WEBVTT - Chapter 1: An Explosive Cauldron 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:01.920 So wanted me to start very simple in to sort 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:04.200 because you say your name and where you're from. 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:09.960 Oh, okay, my name's Paul Koming. I'm from Rochester, mass 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:13.520 originally great okay, so I made some of those nuts. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:14.000 So little. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:16.200 What did you want to talk about to start off 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:16.680 the end? 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:17.040 Oh? 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.119 Kind of my how it was. I came to be 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.520 the kind of person I was outspoken from a rather 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.720 quiet person because I never usually spoke out about much 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:27.640 of anything when I. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:28.040 Was a kid. 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:33.519 Two miles before you get to downtown Boston on the 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.159 Southeast Expressway, you pass a giant gas tank right at 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.320 the edge of Boston Harbor, covered in a rainbow of 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.839 colorful stripes. Seeing this gas tank means you're passing the 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.280 neighborhood of Dorchester, where much of our story takes place, 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.199 or at least where most of the characters seem to 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.520 have apartments. It's the largest neighborhood in Boston, making up 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.760 the southern half of the city. For a brief period 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.000 in the nineteen eighties, it had a bookstore and a 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:06.680 movie theater, but unfortunately they didn't last. It is perpetually 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:11.160 right on the verge of gentrifying, but fortunately it never does. 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.479 I'm your host. Brendan Patrick Hughes. I grew up there, 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.080 and so did Rose Kennedy, eighty percent of new kids 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:23.759 on the Block, John King, who does the Magic Wall 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:29.600 on CNN, and Iowa Debris from the Bear. Dorchester is 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.800 where Boston has its morning. The sun is too bright, 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:36.160 the wind is too strong, the trees never have leaves, 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:40.160 and describe crooked witch finger silhouettes against Newport meantal billboards 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.960 featuring laughing people who'd never set foot here, and they're 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:49.480 slush on the floor of Dunkin Donuts. Dorchester has four 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.720 subway stations, all on the Red Line, far more than 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.400 its share of break service and autobody shops, triple deckers, 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:01.720 package stores, burgeoning Vietnamese and Cape Verdean commune these African Americans, 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:07.800 Irish Catholics, and a long history of apartments full of activists, 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:16.960 Activists like Paul Komick. Paul was born in the salad 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:18.560 days of post World War two. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.880 I was born in forty eight. So the war ended, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.320 and there's a lot more opportunities there, and there's a 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:25.920 lot more hope in the nation as a whole. Dad 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.680 went a lot to what kind of person I became 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.440 you know, and I was quiet, but I was very 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:33.480 open to the things being hopeful. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.280 Okay, before I unleash all these accents on you. Something 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:39.440 that's always driven me crazy. When you see a movie 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.880 about Boston, there's always some character walking around being like kid. 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:46.880 If you see Tommy Sullivan at Doyle's, tell that chuckle, fuck, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:52.320 I need a ride back to Revere. These ridiculous accents. 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:54.920 We're not all hit in the package store for fat 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.920 mouth makys and scratch tickets. It's not really like that. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:03.160 I mean, I guess it is kind of sometimes a 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:07.160 little bit in some places. Yes, in Dorchester, certain pockets, 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.440 but there's also everything else. Everyone I grew up with 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:17.240 became a teacher who worked in a nonprofit nonprofit. The 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.919 point being the image of Boston in the American imagination 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:26.480 is incomplete, but I will say there is something strange 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.840 about the city and the overly colorful people it relentlessly produces. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.680 Take that giant gas tank with the colorful stripes out 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.040 on ninety three. You can't miss it. It's a huge, 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:41.840 kind of half of a pill capsule dome top cylinder 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:46.640 tank thing, fourteen stories tall in brilliant blazing white with 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:51.000 these incredibly dramatic hand painted splashes in rainbow colors running 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.160 over the top. And it turns out it has a name, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.960 Rainbow Swash. It was created in nineteen seventy one by 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.120 Sister Karita Kent, and when it was painted, it was 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:07.440 the world's largest copyrighted piece of art. Sister Kurita was 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:11.160 a peace activist, a Roman Catholic nun, and a prolific 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:15.280 abstract painter. In nineteen seventy one, she was commissioned to 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.599 brighten up this giant industrial behemoth of a gas tank 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:21.679 that would block the view of the harbor for miles around. 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:27.680 Like some Catholics, she strongly opposed the war in Vietnam, 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:31.039 and she would later deny that she had secretly painted 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.440 Ho Chi Min's profile into the left side of the 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:38.400 blue stripe as a protest and at the risk of 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:41.320 conveying too cute a metaphor too early in a podcast, 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.159 There's something I really love about Dorchester's largest monument being 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:54.279 an explosive cauldron of colorful subversion. This is divine intervention. 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.560 This is a story about radical nuns and combat boots 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.520 and wild haired priests trading blows with j Edgar Hoover's 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.440 FBI in a hell bent effort to sabotage a war. 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:12.520 It's got heist's tragedy, a trial of the century, and 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:20.039 the god damnedest love story you've ever heard. When Paul 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.400 was growing up, his family had a strong tradition of 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.120 caring for the welfare of people you didn't know. Beginning 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:27.880 with his grandmother. 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.760 She went overboard. No matter who came to the back door, 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.559 people would come, She'd always have it open and serve 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:34.520 them sup. 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:37.320 Their strongest beliefe. 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.520 Were to help other people. My father worked as a 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.960 janitor in a housing project at Columbia Point. He's saw 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.280 it as a pleasure to serve the poor. He's sorry 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.520 as a Christian honor to be able to do that. 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:54.840 Like many Catholics of the fifties and sixties, the church 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.279 was the centripetal force in their lives. 0:05:57.400 --> 0:05:59.440 One of the things about living right next to the 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.320 church that we open up our kitchen to anybody from 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.120 the church who want to come over, and we had 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.599 this big urn of coffee, and we'd have coffee and 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.720 donuts for anybody that wanted to command. And they used 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:13.920 to be a crowd of twenty twenty five people who 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.400 would come over every Sunday after the church, and that 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.640 would be the more progressive wing of the parishioners. 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:23.000 Paul grew up in the Franklin Hill housing projects near 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:23.840 Bluehill Avenue. 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:26.320 I was very much going to join the Marines and 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:27.600 fight for freedom. 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:29.760 I was religiously. 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:32.640 I would always put the American flag out. 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.320 By the time he was in his early twenties, the 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:41.200 Vietnam War had hit Dorchester hard. A mile north of 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.880 the gas tank on Morrisey Boulevard, a memorial stands for 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:49.200 the eighty Dorchester servicemen that were killed in Vietnam in 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.440 our neighborhood. By nineteen seventy one, the once innocuous act 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.360 of checking your mailbox had become a game of Russian 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.680 Roulette for mothers and sons from Ashmont to Savin Hill 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.480 for going on seven years, and more draft notices were 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:08.320 landing in Dorchester mailboxes than in the wealthy suburbs surrounding Boston, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.760 whisking young men to what felt like certain death in 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:16.640 an unfamiliar hemisphere. And sure enough, every few months for 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.800 the last five years, another body bag had landed at 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.520 Logan on its way to another devastated Dorchester family, and 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.960 those families, like families all across America, were watching a 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.760 war broadcast on their TV screens for the first time 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:33.400 in history. 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:35.320 Casualty figures to a new high. 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.640 Every night Americans received horrifying images of the government's vain 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.960 attempt to pound a tiny agrarian nation into submission. And 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.640 as these nights drew on into weeks and months and years, 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.920 and as veterans came home and broken states of sorrow, 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:58.160 Americans like Paul began to wonder why the hell are 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:04.520 we doing this? And the funny thing is, if Paul 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.600 hadn't grown up Catholic, he might never have ended up 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.480 resisting the war and wanted by the FBI, which is 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:15.560 particularly strange because Catholics are known for their love of authority, 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:19.640 so much so that j Edgar Hoover, then the director 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:23.480 of the FBI, would regularly recruit new agents from Catholic 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:27.840 universities like Notre Dame in Boston College. Yet when Paul 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.960 found himself progressing from finding the war troubling to feeling 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:37.120 genuine dissent to finally committing active forms of resistance, there 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:41.480 were other young Catholics ready to welcome him in the movement. 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.400 Paul would eventually become known as Little Big Man, owing 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.319 to the combination of his height and his utter disregard 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:52.400 for his own safety. And in nineteen seventy one, as 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.120 Rainbow Swash was being painted onto the gas tank, Paul 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.679 was on the run from the FBI, and he was 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.400 hiding out and he already very full Dorchester apartment of 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:06.360 a young woman named mary Anne. 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:11.680 Paul comes to Florida Street with me and Sarah and 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:12.319 the kids. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.640 If it's five am in Dorchester, where she still lives 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.360 with Prince by sister Careita hanging in her pantry. Mary 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.840 Anne is sitting in her living room reading books about 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.600 spirituality and leadership. In January of nineteen seventy one, however, 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.520 she had just left her first husband and was living 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.800 on welfare with her best friend Sarah and her two children, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.120 Chrissy and Jojo. Chrissy was four. 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.320 Paul, I remember, like I thought Paul was mine, Like 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.280 I thought he was like my friend, so funny, so 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:48.600 fun the most outrageous laugh. I can't even describe to 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.120 you how bizarre his laugh was. 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:59.040 Paul's laughs. Okay, that brings up an important point and 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:01.240 we have to stop ever everything right here and get 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.400 something out of the way. I listen to serious podcasts 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.400 all the time. I listened to NPR. I know how 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.600 this is supposed to go. I put my mouth really 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:16.080 close to an expensive microphone and speak softly, with hushed 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:21.560 patrician enthusiasm about lofty things. But it's really hard to 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.040 do that if you're talking about Irish Catholics, especially if 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:29.240 culturally you are one as well. I'm not per se Catholic, 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:32.199 but every single one of my ancestors was, going back 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.280 to the fifth century. I won't insert myself much in 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.160 this story, but very quickly, half of my family is 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:41.960 from Scranton, the other half is from Dorchester. So you 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:44.199 know the whole Joe Biden thing they used to make 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.480 fun of him for about being too close and hugging 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.360 people and stuff like that. That makes perfect sense to me. 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.760 When I went to my grandfather's wake in Scranton, I 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:56.800 could barely hear myself think over the backslapping. And I 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.319 will do my best to deliver for you a serious 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:03.600 podcast where yes, everything is thoughtful and considered and pairs 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:05.960 well with a gluten free brand muffin and the Sunday 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.280 New York Times. But I grew up knowing all these people, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.320 and it's important for you to understand that. Throughout every 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.320 ordeal I'm about to share with you, they all roared 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.480 with laughter and slapped each other's backs and grabbed each 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.280 other's cheeks, and they were thrilled to see each other 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.880 and yelled their greetings too loud. For instance, here's Marianne 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.800 again on speakerphone, talking about her friendship with her roommate, Sarah. 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.840 You have no idea how I wish, Oh my god, 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:38.720 because we were both really funny. I mean we would 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.680 scream laughing, scream laughing. I remember one time we're walking 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.240 down to the Newman Center and we're laughing so damn hard. 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:51.920 We're like like literally bending over, and Mike Hunt yelled. 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:52.280 On the street. 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.000 Do you two know wars going on? 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.440 Legend has it? Sigmund Freud once said of the Irish 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.320 that they are the the only people in the world 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:06.000 completely impenetrable to psychoanalysis. So with that caveat out of 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:07.920 the way, that this is going to be a fucking 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:13.720 mess because Catholics are involved, let's continue with Chrissy describing Paul. 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.600 And I remember like everybody whenever he would let would 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.040 stop whatever they were doing, like in a restaurant or 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:21.920 at the Paula Center, or just like walking down the street. 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.760 He just was special. He was really special and small 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:27.080 and elfin and always had rosy cheeks. 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.440 So why did sweet little Paul, he of the world's 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.000 most wholesome upbringing, have to go under ground in the 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.760 first place? And by that I mean hide from the 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.360 FBI by moving into a one bedroom apartment that already 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:40.240 had four people in it. 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.440 Paul Koombing had signed up as a conscientious objector. 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.160 This is Anne Walsh, who at the time was a 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.679 nun living on Claiborne Street in Dorchester. In those days, 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:52.200 she was known as pretty h core and was often 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.480 seen wearing combat boots and rocking up Pat bennetts ar haircut. 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.920 She had just rebelled against her mother's superior and was 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.480 in the midst of starting a renegade order of nuns 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:06.280 in Dorchester. When Anne met Paul, he'd already gone before 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:10.160 the Selective Service Board and been given conscientious objector status. 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.040 This was a rare designation, reserved for someone who could 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.160 not fight in a war on religious grounds. 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.680 They grilled me on whether I would defend my mother 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.079 she was being attacked on the street. I said, I 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.080 would do everything in my power to stop that from happening, 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.040 but I would not kill the person trying to do it. 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.840 If you're granted conscientious objector status, you still have to 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.800 perform some sort of alternative service during the time you 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:35.880 would have been in the army. 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:40.280 And he was assigned for alternative service to be an 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.240 orderly at the Newton Wellesley Hospital. 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.520 But Newton and Wellesley are fancy suburbs full of rich people, 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:48.440 and it's hard to get to on the tee. 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.040 And this is Paul Combing grew up in Dorchester between 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.880 the Franklin Hill Project and Saint Leo's Parish, and so 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.400 he said, you know, I'll go to City Hospital if 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.520 you want, where poor people would be served. But I'm 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.040 sure I'm not going to go to Wellesley. So they said, no, 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:05.480 you're going to go to Wellesley. You don't get any choice. 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.200 So Paul never showed up in Newton, which people in 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:12.040 Dorchester call Snewton, and in doing so forfeited his sought 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:15.800 after CEO status. And then he took it one step further. 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:18.160 Filar at the time said that you had to carry 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.600 your classification card and your registration card on your person 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:24.080 at all times if you were over the age of eighteen. 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.920 Not satisfied with merely flouting his orderly assignment, Paul wanted 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.400 to make sure he was in direct violation of federal law. 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:33.960 I took my cards and put him in an envelope 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:36.400 and mailed them back to the Draft for telling them 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.720 to do was against my religion to continue to hold 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.160 these cards to participate in the draft. So I sent 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.240 them back with the statements similar to that, and they 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:45.800 kept them. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.720 He was basically jumping up and down and waving his arms, 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.200 yelling at the government to come get him, and sure enough, 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.280 the long arm of the law eventually did. 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.600 A few years later, they charged me with not having 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.000 them on person. Yeah, I got a summons from the 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.000 court that I was being charged with three counts of 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:07.840 violation of Select Service Act. 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.680 Paul was facing fifteen years for not carrying his draft 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:12.720 papers on his person. 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.840 They knew I didn't have mommy, because they had them 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:15.600 in their hands. 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.760 As you can imagine, he found this pretty depressing. 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:20.440 I was just going to end up going to jail 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:22.280 for a while, and I was really just bummed out 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:23.440 about the whole process. 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:25.000 He started looking at every option. 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.040 My brothers all three years I mentioned were in the service. 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.120 We're all trying to convince me to go to Canada. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.840 But Paul knew he only had one choice to stand 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:38.960 up to the government when he knew it was wrong, 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:42.920 because sometimes the only way to be a good citizen 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:49.440 is to do something illegal. Then a Kakamami idea developed 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.440 among the Catholic activists in the Dorchester Resistance. 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.800 There was some tauk Mary Anne amongst the community Claiborne Street. 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.120 Kind of action around on my refusing to carry my 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:03.800 draft cards in my trial. 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:08.720 That Paul wanted to take this action that he wasn't going. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.120 To show up for Corey Ann Walsh grabbed me by 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.000 the call of one day and said, look, I want 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:14.640 you to go down to the Poula Center. I want 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:15.600 you to meet some people. 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:18.960 The Paulist Center was a church in downtown Boston that 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:21.400 was beginning to make a name for itself as a 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.680 hotbed for a very new kind of youthful Catholic unrest. 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.720 And talk to them about your situation. 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:29.000 I don't know who came up. 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:29.480 With the idea. 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:30.280 Anne Walsh. 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:31.920 What we came up with this idea. 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:36.360 We were hoping that the Paulist Center community would put 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:37.480 Paul in sanctuary. 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:41.360 Sanctuary meaning Paul would turn himself over to the authority 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.960 of the religious leaders inside a church instead of federal 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.840 law enforcement. The Catholic Church had adopted this practice at 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:53.320 the First Council of Orleans in five eleven AD for thieves, adulterers, 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.640 and fugitive slaves to seek refuge in churches from capital 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.840 punishment until an oath was sworn to do them no harm. 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.640 But it had long since been abandoned. 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.520 So the question was could they find a Catholic church 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:10.480 in which to take sanctuary. So Anne Walsh approached an 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:12.320 Tobin at the Paula Center. 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.560 So now we have an Ann, an Ann, and a Marianne. 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.320 This is, as I warned you, a story about Catholics. 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.679 Here's an Tobin who everyone called Tobin. 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:24.639 I would meet people and they would say, oh, what 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.120 are you studying. I'd say, oh, theology, and they oh, 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.359 geology or isn't that interesting? 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.160 I say no not. Rocks Tobin was diminutive like Paul. 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:36.200 She had a master's degree in theology and its great 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:40.600 at keeping housecats. Alive well into their twenties. Tobin had 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:45.040 recently and controversially been named female lay minister at the 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.480 Poula Center. Once she got a call from Anne Walsh. 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.439 And she called me one day and said, could you 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.280 come and meet me. I have somebody I want to 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.760 introduce you to and we want to discuss something with you. 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:01.480 That night, Anne Walsh, Paul Cooming and a Tobin met 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.200 at a Peter Pan restaurant near Boston University. 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.040 She had this young man with her. She introduced me 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.320 to him and she said, this is Paul Cooming. He's 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.200 been drafted and he's not going to go. He's going 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:17.440 to resist. And she said, we want to know if 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.640 we could have a sanctuary at the Paula Center. And 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:27.880 I said, well, yeah, sure, why not? And she said, 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.960 well clearly, she said, you don't know much about sanctuaries. 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.119 She said, there have been several sanctuaries in Boston and 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:39.760 they have been very violent situations because of the police 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:42.680 in the National Guard, and so she gave me an example. 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.760 Anne Walsh then explained to Tobin that there had recently been 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.040 a sanctuary at a Protestant church across Boston Common from 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.679 the Paulist Center. Here's how Tobin and Paul remembered it. 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:57.080 Federal marshalls broke into the chapel and beat people up, 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.119 and people were hurt, and there was a lot of 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.000 damage done to the Arching Street. Church. 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.159 Police had gone in a riker and smashed heads with 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.720 billy clubs and drag the soldiers that were a wall 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.280 basically out into the street and the rest. And there's 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:13.160 a lot of injuries. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:18.359 Is it all? I see? Well, that's okay. 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:20.879 We'll do it anyway, you know, we'll do it. 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:21.800 We'll figure it out. 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.600 The thinking was that maybe in a Catholic town like Boston, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.800 where the police force was filled with Irish Catholics just 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.919 like them, they could avoid a visit from the goon squad. 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.920 The sanctity of the Catholic church was just a much 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:40.320 more really you know, chose of prejudice against other religions, 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.160 I guess, but it was much more secure than any 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:44.800 other church that would offered. 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.400 Or at least the action would create a pr nightmare 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:48.280 for the authorities. 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.320 We felt that for sure the FBI would want to 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.520 try to stop me from going into the church, rather 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:55.280 than having to dragged me out of the church. 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.159 But their other problem was that this would put the 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:02.200 Police Center at odds with the Catholic Church at large, and. 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.360 A Catholic Church had not done that during the Vietnam 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.040 Antaiwan movement as far as I know at that time, because. 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.160 It really a Catholic Church had never had a sanctuary 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.320 for a conscientious subjector ever in the history of the 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.720 Catholic Church ever anywhere in the world before. It was 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:19.280 a first, like all through World War Two, no nothing, zero, zippo. 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.879 It won't generally sound like it because a lot of 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:23.560 what I'm going to tell you is hard to believe. 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:26.679 But this show is in fact fact checked and we 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.879 found nothing to disprove this claim. In fact, there hadn't 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.040 been any instance of political sanctuary in a Catholic Church 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:38.320 since the sixteenth century, and for that matter, the American 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.800 Catholic bishops, led by Cardinal Spelman of New York, were 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:46.240 staunch supporters of the war in Vietnam. But Tobin's church, 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.879 the Polish Center, was a huge flagship chapel for the 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.399 Order of the Polish Fathers. It was the perfect place 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.560 for this crazy scheme because it had just fallen into 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.080 the hands of two young priests who had transformed it 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:06.320 into a headquarters of do gooding and hell raising. The 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.359 police Center sits right below the Golden Dome of the 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.600 State House at number five Park Street, smack in the 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.399 middle of downtown Boston. Park Street is the shortest side 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.720 of the confusingly five sided Boston Common, and it's where 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.640 you'll find two sets of red double doors that mark 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:26.280 the entrance to the Paulis Center Chapel. It was dedicated 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.840 in nineteen fifty seven, but because of anti Catholic prejudice 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:32.359 in Boston at the time, Cardinal Cushing had to have 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:34.959 a Protestant friend by the building and then turn it 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.600 over to the Polists. The Polices are one of many 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:42.080 orders in the Catholic Church, like the Jesuits, the Benedictines, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.680 the Josephites, and the Dominicans. They were the first order 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.480 formed in the United States, and they have a uniquely 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:52.560 American focus. The mission of the Polis is outreach to 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:53.520 non Catholic. 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.080 I remember being overjoyed that I was assigned to Boston. 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.919 That's Jim Carroll, who at the time was a Polis 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.160 priest working at BA You with Anne Walsh. He's also 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.000 the author of several books, including Practicing Catholic Prince of 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.679 Peace and an American Requiem God, My Father and the 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:12.720 War that Came Between Us, which won the National Book Award. 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:16.080 And I was assigned to Boston University, which also pleased me. 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.160