A Society of Brotherhood: Rhetoric for Resistance

Abstract

One of the many protest movements that occurred in the United States during the 1960s was the Anti-War Movement. It was lead by people such as former Stanford Student Body President David Harris, who objected to the Vietnam War, and specifically the draft. Throughout his time in the Anti-War Movement, Harris formed The Resistance, an anti-draft organization; planned mass protests; and spoke in favor of civil disobedience. This study takes a rhetorical approach in examining David Harris’s call to action in a speech he delivered at the University of California, Berkeley on November 9, 1968. In his speech, Harris employs constitutive rhetoric to create a base on which to make his public moral argument for draft resistance centered on the rehumanization of the Vietnamese people.