It has provided grants to grassroots activist organizations around the country since its inception in 1967 as a result of the anti-war proclamation "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority".
[2]In addition to Chomsky and Lauter, others involved in the organization's early stages included novelist Mitchell Goodman,[3] novelist Hans Koning, poet Robert Lowell, writer Dwight Macdonald, leading lawyer for the Mobilization's Legal Defense Committee Ed de Grazia, poet Denise Levertov, and The Armies of the Night author Norman Mailer[2] In the days leading up to the march, the collective penned "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority," which was published in the October 12th, 1967 edition of The New York Review of Books.
[2][4] The manifesto was signed by hundreds including Mitchell Goodman, Marcus Raskin Henry Braun, Denise Levertov, Noam Chomsky, William Sloane Coffin, Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Dwight Macdonald, Allen Ginsberg, Barbara Guest, Wilbur H. Ferry, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
[5] Leaflets were circulated among sympathizers prior to the march detailing their intended action: WE ARE PLANNING AN ACT OF DIRECT CREATIVE RESISTANCE TO THE WAR AND THE DRAFT IN WASHINGTON ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20.
There we will present to the Attorney General the draft cards turned in locally by these groups on October 16 ... We will, in a clear, simple ceremony, make concrete our affirmation of support for these young men who are the spearhead of direct resistance to the war and all of its machinery.
... [Signed] Mitchell Goodman, Henry Braun, Denise Levertov, Noam Chomsky, William Sloane Coffin, Dwight Macdonald.
NOTE: Among the hundreds already committed to this action are Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer, Ashley Montagu, Arthur Waskow, and professors from most of the major colleges and universities in the East.
The organization continues to work to support the groups that are chopping down the pillars that prop up everything from militarism to capitalism, from racism to patriarchy, and the intersections that connect them all.