MEDIA RELEASES

Dominican University will host a discussion on Thursday, October 25 by Tom Melville and George Mische, long-time activists in the struggle for peace and justice and participants in the Catonsville 9 anti-Vietnam War protest in 1968. During their lecture, they will examine U.S. interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East and Iraq. The program will be held at 2:30 p.m. in Lewis Lounge, Lewis Hall, 7900 W. Division St.

Melville and Mische were members of the Catonsville 9, a group of Catholics who burned draft files in Catonsville, MD in 1968. All nine members were sentenced to federal prison for their actions; Melville served 18 months in prison and Mische served 25 months. Their actions were chronicled in Daniel Berrigan’s play, “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” which was most recently performed in August at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles starring Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen, Mike Farrell, Beau Bridges, Leiv Schreiber, Keith Carradine, Anthony Zerbe, Camryn Manheim and Sandra Oh.

Melville was ordained as a Maryknoll priest and sent to Guatemala in 1957, where he worked in economic development and land distribution programs. In 1967 he and a number of other Maryknollers were expelled from Guatemala for their opposition to U.S. policies supporting acts of violence against Guatemalans. His most recent book, Through A Glass Darkly: The U.S. Holocaust in Central America, chronicles what he believes was a U.S.-supported program of terrorism resulting in the deaths of over 300,000 lives in Central America since the Eisenhower administration.

Mische was recruited by the Kennedy administration after graduating from college and sent to Central America. He resigned from the organization during the Johnson administration because of what he believed was the administration’s support of military interventions in democratic governments in Latin America. After he was released from prison following the Catonsville 9 trial, he established a nonprofit legal justice/prison reform organization that investigated federal and state prison systems. He is currently working on a book about the history of the Catholic peace movement since the Vietnam War.

For more information on this free program, contact Sara O’Malley Bligh, director of university ministry, at (708) 524-6684.