having some younger crew members, and they were also, you know, they were savvy. They said, you know, so I mean, they invited a lot, for people to apply to go. So I applied to go. And I think they also said, you know, here's this young Quaker. Let's let's get him more involved. You know, he looks like he's got some potential as an activist. Let's cultivate this.

Wood: One of the things. So I saw a few different sources that talk about this boat and this boat trip. And one of the things that stuck out to me is that some of them describe the boat as a yacht and others used more specific terms for sailboats. I don't remember what they are, I'm not a sailor. But I wonder, I wonder what you think about the different uses of the term, because obviously 00:38:00yacht is a loaded term these days.

Braxton: Yeah. And I'm not sure what the technical meaning of the word yacht is, but you're right, most people think of a yacht as being a really fancy boat. There's nothing fancy about this boat. Initially it wasn't even outfitted with a motor, it was just purely a sailboat. So it couldn't go anywhere if it wasn't windy. Eventually they did put a motor on it because there are times you want to get somewhere when you can't. But it is very old technology. So, yeah, this this was not, this is a wooden boat that, you know. We had a, we supposedly had a two way radio on it, but it mostly didn't work in those days. You know, there was no jeeps in those days. So the technology that we used to know where we were was the old fashioned sextant. You know, you'd see what you'd get, a reading of, 00:39:00what the angle was to the sun at noon. You hoped it wasn't cloudy at noon, and that would tell you use calculations from that to tell you where you were.

Wood: So you, you get the you, you apply, I guess.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: And what was it like, a physical paper application or--

Braxton: Yeah. Yeah. I had to write a little essay about why I wanted to do this, and I don't know if that essay exists or not anymore. It might. The Quaker Action Group files are in the Swarthmore College Peace collection, and so that essay might still exist. I haven't seen it. I didn't keep a copy of it, but I know it was a very, it was a very passionate, it was a very passionate essay. It's like, you know, I, I want to do whatever I can to stop this war. And, and so, so in the summer of '67. I was actually working for a Quaker group called 00:40:00the Friends Peace Committee and trying to do door to door, canvasing and education about the war. But partway through the summer, then a Quaker action group contacted me and said, you know, "We're we're going to do a second trip and and we'd like you to go on it if you if you can." And I thought, well, maybe we'll get it in during the summer and I can go back to Swarthmore in the fall. But as it turned out, that it didn't happen. So I, I skipped my fall semester at Swarthmore. And then actually came back, I think about two weeks late to the spring semester; which as a college professor now, I think I remember one of my professors, I went to him and said, you know, I know and two weeks late. But I think I can catch up. And he said, I don't know what. I kind of begged and pleaded. And he said, okay. And I ended up working for him for five years after 00:41:00college. But, but yeah. So I missed all of the fall semester and a bit of the spring semester.

Wood: Tell me about the door to door canvasing you did.

Braxton: It was interesting. I was doing it in Chester, Pennsylvania, which is a working class city. Um, I think at that time it probably had a large white working class community, as well as a large black working class community. So I was just literally going around door to door handing out literature about the war, saying "What's wrong about the war?" And I don't even know if there was a particular, you know; nowadays organizers always say you have to have an ask to use it as a noun. You have to have and ask, what are you asking people to do? Will they sign a petition or join an organization or make a donation? I don't even remember that we had, that we were that sophisticated. It was more just 00:42:00let's it was like just spread the word. This war is wrong. And I had a lot of hostile reactions. I had a door slammed in my face. One person called me a communist and a Nazi. I didn't have time to explain that you really couldn't be both at the same time.

Wood: The distinction was lost on that line.

Braxton: Right?

Wood: Okay. Sorry. Sorry for the sidetrack. So that's going back to your relevant your boat trip.

Braxton: Yeah. So I arrive in Hiroshima on August 6th, the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb. And, and I go to the, uh, they have a peace park there. And part of what's in the piece park is an old domed building that was bombed out, and they just deliberately left it. They didn't try to deconstruct it and 00:43:00they didn't try to reconstruct it. It's kind of a, a memory of what that blast did. And actually, there's also at the time there was a bank building that had survived the blast, and it had on it the shadow of a human being, because the the black the flash of the blast actually bleached the stones. But this shadow was left on there. And that was this like, it's still just to think about it almost brings tears to my eyes. It's like, you know, what a horrific thing that that was, that dropping of that bomb.

Wood: I agree entirely, I think. I think it's especially interesting in the context of your Quakerism, too, because you look at every person as having an inner light. And I understand that isn't literally light, but you're seeing the shadow of a person wiped away on a wall, and it's almost like a contrast to a 00:44:00person's inner life.

Braxton: Yeah. And of course, a lot of tourists would come to this peace park. And I remember talking with an American tourist who just happened to come along. And, you know, we could see that we were Westerners. And we started talking. And we started talking about the about the bomb and how bad nuclear weapons are. And he said, "Oh, but our country would never actually use them in a war." I think what he meant was we never use them in a future war. But that's not what he said. And it was just, it's just amazing to see somebody make that statement in that city at that time.

Wood: I wonder, obviously, the boat is in Hiroshima for a good reason this year. Reynolds, you said, was studying the effects of radiation on the long term. I 00:45:00wonder if there was any symbolism in your mind about leaving from Hiroshima, a city terribly devastated by war and going to North Vietnam?

Wood: Yeah, I think I mean, and the Reynolds family had actually formed something that they called the International Friendship Center, I believe they called it. And so they were, they were trying to educate about peace and, you know, and the. Yeah, so the symbolism of Hiroshima, I mean, we wouldn't have deliberately gone to Hiroshima to launch the boat, but that was all part of it. And when we ended up sailing, leaving Hiroshima, there was a pretty good sized crowd of people that came to see us off and brought flowers. The boat had a really positive name in Japan. It was like, you know, we've, we've seen the 00:46:00horror of what atomic weapons can do and the horror of what war and general can do. And here's a ship that was trying to that crew was trying to make a statement against war. So, yeah, it's called the Phoenix. And it's interesting, the Phoenix has both an Eastern and a Western history. I don't know how that word came to be used for both of them, but I think in the Eastern tradition, it's a bird that only flies during a time of peace. And of course, and in the Greek tradition, it was one that rises up out of the ashes of destruction. So the combination here was, here's Hiroshima, rising up out of the ashes of destruction and people yearning for peace.

Wood: The story is obviously rife with symbolism, and I use the word story very intentionally. So as you were setting out before you were in Hiroshima, did you 00:47:00have any idea of the way this would resonate in the media?

Braxton: By the time I got on the boat, because the first trip had gotten a lot of media coverage here. And the first trip, I think, was more daring than the subsequent one was because we really people didn't know for sure what the response of the US military would be. Would they bomb the ship? Would they blockade it in some way? And at one point on that first trip to North Vietnam that they sailed from Hiroshima to Hong Kong, and then fueled up. But the US government tried to block the fuel companies from selling fuel to the boat. But I think they, I think they found a probably they went to Shell, which is a Dutch company at the time and the Dutch said, "Hey, if you're paying money, we'll sell 00:48:00it to you. The American embassy doesn't tell us how to not make money." So. So we didn't know when that ship sailed, whether what the consequences would be. But it did get through. They, in the film, it shows planes that swooped down to probably intimidate and at least investigate, where is this ship? So, so there was a lot of media coverage. And then, when when that crew came back, they started talking about what they'd seen. And one of the things that they had seen, that was I also saw when we went to North Vietnam, was that the US was using anti-personnel weapons in the war. Which are these horrible things where a big canister, a six foot tall canister, opens up in midair with a series of 00:49:00bomblets about the size of your fist. And inside each bomblets are a series of either little pellets or in some cases, little what they call fleshettes. It's little tiny metal arrows. And so they, by the time these things all hit the ground, they are filling the area the size of a couple of football fields with just filled with these little metal particles. And they, they mostly don't kill, but they wound terribly and from.. And they actually aren't, they're mostly effective against an unprotected population. If you have a flak jacket on, it's probably not going to get through the flak jacket. Um, but that first crew and also the crew that I was with saw children that and women who'd been shot, have 00:50:00been injured by these terrible weapons. And the US line, the US government line was "We only bomb military targets." So here they were using weapons that were not designed to really hurt a military target and clearly not hitting military targets. So they were talking about what how precisely were in there bombing and so so I think, and it was just, and it was it was this bold, symbolic move. You know, the amount, the value of the medical supplies was to us a lot. It was like $10,000, which in '66 was a lot of money, '67 was a lot of money. But to a nation, it wasn't a huge help. But the symbolism of people caring enough saying 00:51:00these are not our enemy. And we're prepared to to get arrested or maybe worse, or we maybe we're risking our lives to do this. And so, so that did attract a huge amount of media attention. And, you know, Time magazine and The New York Times and CBS News, they were all there for these events.

Wood: So tell me about life on the boat.

Braxton: Oh, it was very varied. I loved it. I mean, I loved learning, I knew nothing about sailing. So I was just like I was just soaking it up, you know, tell me all about it.

Wood: So they just they just took off.

Braxton: They just said, you, you got a good heart, you got a good mind. And we got people that can teach you. And they were good teachers. So the trip from Hiroshima to Hong Kong, we were not in any particular hurry. It's a good thing 00:52:00because there was no wind. So we spent a lot of time, we painted the decks, we'd paint one part of the deck one day and let it dry with paint and the other part the next day. And uh, and partly then it was also a chance that there might be a little bit of wind. And so, you know, we could, I could learn about, you know, how to put up a sail and, you know, how to make sure that you have it trimmed in the right way and so forth. But then we also were on the edge of a typhoon at one point, and we had waves that were, I'm guessing, 35 or 40 feet. You know, they were big and the boat would rock way, way over and, uh, and, uh, and so there was, there was a strenuous aspect of it too at, during times like that. Um, I remember there was one time where we wanted to reduce the amount of sail that we had up, but, uh, and again, the technology was, it was, was old 00:53:00technology and the sail got stuck. We couldn't get it down. And you know how, if, if something get stuck, sometimes you're trying to pull it in one direction? He said, Well, maybe if I push it the other direction, it'll loosen up. So I thought, Well, and I think somebody on the crew who knew more about sailing than I did said, you know, I was pulling on this halyard to see if we could get it to go up a little bit. He said, Well, so I said, Well, let me just give it all I got. And I gave it one big yank and lifted myself off the deck and the boat rolled and I went swinging out over the waves. The first mate on the boat, we did have a captain and a first mate; he said he just wondered if he was ever going to see me again. But I was lightweight. I was a skinny guy. I held on and swung back. And it, to me, it was I kind of knew that I was going to be okay. 00:54:00Although what would have been really bad was if the sail had pulled, the full sail had pulled up, that I was going to be going down. So if I'd gone down into the water, hanging onto this rope, that would have been another thing to deal with.

Wood: How many people were on the boat with you?

Braxton: It varied. The smallest crew we had was four of us. And that was that was a minimum. And and, you know, you've got to have somebody at the wheel 24 hours a day. So we would take watches. Sometimes it would, it varied. It sometimes would be 4 hours on, 4 hours off. Sometimes it would be longer than that, so you could get a little more sleep. So and then but then in Hong Kong, we ended up picking up several more people. So I think we had eight or nine as the max at one point.

Wood: And how was your food and water supplies?

Braxton: It was fairly primitive. We took a bunch of fruits and vegetables, but they start to rot pretty fast. There's no refrigerator on the boat and that. So that tells you something about it being a yacht. You know what a yacht can mean. And we had a lot of canned goods. We had a lot of rice and noodles. And so, yeah, it was, it was pretty primitive. And that, that wasn't a problem for me. You know, that was all, it was all part of Quaker's simplicity, not wanting to spend money in ways that weren't necessary. And, and I mentioned that my parents were camp directors, so I was used to camp food, which is nobody considers to be really terrific, but it's perfectly adequate.

Wood: Did you go on tour when you were in Hong Kong?

Braxton: Yeah, we ended up we got to Hong Kong and then we got a message from 00:56:00the North Vietnamese that they did not want us to come at that time, that they said the bombing is very heavy and they were afraid for our safety. They were also worried that as we were sailing up the coast to go to Haiphong Harbor, they would, uh, they would need to tell everybody not to shoot at us. And I think they weren't sure that, they that they could be confident that everybody would recognize who to shoot at and who not to shoot at. We did have an American flag on the boat. And also, I think they didn't want to shut down their shore. It was kind of like, I think they would say they just wanted to shut down the shore batteries for 24 hours to make sure that we were going to be safe. But that 00:57:00meant that something else could come up, that they didn't want to come up. So for a combination of reasons, they didn't want us to come at that time. So we said, Well, let's get some supplies that are geared for the needs in South Vietnam, which are somewhat different, that needs in South Vietnam. There were plenty of similarities, but they also just needed like anti-malaria drugs and anti diarrhea drugs, those kinds of things. And so we bought a new set of supplies and went to the South Vietnamese embassy or consulate, whichever it was in Hong Kong, and got permission to sail to Danang in South Vietnam. Um, and we thought, well, this will demonstrate we're not picking sides in the war. We're 00:58:00not saying we favor the North Vietnamese. We're really saying humanitarian aid should be delivered to anybody who needs it. And we were also saying we do oppose war. We recognize that it's the United States that is responsible for the escalation of a continuation of the war. So we're opposed to the US government's role, but we're not in favor of either military side winning. And so we get to Danang and oh, but and the arrangement that we made was that we would split the, the cargo between the South Vietnamese Red Cross which was fairly strongly associated with the South Vietnamese government, and the United Buddhist Church, which was in huge disputes with the South Vietnamese government. And some of it 00:59:00was they they were actually, in some ways philosophically very similar to us. They were saying war in general is wrong. We don't believe in killing. And they also recognized how corrupt the South Vietnamese government was. So there were these huge disputes. And when we got there, the local South Vietnamese officials wouldn't let us in. And we tried to find out why, and they wouldn't-- the people-- we had very friendly relationships with, with the South Vietnamese that we were speaking with through interpreters. But they would just say, well, we just have orders. You know, we have orders not to let you in. And we said, well, you know, don't you need these medical supplies? Yes, we need these medical supplies, but we have orders. And so they ordered us to leave. And so we had this big strategy session and said, well, what if we try to stick around? What 01:00:00if we refuse to leave and see if maybe the Buddhist church can put pressure to get us in? Maybe the media will find out that we're being excluded because the media was interested in us. And so maybe so let's refuse to leave. At one point, a media boat and a bunch of media people did charter a little boat to come out into the harbor where we were anchored. And the Vietnamese gunboat nearby fired a machine gun in their direction, and they decided to turn around. They didn't shoot at them, but the message was pretty clear. You're not coming any further. And incidentally, anchored in that harbor all night long, they would they would 01:01:00lob mortar shells from one side of the harbor over to the other, because the South Vietnamese and Americans couldn't hold any territory for any length of time. They could take any piece of territory they wanted. They had the firepower to do that, but they couldn't hold it. So here they were outside one of the major naval bases and air bases in the country. And they just, they just shelled that shoreline every night, just just in case there were the so-called enemy trying to come in there. So we refused to leave and we told them we're not going to voluntarily leave. And they said, well, we're going to have to tow you out. So we said, okay, if that's what you have to do, then that's what you have to do. And it was actually a very sweet relationship we had with the people that came on board. But we said, Well, if you come on board, we're not going to help 01:02:00you to tow us that you're going to have to do it all yourselves. And if you try to tow us that we're prepared to jump overboard and swim to shore. This sounds kind of crazy in retrospect. But, you know, it was an indication of how dedicated we were. And so we didn't tell them, but we designated two people to jump overboard. And the rest of us were going to kind of keep an eye on the boat. And one of them was this guy, George Lakey, that I mentioned earlier. And he had, he is, he is a very well-known at this point theoretician around nonviolent strategizing. And he had but he had a lot of experience with nonviolent actions up until then. And he kind of knew that what Quakers do is, you know, you make a symbolic gesture and then you let yourself get arrested. So 01:03:00he jumped in the water. They sent in a couple of Navy people after him. They swam up to him and they said, come with us. And he said, fine. So but the other guy-- We often thought it was because he was inexperienced in who he was. I think he was, I'm sure he was a Quaker also, but he was inexperienced in that he'd never been arrested or anything. So he thought his job was to swim to shore. We also joked because he had been terribly seasick and we just thought he just wants to get to. Off the boat. And so he started swimming and it's getting dark at this point. And he just out swam the South Vietnamese, who probably weren't very interested in going after him anyway. They told us that there were 01:04:00poisonous snakes in the water. I don't know if that was true or not, but they might have believed it was true. So he actually made it to shore and it's dark. By the time he gets there, he walks up on this hillside. That later on is being, you know, shelled by the South Vietnamese navy. But he walks up and he doesn't know much about the geography, but he knows there's a highway. If you go up the hill, you're going to run into the one highway that runs along the coast, turn left and head south, and pretty soon you're going to run into some kind of a checkpoint. And he did. And they, the story they heard was that somebody from the American Navy had jumped ship. But he explained that he wasn't really part of the American Navy and he was arrested. And he said, but I want to see, I'm here because we can't get an answer as to why we can't deliver these medical 01:05:00supplies. And if you can't give me an answer, I want to see the guy who can tell us. And amazingly, he had a conversation with General Laum, who was the top South Vietnamese general in the region, and who said, A., you're giving it to the Buddhist church. We're not happy with the Buddhist church. B., you've been to North Vietnam. We weren't too happy about that. So there's a reasons. And so then the next day they ended up bringing him back. We didn't know what had happened to him, so we were very relieved to know he was alive and okay. And they said, So now we're going to tow you out, because they stopped towing us when all this happened. And we said, okay, we're not going to cooperate, but we're not going to jump overboard. We did get the reason we didn't see what 01:06:00purpose we would serve by continuing to jump overboard. And so they towed us out, and we would communicate sometimes, you know, when we when the two boats were close enough, we would talk through an interpreter. But when we when we were farther apart than that, we communicated. There's an old fashioned system of flags called "semaphore", where you hold up certain flags and certain positions. And it stands for a letter. In fact, the you know, the old peace symbol with the circle and the line from the top to the middle, and then the three branches at the bottom is actually semaphore signal symbols for I've heard it different ways, but I think it might be "N" and "V" for nonviolence or something like that at any rate. So but they didn't have said before and this is again, this is a yacht. This is the, this is the high technology we had for 01:07:00communicating with other ships. And you'd go to a book and say, oh, they put up the following letters that and that symbolizes this sentence. They didn't have-- they had the book so they could read what our symbols were. And, um, and so they would, they would sometimes sail by with a big blackboard where they wrote something on there. So they, as they were towing us out, they put up their blackboard and said, We regret towing and we put up our flags. That said, we understand, peace. So we had this friendly relationship, but they had orders and they towed us out. We decided to sail, to not leave, not go far away, to sail up and down the coast for a couple of days. Again, to see if maybe the press were 01:08:00putting on enough pressure to get us back in or the Buddhist church could get us back in. And while we were doing that, then they had a gunboat following us all the time. And then at some point, the gunboat clearly was under orders to start intimidating us, and they started firing machine gun tracer bullets alongside of us at night. So you'd see these flashes of bullets going by. They weren't aiming at us, but, you know, it was an intimidation tactic. And then at one point, they they came so close to us. I don't, they didn't like deliberately ram us, but they came close to us and the boats are rocking. And they are, they're a much larger steel boat and we're a small wooden boat. And they banged into us and 01:09:00they did some damage to the ship. Not damage that would put us in danger of sinking. But it damaged one of the masts. And that was going to make it hard for us to sail back to Hong Kong because Hong Kong was upwind and you needed that mast to sail against the wind. And so we decided, well, let's sail down to Saigon. And maybe this was a regional decision and the national government will reverse it. So we tried community, we did manage to communicate by radio. Our radio was really pretty bad. But, um, but we got the word that they weren't going to let us in there either. So then we decided to sail to Cambodia to try to get the boat repaired. Cambodia was neutral during the war and we also 01:10:00thought maybe we can unload the supplies for South Vietnam in Cambodia, and have them shipped overland to their destination. But this was, at that time, Cambodia was ruled by a prince, Prince Sihanouk, who was trying very hard to stay neutral in the war. And, and the North Vietnamese were actually using parts of Cambodia to send troops to the south. And so the North Vietnamese were in some sense, abusing Cambodia, and the Americans were bombing Cambodia to try to get at those North Vietnamese who had. So both sides were ignoring the border. The prince was trying to kind of not get drawn into the war. And so the government said to us, 01:11:00you know, you're kind of you know, the US government doesn't like you very much and we don't want to give them any excuses, any anything further to alienate them. So officially you can't land here, but there's this little island off the coast you can anchor there and you can get the supplies brought out that you need to fix the boat and resupply as needed, and then you can move along. So we spent a kind of idyllic couple of weeks in this tropical island where there's coconuts, and pineapples, and bananas, and, and coral reefs to swim on. And, um, and getting the boat, getting supplies brought out to us. And then during that time, we Quaker action group had a so-called ambassador, a presence in Cambodia 01:12:00because Cambodia had an embassy, a North Vietnamese embassy. So that was a way we could communicate directly with the North Vietnamese. So he was talking to the North Vietnamese and they said, you could bring the Phoenix in for a two day period. There's always a bombing pause during the the Tet Lunar New Year holiday, and both sides more or less recognize that. So you could bring the Phoenix in, then we could shut down the Shaw batteries for that period of time. So we quickly got ourselves together and sailed back around to Hong Kong to get the supplies that we'd originally bought for North Vietnam and sailed to North Vietnam.

Wood: In one of the sources, I forget which one I read that this was 01:13:00specifically Ho Chi Minh's decision. I wonder how far up your communications went up the chain of command, because obviously Ho Chi Minh was very old at this point.

Braxton: He was very old. And now we know that I don't know how much he was actually in charge. He was the symbolic head of the government. But I don't have the-- I actually had never heard that. So it's interesting that you read that somewhere. You read something that I haven't read. I never heard it. And so I don't have any knowledge that that's true. And I would tend to doubt it. But it was clear that the government was there, it was a governmental decision. They had, they did shut down the Shaw batteries for that period of time. And and and we were welcomed by government officials.

Wood: It must have been fairly high up because to get Haiphong you had to go past presumably a fair amount of shore battery--.

Braxton: That's right

Wood: --off shore patrol.

Braxton: Yeah, that's right. And they sent a pilot out to get on the boat to help us navigate the narrow channel in the harbor. And, um, so, yeah, so clearly we were, we were welcomed. They, they treated us like, like heroes, really, that, you know, they just gave us the biggest welcome and, and it was their Lunar New Year holiday. So they were having big celebrations anyway. Well, this was by this time it was late January, 1968. This was the Tet Offensive of '68. And they were giving us these reports about all these cities that were being overrun by their forces. And I'm not sure they said it was their forces that, you know, there was the National Liberation Front, which was South Vietnamese, who were opposed to the South Vietnamese government, and there was the North Vietnamese government. And so there were some distinctions between them, but 01:15:00there was a hell of a lot of overlap. So I don't know how much. But anyway, you know, their forces were overrunning all of the major cities. Saigon was and Huế and all of the big cities were overrun by their forces. And for a little while. And we course, had no news about this independent of what they were telling us. So we didn't know if they were exaggerating. Um, and, you know, we, we genuinely were not excited about a military victory. We kind of knew that if the US pulled out, we knew who was going to win. So we weren't naive about that. And, and we certainly were no fans of the corrupt South Vietnamese government. But, um, but we were hearing these stories. It turned out that one of the cities, Huế, that was overrun, the sister of one of the crew members, Birrell 01:16:00Nelson's sister, was working for the American Friends Service Committee in South Vietnam and she was captured during that time. Uh, so we didn't know that, so when we got back to Hong Kong, he learned that she was missing and she was actually held by them in jungle camps. I've forgotten, she has a book documenting all this. Um, I think for six weeks or something like that, they, they fairly soon realized that she and the other woman that, that was captured with her were not the enemy. Uh, but it wasn't easy for them to figure out what to do then, because, um, they couldn't just like by then, of course, all the cities had been cleared. Uh, it was back under government control. So you couldn't just walk into a city and say, Oh, here's this captive, because they would risk that would put the people, that was the Vietnamese, that were 01:17:00covering them at risk. So they so they moved her around from one village to another. And then at some point she woke up one morning, I think they had kind of said and she got to be friendly with them. Of course, I think that they had kind of given some indications that we're trying to get you back to where it's safe, where you are. And they they left information, you know, with the family that they were with walked down this road and you'll be in government controlled territory. So, yeah, we spent, we really only spent two days in North Vietnam, but it was a you know, it was a landmark two days for all of us. Seeing the bombing was devastating, seeing clearly that civilian areas were being bombed, that anti-personnel weapons were being used. Um, and also just seeing the determination of the North Vietnamese, that they were just determined that they 01:18:00weren't going to give in. And you know, the US would, would blow up a bridge. Uh, well within a day or so they would have pontoons set up and set up some rickety bridge and a lot of the freight that they would carry, they would carry on bicycles. And so they could get it over that bridge, And it, you know, it slowed them down, but it didn't stop them.

Wood: You're well versed in the Vietnam War and the history of it. So you obviously know about all of the horrible things that happened during the Tet Offensive of '68 while you were in Vietnam.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: Did learning about that after the fact affect you at all?

Braxton: I just knew that both sides were using horrible tactics. Yeah. And, um, you know, I think the US was so technologically superior, so superior 01:19:00technologically, that the horrible things that we were doing were more on my mind; partly because it was our government and our tax dollars and our names that were being used to justify this. And partly it was like, you know, the napalm being dropped safely from airplanes, and tanks and so forth, whereas to the Vietnamese was a very strictly-- they weren't using tanks to get around. They were on foot in intact.

Wood: There was actually some use of VA tanks.

Braxton: Yeah, there were. There was some.

Wood: Yeah.

Braxton: But mostly not. Yeah. So, yeah, we never we I never we never felt in any way, you know, justifying the violence. And that's just what happens in wars. Both, both sides go crazy and do two really awful things, huh?

Wood: Yeah.

Braxton: I went back to Vietnam in 2014 and visited some museums that they have there. And, you know, we saw some of the weapons that the North Vietnamese had used. They would set up booby traps, you know, with bamboo spikes. I mean, they were technologically primitive, but they were deadly. They were off. And they would wound people also. They mostly didn't kill, but they would wound. Yeah.

Wood: So you went to Haiphong. And Haiphong Bay isn't too far away from that. Did you, did you see it? Did you stop?

Braxton: Didn't see it long. But I saw it when I was there in 2014. Yeah, beautiful.

Wood: I've seen pictures.

Braxton: Yeah. Yeah, it's an amazing, amazing place. Yeah. Monkey, monkeys 01:21:00climbing around on the trees. Yeah, it's just really one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Wood: I remember in one of the sources I saw, I think on the other oral history project for this, there was a newspaper article they quoted about your time in Haiphong Bay, and they talked about it was cut off. So I wasn't sure if this was a separate story or what was going on, but it talked about you meeting Cuban children or something.

Braxton: Now, almost, yeah. There was most of the time it was only two days that we were there, maybe, maybe two nights and parts of three days or something. And so most of the time we were, you know, going around with government officials and going where they wanted us to go. But there was a little while at one point where there was kind of a lull in the action. And we were staying in a, in an old hotel, an old French hotel. And I thought, well, I'm just going to go out and wander around for a little bit. So I went out there and there were a bunch 01:22:00of Vietnamese children and they saw me. And obviously I'm Western and the only Westerners that they were used to seeing were Cubans. And I had a pretty nice tan at that point because I'd been out on the boat for quite a few months, and so they assumed I was Cuban. And so they came up and said, Cuba, si, Yankee, no. And I said, Yankee. And they kind of took a step back for a minute. I think I had learned how to say, my name is John Braxton, or something like that, in Vietnamese. I don't remember now what it was. And I so I said, my name is John Braxton. And I couldn't really say anything else to them, but this really had a big impact on me. You know, for a minute, they kind of step back and say, oh, you know, Yankee, what do we do? But I think they figured, well, if he's here, 01:23:00it's probably not the enemy. He's clearly not a soldier, not dressed like a soldier. And so one of them said, John Braxton sống lâu, and I had heard the phrase over and over again, Ho Chi Minh, sống lâu Means. Long live Ho Chi Minh. So they were welcoming me. And to me, that was really fascinating, because all of the Vietnamese officials that we spoke with always emphasized we are not enemies of the American people. The American government is hostile. The American government is doing this war. I think they even exaggerate it. Well, they said we know the American people, if they knew the truth, would not want this war to happen. And I think ultimately that proved to be true, although at that time it 01:24:00was it was 50/50, I think. And most people were believing the government, and our government. And so, you know, they had this line where it's the American people are our friends. And and of course, we thank you for being peace people and trying to do what you can to stop the war. But I wondered how far it went down to ordinary people, and the fact that this that these Vietnamese children said that to me was meant to me, that they were getting that message, that they that this was consistent. And I think it was a way that the government could explain to the people why this was going on. You know, why why would people do this to us? Well, it's not the American people. It's a, it's a government policy, but it's not the American people. I think it was a way-- I think they believed it, you know, as communists, that this was, whatever you think about 01:25:00communism, there are some. Good part to the ideals behind it. It was, you know, all humanity deserves to be united, workers of the world unite. And so there was a piece of this that of their ideology. I think that was. It was all people, if they really understood each other, would come together and would not carry out this kind of activity. And then to jump ahead briefly to 2014, when I visited North Vietnam, we went to a what used to, have previously been a hospital, in North Vietnam. It was now being used as a kind of a place for veterans to come and get a couple of days of recreation, kind of a place to stay and hang out. And, uh, and it was on a weekend and our guides just said, Well, there isn't 01:26:00anything official going on that you can see, but you can just go in and walk into any of the rooms and talk to people. And we had an interpreter with us. So I introduced myself to them through the interpreter and I brought pictures of myself as a draft resister in handcuffs. And, and I said I was a Quaker and had been to North Vietnam with medical supplies. And, and right away, they just stood up and they gave us handshakes and hugs. And, and, you know, what they said was, we always believed that the American people were on our side. You're the first one. They had met other veterans that had come over. Some of them, of course, by now were anti-war, but they'd never met a peace movement person. And, you know, what they had been told was, by the government was, we think the 01:27:00American people will eventually stop their government from prosecuting this war. And they'd never met anybody that had actually been involved with that. So again, that message was it looks like it was very consistent. The American people are on our side. I think that was an exaggeration. But, uh, but more and more it was, you know, I mean, I do think it was the peace movement that clipped the wings of the government. You know, Nixon no longer felt like he could escalate any more, and he had to Veitnamize the war, and then that didn't work. And so eventually it had to end. And if it had just been a purely military decision, we now know that Nixon was actually planning to escalate the war a lot in '69. Uh, and there were massive demonstrations against the war, that I was 01:28:00participating in and helping to organize. And, and Nixon's line was, I'm not paying any attention to those demonstrators, but we now know from his aides that he actually it changed his mind. He was he was operating he was going to operate under a theory they called the Madman Theory, where if he just looked like he was so totally crazy that he would do anything, including nuclear weapons, and that will bring the Vietnamese to their knees. And he decided he couldn't pull that off because of the demonstrations. So, so it's just really interesting in a lot of, on a lot of levels. That the Vietnamese were being told that the peace movement was going to be be the other piece of the puzzle that would be needed to end the war. And we were hoping that we could be that other piece of the 01:29:00puzzle, but we didn't know how effective we were being at that point.

Wood: So human memory is a tricky thing, I'm sure you're aware. And I wonder how many times, I have some idea of how many times you've told this story.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: And I wonder how much, obviously, I don't know if you'd be a good narrator of this, but how much has retelling the story colored it in one way or another? In your mind? Are there like specific events you can think of that really, really-- Like you've repeated them so much that you're like, Was that really how it happened? Or or

Braxton: Yeah

Wood: Do you just say this so often?

Braxton: You know, it's interesting. At one point I've gone back and read some of the things that I wrote right after coming back, and that was very helpful because yeah, you're right, the stories kind of take on a momentum of their own. And so I went back and read, Oh yeah, okay. So yeah, I did visit. I did visit 01:30:00and see people who were hit by that shrapnel. You know, girls who were hit, young women who were hit by that shrapnel. I did. I wrote up right after I got back, that conversation with those Vietnamese children, conversation that that whatever it was, that little bit of impact that we had together. So, yeah, there are ways that I that I can kind of go back and, and I unless I made it all up then, at least I've been consistent ever since.

Wood: All right. Just a side note, something I like to consider, especially you in some a story that you've told so often.

Braxton: And it's true. Yeah. Mm hmm.

Wood: So you. You leave Hanoi and not Hanoi. Sorry, Haiphong . You head back to Hiroshima from there. Right?

BRaxton: Mm hmm. And, well, no, actually, we head back to Hong Kong, and by then I, I decided. Well, looks like I could get back to Swarthmore and only be a 01:31:00couple of weeks late, and I could probably make that time up and and not miss a whole other semester. So. So I left. We got back and I left. There was a little-- But it's funny. At one point, there were stories in the newspaper that came out that the Phoenix is overdue in Hong Kong and nobody knows where it is. Uh, my parents were very worried. Oh. We thought we were making. I think maybe they just underestimated. We were sailing against the wind, and we didn't, it just took longer than some people thought it would. Um, so, yeah. So I, I came back at that point, um, I forget there was something else that I was going to say-- So there were other crew members then that ended up taking the ship back to Hiroshima.

Wood: So you got off in Hong Kong and then you flew back the United States. Right?

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: So you didn't miss out on much of college?

Braxton: Right. I didn't. I missed that whole fall semester and then was 01:32:00scrambling to catch up for the first couple of weeks.

Wood: And I think I read that because you missed that fall semester, you were then eligible for the draft.

Braxton: That's, that's what I assumed. I assumed that the, that the draft board would say, look, you weren't a student in the fall. Your student deferment is no good. Um, so I actually wrote to them either before I left, or maybe wrote to them from Japan while I was in Japan, and said, I'm going to miss the fall since, or maybe from Hong Kong. Some of these details I have lost. But I wrote to them and said, I know I've lost my student deferment. And so I want to, uh, I want you to work on my applications as a conscientious objector. And I, you know, expect to do some civilian work for two years as alternative service. And that was my assumption. But seeing the destruction of the war firsthand, um, was 01:33:00really had a huge impact on me. And this was again, 1968, and the draft resistance movement was really flourishing at this point. And the captain on the Phoenix, on my trip of the Phoenix, it was not Earl Reynolds, it was Bob Eaton who was another Swarthmore graduate, and he was a draft resister. He'd already made a public statement that he was not going to have anything to do with the draft, including alternative service. Um, and I thought that's the right thing to do, but I don't know if I'm going to do it. And it took me so-- but in May of '68, I made the decision that I was and so I wrote to the draft board and said-- Oh, they had by then, uh, granted me the CO status. So, and one of the reasons 01:34:00why I didn't want to take advantage of it was because it was such a discriminatory-- If you had a Quaker, I had a flawless Quaker record, you know, Quaker member of a Quaker meeting, Quaker High School, Quaker College, good references. Um, and so, so they weren't going to turn me down. But somebody else who, you know, you know, comes from a working class background or poor background and just said, you know. Take Muhammad Ali, you know, no Vietnamese never called me a [REDACTED]. And, you know, Muhammad Ali was a very intelligent person, very articulate. But, um, but he, he didn't portray, you know, he didn't have the kind of credentials that you would need to get a conscientious objector 01:35:00position. He ended up claiming he, you know, as a minister, he could be, he could not be drafted. And eventually he won in court. But. And talk about guts. I mean, here he was at the height of his career as the world champion. And what a great person to have on our side, you know, somebody who's not a nonviolent person. But he's saying, you know, I'm not going to have anything to do with this war. And so, yeah. So partly it was just it was I didn't want to take it. I didn't want to have this privileged position that wouldn't have been offered to somebody else, whose views might have been just as sincere as mine, but maybe didn't have the background to convince them that they were that sincere.

Wood: The affiliation.

Braxton: Yeah. Right.

Wood: Hmm. So you have the CO status, and you said you sent them a letter after being granted CO status. Saying what? That I don't want to be an objector anymore.

Braxton: Yeah. Saying I'm not going to cooperate. I'm going to refuse to. The work that you would have me do is good work, but I'm not going to do it as part of your system. So it was kind of like, I know that the draft system is at that time what was making the war possible. And so I want to do whatever I can to withdraw support for that war.

Wood: And they said, what? Jon Braxton. Have a good life.

Braxton: They, they sent me orders to report to work in a hospital and Williamsport, Pennsylvania. And so then we had a little demonstration at my draft board where I formally refused to participate, and that got some press. So we tried to, we tried to use every opportunity that we could to try to spread the word that this peace movement is growing and we're right. And, you know, I think more and more people became convinced. A lot of people became convinced 01:37:00because of veterans coming back and saying, you can't believe the horrible stuff that I had to do.

Wood: So tell me about the this protest, this formal disobedience, I guess, in front of your draft board.

Braxton: Yeah.

Wood: Well, what did you do?

Braxton: We just had a little sort of picket line that was maybe 25 people at most, I would say. And so we just paraded around in front. We handed out leaflets about stopping the war. And my mother, bless her, she came and she brought, typical mom, she brought homemade grape juice and served homemade grape juice to everybody. And, uh, and so there's this lovely newspaper article from the Norristown Times-Herald with a picture of her and a picture of me and quotes from her. And, uh, and, you know, she was not, she was very upset about the idea 01:38:00of my going to prison. I don't blame her, but she was going to back me all the way. And and, you know, my parents couldn't. My parents wished they would say over and over again, we wish you were making a different choice, but we support you. And they couldn't very well say that I wasn't acting on their values. So I was very consistent with their values. And they knew that, they understood that, they were just scared, mom and dad, for their little boy.

Wood: So you get sent to prison.

Braxton: So, yeah. So I eventually get sent to prison, two and a half year sentence.

Wood: I, I was a little unclear about this because I saw that you were sent to prison, but I couldn't find whether it was specifically because you went to North Vietnam or if this was because of the draft.

Braxton: It was because of the draft.

Wood: Okay.

Braxton: So they never prosecuted us. Theoretically, they believed they could. They believed we had violated the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Export Control Act, each of which can be five years and $10,000. So I could have had ten years in prison and $20,000 in fines. Um, but it's interesting, you know, in nonviolent strategy, one of the tactics is doing what they sometimes refer to as a, putting the adversary in a dilemma, a dilemma demonstration. So, like, if they don't arrest us, they look kind of weak or, you know, you say you're violating the law. Why aren't you arresting them? If you do arrest them, you're arresting people for trying to deliver medical supplies. Is that the kind of people that you are? So they ended up not prosecuting us for that. They had tried to interfere with us and they were certainly keeping tabs on us. I have a 01:40:00big FBI file. And, and, uh, and, of course, they froze our bank, the organization's bank accounts, but we open up new bank accounts. So they didn't kind of keep track of the new ones so much.

Wood: So tell me about your time in prison.

Braxton: Oh, it was a very it was a mixture of good things and horrible things. Good things might might be surprising, but in a way, you know, it exposed me to a whole group of people that I would never have had any contact with. And I learned a lot from that. You know, I learned that they were human beings. I believe that to begin with. But I learned it firsthand, you know, that these are people that and they were in for all kinds of things. You know, when I was in prison, I actually met Jimmy Hoffa in prison. He was in prison for jury 01:41:00tampering. And there was a guy named Bobby Baker, who was a close associate of Lyndon Johnson, who had done all that. Lyndon Johnson was really corrupt in lots of ways.

Wood: Was the meeting with Jimmy Hoffa. How you got inspired for today?

Braxton: No, no.

Wood: It's a pure coincidence.

Braxton: Pure coincidence that I happened to meet him in prison. He was, he was working in the laundry room. And his job was to make sure that everybody got their weekly allotment of socks. He probably also had other jobs. But so I went through to get my first handful of socks and, uh, and, and this, and he says, and they're all in this big bin. And I start, I ask the guy in front of me, How many pairs of socks do we get? He told me. So I reached into the bed and started grabbing him and he said, No, you don't take them, I give them. So I figured 01:42:00that was the one thing Jimmy Hoffa was in charge of at that point. How many socks you got. And he could probably help his friends out by giving them a couple of extra pairs of socks, you know? So now total coincidence and I didn't know, I didn't recognize them. But after I got through that, somebody said, you know, do you know how that is. I said, no, it's it's Jimmy Hoffa. So and of course, there are people in there for bank robbery and some of them who committed violent crimes. But, you know, it was, it was just and, you know, I certainly wasn't in any way justifying those crimes. But, you know, I also got a sense of how useless the prison system is and how much it actually leaves people less able to cope with the world when they get out. We had one guy that I knew 01:43:00who was getting ready to be paroled after being in jail for quite a while. And in those days, I think they were, they were going to give him like $50 to sort of street money to get started when he got out of prison. And the prison had the-- our understanding was the prison had the ability to give more money if they thought it was a good idea. So he went to the superintendent of the prison and said, I need more money than that. You know, I can't, I can't survive for more than a couple of days, maybe not even a day. I've lost all my contacts out there and so forth. And he said, he said, and the guy said, Well, that's all you're getting. And he said, Well, you know what? The best thing I can do with $50 is to buy a gun. And it was a kind of a funny story because at least according to this guy, the superintendent said, If I saw you with a gun, I'd 01:44:00kill you. And he said, But Mr. Angle, I'm the one that's got the gun. But yeah, you just got to you just really saw that. Okay. There can be there can be a good reason for separating people for some period of time, you know, shake them up or let them learn that you got you got to change your ways, but then you got to give them the resources to do that, and there was very little of that going on. So that was interesting.

Wood: Did you continue your anti-war activism from prison?

Braxton: I couldn't really continue antiwar activism from there. I could kind of stay in touch with what was going on, but there wasn't much that I could do. But so, but a group of us did decide that we wanted to try to organize, to try to make the prison conditions better. And the prison authorities did not appreciate 01:45:00this. And we were not very sophisticated about it, but they got wind of it. Well, one of the-- they got wind of it. We organized a prison, an inmate counsel, and we tried to make sure that there were representatives of all the different little sects within. So we there was the Italian group and there was the Puerto Ricans and there were the, you know, the drug dealers. And that we wanted to make sure each group felt like they had a say. It was sort of proportional representation in some sense, I guess. And so we and we we wrote up some, I don't know that we called them demands or proposals. And they were pretty modest. They were things like when you're getting ready to be released on parole, could you have a visit with your family in the town in the month 01:46:00beforehand? So you sort of got used to getting your feet outside of the prison for a day. And other prisoners were doing that. This one wasn't. So it was modest stuff like that. But if the demands were not earth shattering, the idea of inmates getting together to do something was. And then there was an incident that occurred where, um. The prison that I was in at this point was Allenwood, which is a minimum security prison. And so there's not a lot of officers on duty. Basically, if you try to escape, you're in the middle of central Pennsylvania. It's not that hard to escape as it doesn't have walls around it. It's got six foot, you know, cyclone fences, but you can get through that. Um, but then you're in the middle of central Pennsylvania. Then what do you do? And if you get caught, you get a five year sentence. So, and most of the people 01:47:00there are either on short sentences or getting to the end of their long sentence. So they don't want to take any risks. So on Saturday nights, there's only a couple of officers on duty and they kind of loosen up on the rules. So you're supposed to be at your bed at 11:00 at night and then they go around and count and make sure that everybody's at their bed and they can count the number of inmates. But they had a rule that, ah, they, they loosened up on Saturdays if you're watching television at 11:00 at night, will count you in the T.V. room. So yeah. Okay. We got 12 people at the TV room were missing 12 people at their beds, we're fine. But so was some incident where the the guard-- there was some irritation between the guard and one of the inmates. And the guard said, no, you have to go back to your bed. And the inmate was mad at him. And anyway, the guard wrote him up as a disciplinary report and he, he was about to get paroled. 01:48:00So now he's really scared he was going to have to spend the rest of his time in prison when he was about to get out. And so I think partly because we had this inmate counsel, it kind of gave people a sense that we weren't powerless. I don't know for sure if that was what played a role. What I know is I had gone to bed and-- and then somewhere around 11:30 or 12:00 at night, somebody throws the lights on and says, come on, we're rolling. We're all going down to the control center and here's what happened. And where's Braxton? He ought to be part of this. I know he'll want to be part of this. So, like two thirds of the men in the camp marched down to the, to the office where there's two guards on duty. And they and we say, we want you to rip up that disciplinary report. Well, so they rip it up. They probably had a carbon copy of it somewhere. Oh, carbon 01:49:00copies in those days. And so we're feeling great. You know, we exerted our power and we had some influence. And we, you know, we all felt united. We all went back and went to sleep. And the next couple of days went by and we're all feeling pretty excited. And then an announcement comes over the loudspeaker and the following inmates report to the visiting room. Uh, and I was one of them. And, um, and then we started gathering in the visiting room and I said, I don't have a visit coming today. Did you know I have a visit? Some of us said I never have a visit, you know. And the next thing we know, two busses pull up, two prison busses pull up with wire mesh all over the windows. And they're filled with armed guards who've got gas masks and helmets and wooden batons. And they 01:50:00put handcuffs on all of us, and haul us off to the medium security prison, which is Lewisburg, which is a medium security is very secure. You, you don't get out of Lewisburg and eventually throw us into solitary confinement. And and well, first they put us they pracked us in jail cells. And then they eventually transferred us to solitary. And we tried a hunger strike. We got some people protesting outside the prison. We got some press. We tried a court fight saying that they hadn't given us due process. And some of the people, some of us were involved in building this inmate council and sort of felt like, okay, yeah, you caught us. You know, we're, I mean, we weren't hiding it, but we did stuff that you didn't like. Some of them were not involved at all. So there wasn't a real 01:51:00due process issue there, you know? Do you actually know who you're punishing and why? But eventually I got transferred then to Petersburg, Virginia, and served the rest of my time down there. And, and I arrived there with a reputation that I'd started a riot at Allenwould.

Wood: So tell me how their their strike breaking compares to something like U.P.S.

Braxton: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they've, they've got a lot more tools. Strike did break out at Allenwood after we were sent into solitary, but I don't think it lasted long. Um, and a couple more people were sent there because they participated in the strike, but I think it petered out pretty quickly.

Wood: Tell me about solitary confinement.

Braxton: And there's different levels of solitary. At one point because of the hunger strike I was on, uh, and because I complained, because they refused to 01:52:00feed one of the other, one of one of our crew that had been, been put in solitary with us, but he wasn't trying to participate. And so I just said to the guard, Do you realize that he's not one of the ones participating? And the the guard was just pissed off and said, okay, you're going down to level one. So level one's in the basement where you don't have there's no-- Yeah, you don't have a light switch, you can't-- So the lights are on 24 hours a day. There's no-- I had a, in the other solitary you could open a window and get a little bit of fresh air in. But there's the windows are like, you know, sort of, sort of like bathroom windows, frosted glass kind of thing. So you barely know whether it's day or night. Um, and initially in the mattress on the floor, uh, and a 01:53:00toilet that you can't flush, they flush it from the outside; and a little spout of water that they also control. So they can, they can tell you when you can get water or not. And, uh, and, um, so that was pretty hard and pretty scary. Uh, and, um, I, and I pretty soon realized that if I asked for a Bible, he would have to give me a Bible, and that at least gave me something to read. I figured Bible's going to take me a while. I've never read the whole Bible. I didn't get that far into it. Eventually, what they ended up doing was transferring the people that they had put in solitary into various other prisons. So they kind of broke us up. They saw us as an organized ring and they were going to break us up. And so that's how the word got, when I got to Petersburg, that I had started 01:54:00a riot, that I was one of the ringleaders. So I was in solitary there for a while. That was much more humane. Um, if solitary is ever humane, I was in a cell that it's kind of like often you see in the movies where it wasn't a solid wall with a door, it was a series of bars on the, on the front, on the side of the cell that opened onto the hallway. And so that meant you could kind of talk to the guys who were in the cells nearby. Uh, and we used to sing together at night. We would take turns singing songs and, you know, sometimes everybody would sing. Sometimes one guy would sing. He's the only guy that knew the song or so. So, so there again, there was a certain kind of camaraderie that that was 01:55:00a lasting lesson for me, you know? At one point, we would get let out of the cell for like ten or 15 minutes a day. And at one point, somebody invented a game where they tied up a bunch of socks together and made a little ball, and we started playing a soccer game together. And then the officials broke that up because they because it was, it was illegal for whatever reason. But, you know, there was a real sense that, that people are people. And so that's, that's something that was a lasting impact on me. And also the organizing that we had done, although it was, you know, you know, really not very well conceived in a lot of ways and had no that, as far as I know, no real long term impact. Um, it 01:56:00was the first time that I had organized instead of organizing for a lofty ideal like ending the war, it was like, let's get together around things that are our immediate needs. And it started me thinking about then, when I got out, about labor organizing and trying to build a labor movement that was, that had progressive ideals behind it, that wasn't just, wasn't just about getting a bigger raise or getting more sick days or things like that, which may be perfectly justified. But it was, you know, what if we, what if we had a labor movement that was, for example, that would come out against bad wars? And so one of the things that was very satisfying after spending well, from 1978 to the 01:57:00current day, involved in labor unions. When the Iraq war broke out, a bunch of us started an organization called US Labor Against the War, and we were able to eventually convince the national AFL-CIO to come out against the war. It looks like. Like you had heard about that. Yeah. If you have done your homework, it's very impressive.

Wood: I have a few more questions, but I want to start winding down the interview.

Braxton: Yeah. Yeah.

Wood: It seems like solidarity is a consistent part of your story. Or at least your, your narration of your story.

Braxton: Mm hmm.

Wood: I want to know if you think it's something innate to you, whether you think it's maybe a Quaker upbringing, values kind of thing, or. Or where do you think you get that drive to solidarity?

Braxton: Well, you know what I really think? I really think it's inherently human. And, ah, our various institutions tend to drive it out of us. You know, I 01:58:00think, you know, our capitalist society is really like, you gotta make it on your own. And so, you know, but I don't think that's the way we, I don't think that's the way we're born. You know, I think we're we're born-- We come into the world expecting totally helpless, accept that we've got this voice, this big voice that we expect is going to be listened to. You know what? I cry. You're going to you're going to notice it and you're going to give me food if I need food, you're going to give me clothing if I need clothing. And I think we expect that of people and it and, you know, I think as so-called primitive societies, you know, I think that that's what allowed us to survive was sticking together. You know, you can't survive the ice ages on your own. You come together. Uh, I 01:59:00also think we're susceptible to, to, to being hurt in ways that we then get suspicious. So there's clearly... So I think there's lots of evidence for solidarity as being a basic human value. And there's clearly lots of evidence for people that get mistrustful of each other. But my thinking is that that's basically because we get, we get the message that we can't trust other people, and then we start to generalize it. Well, we can't trust them because of the color of their skin, or because of their religion, or because of their, their, you know, their ideology or something like that.

Wood: That struck me as a very Quaker answer.

Braxton: I think it is I think, I think it's a, it's a Quaker answer. But I think it's a, it's broader. I think it's broader than that. I think... I think 02:00:00that-- I don't think anybody is born into this world bad. I think we're born expecting, needing cooperation, and expecting cooperation. And we end up then getting hurt and getting suspicious. And then we act. We act out. Those hurts on other people. And then they act out on us. And it just, it just builds on itself. But I don't believe that's the way it has to be.

Wood: You seem like a person who has stood by your convictions your whole life, but has there ever been a moment where something you believed in strongly or just believed in in general was proven to you to be? Maybe false is the word. And you changed your mind based on new information, a new experience?

Braxton: Well, you know, I would say that when I was in my early twenties, late 02:01:00teens, early twenties, I was-- I would have considered myself, if you ask me, and of course the draft board did, as a really strict pacifist. And now I'm pretty darn close to that. But, you know, if we had, you know, I would like to see us have a society that where the economic, social and economic classes just disappear, um, and where we don't have billionaires who then use their wealth to control the political process. Uh, and, and I think if, if we can get there - oh, and by the way, a society that doesn't have climate change and isn't pouring 02:02:00greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and maybe dooming human civilization in the process - if we can get there, I think it's going to be mostly by nonviolent organizing and convincing people that that's what we have to do. I don't know what happens-- You know, if you if it comes down to, you know, some group of oligarchs saying, yeah, but we still got the guns, I don't know that I'm philosophically a strict pacifist in that sense anymore, although I mostly think that guns are just not-- It's not an effective way to organize you. If what we want to do is to get the vast majority thinking the way I think, meaning cooperating together, you don't do it by pointing a gun at anybody. You know that. And interestingly enough, there's been some recent studies by people who 02:03:00aren't pacifists at all saying it's the nonviolent movements that have been winning and that there aren't very many violent insurrections that have been successful. And so this came from people who were initially totally suspicious of peace movement people, who were saying this, and they said, well, let's do a statistical analysis of it. And lo and behold, they find that nonviolent action is like twice as effective as violent action. So I don't consider myself-- again, like I can conceive of situations where I could see, yeah, maybe we got to use violence there. But I, but it plays no role in what I do and the work that needs to be done.

Wood: Don't worry, I won't tell the other Quakers security is safe with me.

Braxton: I think some of them might, even in their heart of hearts, say, Yeah, we've wondered about that.

Wood: Well, I mean, I think-- it seems to me from the outside perspective that 02:04:00even in Quakerism there is this understanding of nuance and the necessary of, the necessity of gray areas.

Braxton: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's definitely true. Yeah. I mean most Quakers, somebody breaks into their house, they call the police. Why the police? Because they've got a monopoly on violence. So. So, yeah. Um, I think, I think you're right. I think that's-- And people, there would be some Quakers that would refuse to call the police. So, you know, they are violent, I'm not going to use them. But most, most are trying to just make sure their house doesn't get broken into again.

Wood: And I mean, it's it strikes that interesting conundrum of complicity in a system. If you call it the police, then are you-- that's a, that's a rabbit hole. We probably don't need to go down.

Braxton: Well, but it's an interesting point to raise because what I what-- you 02:05:00know, what I realized a long time ago, it's not, I don't think it's certainly not original, but you can't live in this society and not be complicit with it. It's not so purity is not what we strive for. We have I think we strive to live the life that that we think human beings can live as effectively as much as we can. So, you know, we don't use we try to avoid using plastic that we don't need to use. And and we we don't buy fancy yachts.

Wood: You buy the much cheaper wooden yacht.

Braxton: Yeah, that's right. That's right. But if you actually want to change the system, you can't totally withdraw from it. You know, you could. There have been intentional communities that tried to totally withdraw from the system that I think they live pretty good lives. The Mennonite, some of the Amish people, I think are models in that regard in lots of ways, but they don't change the 02:06:00system because they've withdrawn from it. So if you're going to-- if you're going to try to change the system, you've got to interact with it. And that means you, you're going to be part of it to some degree.

Wood: Very interesting. That's enlightening.

Braxton: Thank you. Thank you.

Wood: One last question. Is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you would like to talk about?

Braxton: Oh. I'm trying to think. Well, I think, I think I alluded to this earlier, but you know, what I've come to a conclusion is, is that the war system and the system that has created the climate emergency that we live in and that has created all these class divisions, I think they're all part of the same 02:07:00thing. And so, you know, to me, you know, the labor movement is in some sense trying to end the class system, or that's what I would like it to do. Sometimes it just means give me a bigger piece of the pie in the system, but I'd like to see it more, have a bigger picture, and sometimes it does. And it turns out that the Pentagon is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. And so, so all of these things come together as, and what I hope is that we can come together as one movement, so that the environmentalists unite with the anti-war people, that unite with the labor movement of the Poor People's Campaign, that's happening now. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but Martin Luther King started a poor people's campaign in his last months and he was assassinated in the middle of it. And it's, it's now been revived. And they have four initial 02:08:00principles that they, that they unite around. One of them is ending racism, certainly something that King spoke about; the three giant triplets of: racism, poverty and militarism. And, of course, he was very gutsy in speaking out against the Vietnam War. And some people think the reason he got assassinated is because he wasn't just saying, hey, let's all be nice to each other and eat in the same restaurants. He started saying, We got to change this whole system. So he had those three principles. And the modern day Poor People's Campaign has added climate change. And so, you know, I, you know, my hopes are that those can all come together and we can really get to be the kind of society that I think I think all of us really want. I mean, I'm sure there's, obviously there's 02:09:00differences of how that should look. But those ideals, I think, are what really we all want, ultimately.

Wood: It's like a heightened level of intersectionality.

Braxton: Exactly. Exactly.

Wood: I lied. I have one more question. Your beautiful cat appeared on the interview, so we need to talk about her or him. What is. What is their name?

Braxton: We, she is female. And as far as I know, she identifies as female. And her name is Lola. And she belonged to our neighbors. And she, and she was an outdoor cat with them. She loves to be outdoors. And they at some point bought a farm and moved mostly to West Chester, actually outside somewhere in Chester County. And they, I think one of their daughters still lives down there. And now the cat was not getting as much attention as she was used to. And it turns out 02:10:00that she, she has some bloody ears, that it turns out she's allergic to mosquito bites and she gets bitten on the ears and then she scratches at it and makes it worse. We thought she was really being abused and we said to the people who were no longer really living there, Um, let's see if we can find a home for her. Well, we found one right here.

Wood: Well, thank you. And thank you for sitting with us through the interview.