From Resistance to Resurrection: Jeff Dietrich Recalls His Journey to the LACW

My life began with resistance. The day I refused induction into the U.S. Military, refused to murder, bayonet, maim or kill the enemies of my country was the day that received my life. With that decision, my refusal to kill, I died to my former life, and was re-born into the fulness of life.

I had run out of options, the U.S. government was trying to take my life, draft me, send me to Vietnam; my student deferment had run out, because I graduated; I tried to be a conscientious objector, but I was denied because I was Catholic; I tried to be a teacher, but the education courses were inane.

I was sitting in a dental chair thinking that I would get the braces on my teeth that would finally keep me out of the Army, when I made the decision that would ultimately define my entire life. I decided to resist the draft and refuse induction. I got my induction notice in March of 1970; I was 24 years old at the time.

I completed my physical, turned in my papers to the top sergeant at the desk, and he said, much to my surprise: “Dietrich, are you going to refuse induction?” And I said yes. Go over there and wait on the bench. After numerous young men had joined me on the bench another sergeant took us into a room and read us the oath of the Army and told us to step across the line to affirm our assent to the Oath. No one stepped across the line.

After all, the draft board was in San Francisco, a haven for peace loving hippies and draft resisters. He read the Oath a second time and no one stepped across the line. From that moment on I was a felon, a fugitive from justice, my aspirations of getting a well-paying job and living the American Dream had come to an end. As a felon I could not enter professional life; I could not be a lawyer, or a teacher or a doctor. I could not even be a barber with a felony on my record. My life had come to an end. My plans of living the comfortable, affluent American Dream, as my suburban parents had, collapsed.

‘Jesus Prayer Mantra’

So, I stuck out my thumb and hitch-hiked across the continent from California to New York with a Jack Kerouac On The Road kind of romanticism, in search of an alternative dream. In retrospect it was a kind of a quest, a quest to find a vision for my life.

While staying with friends in New York, I visited a bookstore where I encountered a book by Robert S. De Ropp called Beyond the Drug Experience which in retrospect saved my life. It explained several methods of meditation, because I had been reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger at the time. I choose the Jesus prayer quoted in the book: “Jesus Christ, son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner,” as my mantra.  You have lots of time while waiting on the road for rides and because I had also been reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha—as all good hippies did in 1970—a meditation on Buddhist ideals, I thought it would be better to recite the Jesus prayer than reciting the “snap crackle pop” Rice Crispies jingle in my head. So, I recited my “Jesus Prayer Mantra” while waiting on the side of the road for rides, when I was lonely, frightened or in awkward situations. What I did not know at the time, was this mantra was a secret, muffled cry to heaven for my very life.

I set out on my low budget quest to find my alternative dream by trying to buy the cheapest ticket possible to anywhere in Europe. At the time Icelandic Airlines was the cheapest, but they were not flying into Brussels as they usually did, so I bought a ticket to Iceland, thinking I would find a job on a fishing boat to Europe. After spending a week of hospitality in a commune of young students in Iceland, I finally sailed to Denmark.

Europe

When I arrived in Denmark, I was desolate, lonely, and cold, missing family and friends. I slept in abandoned trucks and railway cars when it rained, in open fields, behind shrubs, and under park benches when the weather turned nice. I woke up one morning in Spain to find myself in a city dump and on another morning with a donkey licking my face. I took the train to Marrakesh and smuggled hashish in an ornate Moroccan table, but I was still praying as I walked the dark and lonely back roads in Portugal with a flashlight in hand, visiting the spectacular Alhambra in Spain, and also spending freezing cold summer days in London parks and public libraries because I had sent my winter jacket back home.

I was still praying when I landed back in the U.S.

I fully expected to be arrested for draft refusal when I stepped off the plane from Europe but much to my surprise and relief (and luck) I was not arrested. I spent the night in Kennedy International Airport. While there I read my first English language newspapers in 6 months. I read about multiple murders, killings, beatings and the death of a solitary. hitchhiker. “Jesus Christ have mercy on me.” Though I was frightened by the brutality of my native land, I stuck out my thumb with more bluff and bravado than sensibleness. I had 5 dollars in my pocket, not wanting to wire home for money.

Peacemaker

I was still praying, when two days later I was on an offramp outside of St. Louis, Missouri; I still had the same 5 dollars in my pocket and a Volkswagen van picked me up: “We’re goin’ to a Peacemakers Conference,” they said, “You want to go?”

I thought to myself, well I have refused induction into the U.S. military, and I have refused to kill, so I guess I am a Peacemaker.

It could have been a rainbow, hippie, dope smoking gathering but instead it was a gathering of legitimate peacemakers who had served prison time for refusing induction into World War II; who had been beaten on Freedom Rides to the South, and protested every war and weapons system their country could devise.  They lived simply, refused to pay federal taxes for war, and they challenged my youthful disdain for seniors.

I was after all of the generation who thought that you could not trust anyone over thirty though some of the peacemakers were over fifty! I was misguided in my thinking because I had never been introduced to folks who had lived their entire lives in an ethical and righteous manner. Unbeknownst to me I was about to meet yet another group of young Catholic Workers who were about to change my life.

Though I grew up Catholic, was an altar boy, attended Catholic schools most of my life, I had never heard of Dorothy Day and her radical band of subversive Catholic Workers who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless and agitated for peace against the current war in Vietnam.

The young people from the Milwaukee Catholic Worker were coming from the trial of the Milwaukee 14, in which their founder, Mike Cullen, lead thirteen others in burning draft files. When I heard what they had done a light went on in my very soul. I thought that is what Jesus would be doing if he were alive today: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and BURNING DRAFT FILES!! All at once my political, anti-war, convictions came into alignment with my somewhat dormant, spiritual, Catholic convictions. It was an answer to prayer!

The L.A. Catholic Worker

I was silently praying when I got back to my home in Los Angeles, and I still had the same 5 dollars in my pocket and was contemplating continuing my epic journey, this time to Mexico, Central and South America

I was still praying when I visited my brother in county jail; upon completion of the visit, I walked outside the jail and encountered a blue and white laundry van with “House of Hospitality” painted in small letters on the side. If I had not refused induction, hitchhiked across the continent, traveled to Europe and Morocco, hitchhiked back across the continent, encountered the Catholic Worker outside St. Louis, Missouri, I would have walked right past the van, thinking they were selling coffee and donuts to the passersby. Instead, I knew that House of Hospitality was the Catholic Worker. I talked to the man handing out coffee and donuts to releasees from County Jail, learning that he was Jerry Fallon, a former priest associated with the newly founded Los Angeles Catholic Worker.

I was still praying when I hitchhiked to the location Jerry had given me, dressed in my rumpled cowboy hat and cowboy boots, with my hand tooled Moroccan purse on my shoulder and met Dan and Chris Delany, the founders of the newly formed Los Angeles Catholic Worker, Dan asked, “What have you been doing?” I responded taking a drag off my freshly, hand rolled Moroccan tobacco cigarette: “I been on the road, man.” I did not what to admit that I was something as mundane as a newly minted graduate of the Cal State University English Department.

No, I mean before that, after some stammering, I was forced to admit that I was just a boring English major. Whereupon I was promoted to editor of the yet to be published Catholic Agitator newspaper. It was an answer to prayer!

An Answer to Prayer

I was still praying as Dan and Chris left, in a somewhat acrimonious dispute, soon after I came.  Subsequently a group of long-haired, hippie, anarchist types joined me to form a community of Catholic Workers in Los Angeles. Not a very prestigious group of folks, but fortunately, I had the good sense to marry Catherine Morris, a former Catholic nun 12 years my senior, who was able to generate community. It was an answer to prayer.

For over 50 years we have created community on Skid Row in Los Angeles that has stood faithfully for the Gospel principles of justice and peace: we have thrown blood and oil on the steps of the Federal building, cut the fence around the nuclear test site in Nevada, and been arrested countless times. We have fed the multitudes of thousands of homeless people at our Hippie Kitchen; we have given out thousands of shoes, blankets, clothes, and tarps. We have lived simply, in our own home, with the poor and homeless and some of whom have even died with us, as we prayed with them in our hospice room. It was an answer to prayer.

We have influenced public policy, such that, Skid Row has become an Ellis Island, for the poor and homeless, with tents and tarps proliferating the sidewalks and streets proclaiming that the neo-liberal, capitalist system is broken. But this is not success as the world knows it. Christ remains crucified in the poor and homeless of Skid Row, as well as all the poor and homeless throughout the world fleeing war, famine, and climate change. In this vein, I invite you to practice RESURRECTION through RESISTICE.

In memory of Hiroshima Day, this year, my 90-year-old wife, Catherine, and I will celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary with a party at Vandenberg Airforce Base, which tests nuclear missiles; we will be arrested for trespassing as we cross the line.  As part of a 25-year campaign to close Vandenberg, we will, with joy and some apprehension, go to jail, resisting the neo-liberal, capitalist system that creates Skid Row homeless refugees throughout the world, finances wars in Ukraine, murders babies in Gaza, annihilates the planet and plots nuclear genocide. I invite you to join us in our PRACTICE OF RESURRECTION! It is an answer to prayer.

You can watch the awards ceremony in its entirety, including extended remarks from Jeff, here,