Resistance Radio: Sworn to Refuse

Sworn to Refuse is a non-partisan project with the objective to remind all public officials who take an oath of what that oath represents, as well as their responsibility to refuse to obey or carry out any directive and order which they, in good faith, believe contradicts the oath they’ve taken.

Matt Nicodemus of StR says that he would like to see the movement, which started in Boulder, progress to a national scale.

“When the idea came to me, it was still during the presidential campaign of 2015, 2016 and it was very clear that Donald Trump envisioned a government where he was able to give orders and people would follow them, and they would do things that could very well be rights violating, illegal, unconstitutional. Specifically when he started talking about the U.S. returning to torture against suspected terrorists, when he suggested that maybe we should kill the families of terrorists, and when he said ‘well, we should have taken the oil from Iraq’. Within about a week, heads of the military, the joint chiefs of staff, and national security leaders came out and strongly said ‘if we were ordered to do that, we would not do it’. And that was just a wonderful demonstration of the kind of thing we’re looking for. The core concept here is that things don’t happen in the government unless people who have been asked to do them carry them out.”

Nicodemus and colleagues plan on speaking about Sworn to Refuse and introducing their proposed resolution at both Tuesday’s Boulder County Board of Commissioners meeting and the Boulder City Council’s meeting the same evening.  They also have plans to introduce the resolution at the state legislature.

Sworn to Refuse can be contacted through their facebook page or by emailing [email protected].