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Remembering the Minute Man (paramilitary) attack 50
years ago on the Voluntown CT farmhouse home of non-
violent peace activists
By mickielynn on 2018-08-01 11:58:53
This is a guest post by Steve Trimm, who was a member of the New England Committee for Non
Violent Action in 1968.
[caption id="attachment_11464" align="alignnone" width="724"]
Voluntown
Farmhouse, home of the New England Committee for Non Violent Action. {Undated photo)[/caption] After midnight on
August 24th.,1968, a man dressed in hunter's camouflage, wearing a ski mask and carrying a bayonet-tipped rifle walked
into a farm house outside the eastern Connecticut village of Voluntown. He found two women, Donna and Mary, chatting in
the living room. The invader quickly placed them side-by-side on a couch, tied them up and blindfolded them. A minute
later, Donna and Mary smelled gasoline. The armed man was a member of a right wing paramilitary group called The
Minute Men. Outside the building were other armed vigilantes. They assumed that most of the farm residents were asleep on
the upper two floors of the farm house. The mission of the would-be snipers: Shoot down anyone running from the fire their
leader was about to start. The people designated as targets were pacifists who had been actively protesting the Vietnam War.
They were followers of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The farm house was home to their organization, the New England
Committee For Nonviolent Action. It would eventually become clear that the raiders believed pacifism was the same thing as
Communism. It would also become clear that they had no knowledge of American history and, although they claimed to be
defenders of the Constitution, had no idea what the Constitution contained and safeguarded. The rights of free speech and
peaceable assembly were lost on them. The vigilantes had been told by propagandists that the pacifists were so anti-
American and unforgivably unpatriotic that they deserved death. Outside the house, gun shots. Then, inside the house, the
sound of running feet. Donna and Mary could see nothing, but the loud noise and cursing told them men were grappling
right in front of them. The Connecticut State Police, warned about the raid, had hidden officers around the farm perimeter,
intending to intercept the attackers. But somehow, in the darkness, the Minute Men got by them. When the troopers realized
this, they sent up flares. The flares floated to earth beneath little parachutes. Darkness became bright as day. An instant later,
the troopers opened fire. What Donna and Mary were hearing was a State Trooper and a vigilante wrestling for control of a
rifle. The weapon was knocked out of someone's hands and, when it hit the floor, it discharged. The blast hit Donna in the
thigh. She toppled across Mary's lap. The angle of the shot was such that Donna's blood splashed against the wall behind the
couch and splattered up to the ceiling. The raider was subdued and arrested. So were his comrades outside. But the firefight
took several minutes, with no one quite sure who was shooting at whom. When it was over, Donna was rushed to the
Norwich Hospital. And so was one of the attackers, shot in the face by birdshot and now blind. In the days that followed, the
pacifists visited Donna in the hospital. And, when they learned that the blinded vigilante was handcuffed to a bed down the
hall, they wanted to visit him, too. From the peace activists' perspective, both Donna and the raider were victims of violence.
Both were suffering and both deserved to be comforted. The raider was under 24-hour police guard. How the pacifists talked
their way in to see him is a mystery, but they did it. When they asked the blinded man if there was anything they could do
for him, he said there was. He wished they would read to him. And so they did. The farm folk were never sure the blind man
truly understood who they were. But by the time he was transferred to a prison hospital, they hoped he understood that they
truly cared about him. A State Police car was parked in front of the farm house, around the clock, for the next 2 weeks. The
pacifists would bring coffee and snacks to the troopers and gab with them. Several times they asked the officers " Why didn't
you tell us what the Minute Men were planning? " The troopers' reply was always the same: " /f we'd told you, you'd have
done something foolish. Like trying to talk to them. "The troopers were correct. Believers in nonviolence take it as an article
of faith that words are always better than bullets. (But they will never accept the proposition that talk is foolish. ) Those
who live the nonviolent life hold several views that are unconventional. For instance, they regard prisons as violence
institutionalized. And they say that being locked up in such places can never do anybody any good. Where the Minute Men
were concerned, the Voluntown pacifists thought that psychiatric care might be in order. By definition, they said, anyone
willing to commit murder must be mentally ill. Their anti-prison values were so strong, the farmers would not testify in
court against their attackers. The raiders would be imprisoned, but the pacifists did not cooperate in sending them away.
What of the raid's aftermath? There were physical wounds, some of which healed and some of which didn't. There were
psychological wounds and PTSD, the effects of which diminished over time. Or didn't. For Donna and her 8 year-old son
and 6 year-old daughter, who were at the farm that night, the nightmares never entirely disappeared. Mary, too, had a hard
road. The moment she could get Donna's children away from the farm, she did. And looked after them until Donna could
leave the hospital. Which is to say, Mary put off dealing with her own trauma until Donna's family was reunited. Then she
fell apart. And never put herself completely back together. 40 years after the raid, she burst into tears remembering it.
Observations and lessons from the raid? The bad news first: There are more guns in circulation today than 50 years ago.
And many of those weapons are more powerful than anything carried by the attackers and police at Voluntown. As well, the
sources of propaganda have increased ten thousand fold since 1968. It is much harder, therefore, to resist being infected by
the poison of lies and the contrived reasons for fear and hatred. The good news: The ability absorb new information is
real and, with it, to change one's mind. Narrow minds can be opened. Just as important and real is the human being's
capacity to consciously refuse to hate and to practice the supremely human art and blessing of forgiveness. By the turn of the
21st. Century, the New England Committee For Nonviolent Action was history and the pacifists' Voluntown property had
been inherited by a new generation of activists. They were as dedicated to social change as their predecessors had been, did
more organic gardening than the old timers ever had, and didn't quite grasp what had happened in 1968. But to honor the
past as they understood it, they refrained from plastering and painting over the bullet holes in the room where Donna had
been shot. [caption id="attachment_ 11466" align="alignnone" width="600"]
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2000, a woman knocked on the farm house door. She asked if there was anyone now living at the farm who had been there
in '68. When told no, she made a request. If any of the old farmers got in touch, she asked the new farmers to tell them that
she was the sister of one of the raiders. Her brother was begging, through her, for the pacifists to forgive him for what he'd
done. He had never been able to forgive himself. In 1968 Steve Trimm was 20 years old and had been with the
NECNVA for over a year. He was not at the farm the night of the attack. He was away protesting the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia, which had occurred on August 20th.
