In early August, we learned that another Pakistani ship, the Al Ahmadi, was headed for Philadelphia. On August 12 we set up a blockade at Philadelphia's Pier 80 to meet it, but it turned around in the Delaware River and went to Baltimore. We chased it there and met it with pickets on land and water, then found that it was heading back for Philadelphia.
On August 17 we arose at four in the morning to get our boats in the Delaware in time to meet the Al Ahmadi, which was expected at seven a.m. Four canoes and one kyack paddled about three miles to Pier80 while thirty pickets formed in front of the gigantic warehouse on the dock side. We erected a thirty-foot mural depicting. U.S. arms being shipped to Pakistan, and soon were embroiled in intense discussions and negotiations with longshoremen, teamsters (whose trucks were backed up by our pickets), and officials of the shipping company, who complained that we were shutting down their entire operation and causing the man to lose their pay. We finally agreed to leave one gate (where a Japanese ship was moored) free of pickets.
The tiny nonviolent fleet looked like five slivers of darkness on the glistening water, bouncing 200 yards away at the riverside entrance to the dock. Several police boats kept a close watch. The warehouse blocked the picketers' view down-river, but they knew that the confrontation was imminent when they saw two of the canoeists suddenly raise cardboard signs above their heads and point them in the direction of the outgoing tide.
In a few moments the enormous prow of the Al Ahmadi edged past the warehouse, nudged by two large tugs. Our small boats paddled straight for the bow, but the police, apparently with orders not to make arrests, pulled alongside, grabbed them, and dragged them across the mouth of the ship and out of the way. As soon as they released us, however, we paddled right back, fighting through tugboat wakes and turbulence to get in the freighter's path. For a good twenty minutes the fleet charged and was dragged back, while longshoremen, teamsters, demonstrator, newspaper reporters, television cameramen, and Pakistani crewmen leaning over the rail watched transfixedly. Finally, the Al Ahmadi was able to snag a hawser on the dock's mooring.
The longshoremen held the final card; we were in suspense to see if they would load or not. None had crossed the picket lines so far, and the next work gang was scheduled to pass through the gates at one p.m. At 12:30 they started coming and the picketing was intensified. At 12:45, Richard Askew drove a large black car into the middle of the growing crowd in front of the warehouse gate. He got out slowly and was immediately besieged with microphones and questions by reporters.
Speaking deliberately, he said: “I'm not here to tell the men what to do. I think they've already decided what to do. I'm here to express my own convictions. This company should be ashamed to have this ship then up at its dock, West Pakistan is committing genocide on East Pakistan” If we load this ship, it would be as though we were helping to commit genocide.
A reporter asked the question that had been thrown at the demonstrators all morning: “Mr. Askew, aren your men losing money by not loading this ship?”
