David Victor Harris (February 28, 1946 – February 6, 2023) was an American journalist and activist. After becoming an icon in the movement against the Vietnam War, organizing civil disobedience against military conscription and refusing his own orders to report for military duty, for which he was imprisoned for almost two years, Harris went on to a 50-year career as a distinguished journalist and author, reporting national and international stories. Early life and education Harris was born in Fresno, California, on February 28, 1946. His father, Clifton G. Harris Jr., was a lawyer specializing in real estate. His mother, Elaine Jensen Harris, was a housewife and devout Christian Scientist. His brother, Clifton G. Harris III, was 18 months older than Harris. The first of his family to settle in Fresno was his great-grandfather, Levi Barringer. His maternal grandfather, Daniel Jensen, was a master woodworker at the Fresno Planing Mill. His paternal grandfather, Clifton G. Harris Sr., ran a trunk line railroad that carried ore out of the Kennecott Copper mines in Magna, Utah until he retired and moved in across the street from David's home. David Harris and his brother both attended Fresno public schools. At Fresno High School, Harris was a football letterman, an honor student and a champion debater. Named Fresno High School "Boy of the Year" upon his graduation in 1963, Harris was admitted to Stanford University on scholarship and soon became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was elected student body president at Stanford in the spring of 1966. Draft resistance In 1967, Harris was one of those who founded The Resistance, an organization advocating civil disobedience against military conscription and against the war the conscription system fed. Through 1967 and 1968, The Resistance staged a series of public draft card returns—an action punishable by up to five years in prison—at which some ten thousand young men confronted the government with their disobedience and courted arrest. Harris himself was ordered to report for military service in January 1968 and refused. He was indicted almost immediately and charged with felony "disobedience of a lawful order of induction" and tried in federal court in San Francisco in May 1968. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, with the judge's admonition that "you may be right but you're going to be punished." After a year of unsuccessfully appealing his conviction, Harris was remanded to "the