the anthem more than a century ago on the deck of a British ship in this same harbor. Just around the corner was the famous Fort McHenry which, since it was after seven p. m. would soon be bathed in “the twilight's last gleaming.” School employees. Several teenagers, a doctor, a draft resister about to go to jail, a peace worker, a college student- we all wanted the United States to end its support of the Pakistani military dictatorship.
“You're violating harbor regulations by blocking a shipping lane,” came a more impatient bullhorn voice. “You'll be arrested if you don't get out of the way.”
A large white yacht, loaded with reporters and television cameras, roared up. A smaller inboard, steered by a television reporter with her camera crew in the back, sped in for a closer look. A second police boat closed in and two Coast Guard thirtyfooters edged between us and the Padma, which had now moved to within 200 yards. The freighter's horn let loose a deafening blast and its tugboats added some piercing whistles of their own.
When a voice said, “0. K., arrest'em,” we knew that we wouldn't be able to accomplish the goal, but we kept threading our way between the boats, shouting things like; “We appeal to you to help prevent the death of millions of Pakistanis.” Skillful Coast Guard piloting and the use of grappling hooks, however, soon had all of us loaded aboard the larger boats.
A city policeman politely but firmly escorted us into the front cabin of one of the craft, and we watched the Padma, now towering above us, slip into Pier8. In the hot and crowded cabin, our only consolation came from the young Coast Guard steersman, who leaned over to whisper, “We have to do this job, but we're with you 100 per cent. You're doing the right thing.” Soon we found ourselves in the Baltimore city jail, sharing narrow wooden bunks and reflecting on how we had gotten into this situation.
Many of us had spent the spring and early summer of 1971 working with peace activities in the Philadelphia area to help form a new organization called “The Movement for a New Society” (MNS). It is similar to the “New American Movement,” recently described in these pages (Jeremy Rifkin, “The Red, White, and Blue Left,” The Progressive. November, 1971), but with a more explicit emphasis on the role of nonviolent direct action in building a movement for fundamental change in the United States.
One MNS effort was a small study-action team called the “Overseas Impact Group,” whose members tried to understand the actual effect on other nations of U.S. Government policies and business relationships. Toward the middle of the summer we began reading newspaper accounts of massacres in East Pakistan and the large-scale exodus of refugees into India. Knowing almost nothing about Pakistan, we began to study the country and the role of the United States in its development.
A popular American college text (Loucks and whiteby's comparative Economic Systems. Harper, 1969) describes Pakistan as “one of the primary capitalist countries of the world,” praises its “democratic political system,” and concludes that its economic development has been “remarkably successful.” Other accounts, however, showed
