Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7668 Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 recounted in Betty Medsger’s excellent book The Burglary. Bonnie and John Raines, two of the Media burglars, “revealed their big secret to each of their children separately” long after the fact. When questioned, Bonnie and John explained arrangements they had made for their family to be raised by Bonnie’s parents and uncle had they – Bonnie and John – been imprisoned. But the difficult question remained: “How could they have cared so deeply about anything that they were willing to risk having the family severed?” Frida Berrigan addresses this question in her memoir It Runs in the Family. She is the daughter of the late Philip Berrigan and Eliza- beth ­ McAlister, former priest and nun. Prison separated her parents for eleven of their twenty- nine years of marriage. Although her father and mother tried to avoid being incarcerated at the same time, Frida said she “turned three and my brother turned two while they were away. We all struggled with being apart.” Parents can never know with certainty how their nonviolent activism will affect their children. When I left home to make an un­ authorized trip to Hanoi in December 1965, my seven-year-old son Lee clung to my legs, trying to stop me. As it turned out, I was not imprisoned upon returning; Lee, now fifty-six, and I, at eighty-five, are both doing well. Because the intensity of my objection to the Vietnam War caused me to be expelled from academia, I came to know displaced steel­ workers and high-security prisoners. My wife and I found our way to what Archbishop Romero called “accompaniment.” We went to law school, acquired a skill that steelworkers and prisoners desperately needed, and as attor- neys were privileged – are privileged – to walk beside certain of the poor and oppressed. I believe this is the form of activism the world most needs. We do not presume to provide strategy from on high. The chairs are in a circle, and we learn as well as teach. A Surprising Power From the books under review, the nonviolent action that impressed me most deeply is told in Medsger’s book, The Burglary. During the summer of 1971 a group of war-resisters planned to raid the Selective Service office in Camden, New Jersey, to destroy draft records as a state- ment against the ongoing war in Vietnam. One of their number, Robert Hardy, secretly agreed to be an informant for the FBI. The group was apprehended after they broke into the Camden office and faced possible prison sentences of more than forty years. While trial preparations were underway, Hardy’s nine-year-old son Billy died tragically in an accident. Father Michael Doyle, one of the defendants, had been a longtime family friend and conducted Billy’s funeral; in church, “the FBI agents and the people they had arrested were sitting near each other.” After the funeral, “Peg and Bob Hardy showed Doyle two pieces of wood they had found in Billy’s dresser drawer. With a nail and hammer Billy had chis- eled the word ‘peace’ in one and the word ‘love’ in the other.” Billy’s sudden death impacted the trial that followed. Billy’s father, Robert Hardy, became a witness for the defense. All twenty-eight ­ defendants were acquitted. This story illustrates why nonviolence is best described as a belief that love will find a way – or, as Quakers say, that “way will open.” When way opens, it may not be because we sought it or made it happen. Way must open between nuclear-armed nation-states as it did in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Way can open between heavily armed guardians of authority and unarmed protesters. Again and again, when it looks least likely, way will open.