Draft Counseling 201

This presentation (held on March 8, 2026) at Joy Mennonite Church, 504 NE 16th St, Oklahoma City, OK 73104 is now available in recorded form from:

Drafting Counseling 201 - presented by James M. Branum and Edward Hasbrouck

This video can be viewed on Youtube or via Archive.org.

About this session

This class will continue where we left off from the Draft Counseling 101 class, so we strongly recommend watching the video first for that class.

Our 101 class focused on what draft counselors can do to be prepared for a future draft, while our 201 class will focus on what would happen if a draft is actually called, including the various decisions-points that those facing the draft have, as well as practical advice for presenting a claim before a draft board.

Course Materials

About the presenters

headshot of James M. Branum James M. Branum is an attorney in Oklahoma City who has practiced in the area of military defense law since 2006. He is a past co-chair (and current steering committee member) of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild and is the author of US Army AWOL: A Practice Guide and Formbook. In his legal activism work over the years, James has worked with the GI RIghts Hotline, the Center on Conscience and War, Veterans for Peace, and About Face Veterans Against War. He also been engaged in Interfaith work for many years and is currently an active member of Temple B’nai Israel, The Spinoza Havurah, and Joy Mennonite Church. More information about James' legal work can be found on his website: GIRightsLawyer.com

headshot of James M. Branum Edward Hasbrouck is the editor and publisher of Resisters.info, the most comprehensive non-governmental source of information about the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance in the USA. In the 1980s, he worked as an organizer with the National Resistance Committee and as co-editor of Resistance News, the national journal of draft resistance. As one of only 20 vocal nonregistrants prosecuted in the 1980s before the government abandoned enforcement of draft registration, he was convicted of willful refusal to present himself for and submit to registration with the Selective Service System, and served four and a half months in a Federal Prison Camp in 1983-1984. In 2019, he was the only draft resister invited to testify before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service at its hearings on the future of Selective Service. He is the recipient of a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for investigative reporting from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, and a Social Courage Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association “for exemplifying courage and honor in speaking truth to power”. His articles and op-eds about the draft and draft registration have been published in Waging Nonviolence, Antiwar.com, Responsible Statecraft, Peace Chronicle, Fifth Estate, Peoples World, On Watch, and the San Francisco Chronicle, in addition to his own Web site and blog. He is a member of the War Resisters League and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, and works as a consultant to a human rights project in San Francisco. As a person too old to be likely to be drafted, his continued work against age-based military conscription is an expression of his primary political identification as an older ally to young people in their struggle for youth liberation.