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David Dellinger

David Dellinger (22 August 1915-25 May 2004) was an American pacifist activist who was famously among the "Chicago Seven", who were put on trial in 1969 for participating in the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago.

Biography[]

David Dellinger was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts in 1915 to a wealthy family, and he went to seminary at Columbia University with the intention of becoming a Congregationalist minister. However, during the Great Depression, he rejected his wealthy upbringing to live with hobos, and he volunteered as an ambulance driver during the Spanish Civil War, leaving him with a lifelong distrust of big businesses and their roles in fueling wars, and motivating him to become a pacifist. During World War II, he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector and anti-war agitator, and, while in prison, he protested racial segregation in the dining halls, which were ultimately integrated because of the protests. Dellinger went on to serve on the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America until 1943, and he became involved with several anti-war movements such as the War Resisters League. In 1951, he participated in a Paris-to-Moscow bicycle trip for disarmament, and he joined several freedom marches in the American South during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-1960s. In 1956, he founded the Liberation magazime as a forum for the non-Marxist left, befriending Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King Jr., Abbie Hoffman, James Bevel, and Fred Hampton, among other prominent left-wing activists. In 1966, Dellinger traveled to both North Vietnam and South Vietnam to learn about the impact of American bombing during the Vietnam War, and critics ignored his trip to Saigon in favor of criticizing his trip to Hanoi. He participated in the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, for which he was arrested and charged with conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot. On 18 February 1970, he was acquitted of conspiracy but convicted of inciting a riot; two years later, the convictions were overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1996, he was arrested while participating in a sit-in at Chicago's Federal Building while protesting another Democratic National Convention, and, in 2001, he protested against the creation of a free trade zone between Canada and America. He died in Montpelier, Vermont in 2004.

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