A decade ago, protesters attacked a B-52 bomber there with hammers. This time, they say, they'll wield only peace slogans on T-shirts as they seek to mingle in the crowd of families visiting to ogle the warplanes.
"I think actions like this create hope," said McAlister, 68, taking time from chores at Jonah House, the pacifist community she and Philip Berrigan established in West Baltimore. "And being able to share with people about that creates hope."
Catonsville wasn't the first draft office raid. Philip Berrigan and three others were already awaiting sentencing for pouring blood on draft records at the Custom House in downtown Baltimore in fall 1967. They decided to do it again.
"That was the way to show the government that no matter how many people you lock up, you're not going to get us out of your hair," recalled George Mische, another of the Nine who, like Philip Berrigan, was an Army veteran.
Mische said the group looked at three local draft board sites before settling on the western Baltimore suburb.
"There was no special signficance to Catonsville," said Dean Pappas, a Baltimore physics teacher who helped plan the draft office raid and spread the word after it happened. "It was just a target of opportunity."
Symbolism of site
But Mische and others saw symbolism in the draft board's location on the second floor of the Knights of Columbus hall, a Catholic fraternal organization. They believed church leaders were abdicating their Christian responsibilty to speak out against the war.
Mische said the group also picked Catonsville because it would be "virtually impossible" for anyone to get hurt. But one person did, albeit slightly. Mary Murphy, the head of the office, cut her finger and scratched her leg while wrestling for control of a wire wastebasket containing the seized draft records.
Mische said Murphy also ripped his pants apart, trying to pull him away from the draft files, and another clerk threw a telephone through a window after protesters thwarted efforts to call police. The breaking glass and screaming alerted a groundskeeper outside, who summoned authorities.
Meanwhile, a TV news crew and photographer, who had been tipped off to show up, captured the burning of 378 draft records on black-and-white film with shaky sound.
The Catonsville Nine might have been 10 had McAlister, then a young nun, agreed to join the group that day. "I wasn't ready," she said. "I was too young, and it was too new."
