.....“these actions made an important contribution to public knowledge about the U. S. role in Pakistan. They also provided an example of how ordinary citizens can move beyond a sense of helplessness and into meaningful action...”
Without the slightest hesitation he replied: “If I know in my heart that the money I am earning is blood money, then I don't want to have anything to do with it,” and he piled back into his car and drove off.
Not a single longshoreman crossed the picket line, either then or during the next twenty-eight hours, during which time a continuous day and night demonstration was organized. Fewer and fewer longshoremen responded to the shipping company's repeated calls for work crews, and the next after no on the Al Ahmadi sailed away, leaving more than a thousand tons of equipment on the dock.
Apparently, this action completely closed the port of Philadelphia to Pakistani shops, for later the Direct Action Committee received calls from a manufacturer and a lawyer, asking that the action be stopped so that they could make shipments to Pakistan. A group in Boston also organized a nonviolent fleet and discouraged a scheduled Pakistani ship from using the harbor.
In October, we built eight replicas of sewer pipes (similar to those used for housing by Bengali refugees in India) and placed them in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. A team from the Direct Action Committee lived in them for more than a week, fasting or eating the meager diet of Bengali expatriates, to represent the plight of the refugees. From this lase we organized a march on the Pakistan Embassy, a lobbying day on Capital Hill, an inter-faith religious service attended by Bangladesh representatives to the United Nations, and a refugee meal for Government employees.
Because of the effective mass media coverage, these actions made an important contribution to public knowledge about the U. S. role in Pakistan. They also provided an example of how ordinary citizens can move beyond a sense of helplessness and into meaningful action to counter an obvious evil.
Contacts in India told us that actions such as these were thoroughly described in the Indian press and were much appreciated as signs that, although the U. S. Government was unsympathetic, some American people were willing to take steps to protest against support for mass murder. Indian and U. S. delegates in the United Nations not now on speaking terms might well remember the moment on Pier 80 when longshoremen and demonstrators joined forces and removed their own support for dictatorship and massacre on the other side of the world.
