Mitchell Goodman

Mitchell Goodman (1923–1997) was an American writer, teacher, and activist. He is best known for his role in the Vietnam draft resistance movement, which drew the high-profile 1968 federal prosecution of the "Boston Five."

Mitchell Goodman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1923. His parents, Irving and Adele, were first and second generation Jewish immigrants and were well off until Irving lost his clothing store in the Great Depression. Goodman was given a scholarship to Harvard and was at college when the U.S. entered World War II. He was trained as a Second Lieutenant forward observer in an artillery battalion, but was not deployed overseas. He traveled to Europe following the war, where he met the poet Denise Levertov. The two were married in 1947 and continued lived briefly in France and Italy before moving to the U.S. to Greenwich Village in 1948. A son was born in 1949. These experiences informed his vivid 1961 anti-war novel "The End of It," which focuses on an American soldier's experience in the Italian campaign. The book received a positive reception from critics and prominent literary figures such as William Carlos Williams, and Norman Mailer.

In the mid 1960s Goodman and Levertov both became prominent in the anti-war movement.The two began by running paid advertisements in national publications with statements of protest signed by writers, artists and others. In March 1966, he was involved in organizing the Fifth Avenue Peace parade in New York City, in which an estimated 30,000 people took part. In March 1967 Goodman led a walkout during Vice President Hubert Humphrey's address at the National Book Awards, in which he shouted, "Vice President, we are burning women and children in Vietnam, and you and we are responsible!" The quote was carried in newspapers nationwide. Later that year, as described in the opening of Norman Mailer's book The Armies of the Night, Goodman helped organize the anti-Vietnam war demonstration at the Pentagon in October 1967, the first national protest against the war. As part of the planning for this event, he circulated a pamphlet stating:

"We are planning an act of direct creative resistance to the war and the draft in Washington on Friday, October 20... We will appear at the Justice Department together with 30 or 40 young men brought by us to Washington to represent the 24 Resistance groups from all over the country. There we will present to the Attorney General the draft cards turned in locally by these groups on October 16... We will, in a clear, simple ceremony, make concrete our affirmation of support for these young men who are the spearhead of direct resistance to the war and all of its machinery.... [Signed] Mitchell Goodman, Henry Braun, Denise Levertov, Noam Chomsky, William Sloane Coffin, Dwight Macdonald."

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