Soon the idea became so popular that a permanent organization was created. Chapters sprang up in other countries, and members began to work toward freeing "prisoners of conscience" on every continent. In the past 17 years, Amnesty International -- or "Amnesty" for short -- has aided in securing the release of nearly 13,000 individuals who were imprisoned not for crimes, but for personal beliefs that went against their governments' official policies. "We're a nuisance factor," says Hawk. "We organize letter-writing and publicity campaigns on behalf of individual victims of human rights violations. It's the letters and the publicity that are Amnesty's tools for securing their release or bettering their conditions while they're in. At first it sounds strange to think that people sitting in living rooms in the United States can help someone in a fortress prison on an island in Indonesia, or in Siberia. ... You deluge certain people with so many letters that eventually it becomes an issue. Then the government asks, 'Is holding this person worth the trouble?' And on occasion, the answer is no." The secret of Amnesty's success is its huge number of volunteers -- 170,000 in 78 countries -- who work on the case of a particular prisoner for years if necessary. They send letters and telegrams not only to government officials, but also to the prisoner himself. At times they send packages, or give financial aid to his family, or arrange for legal aid. A 100-member research team in London makes sure that every new case is thoroughly documented before assigning it to an "adoption group" of 12 to 20 people. This group generally receives the names of three prisoners from three different political systems, and meets once a month to work on the cases until a result is obtained. The Riverside adoption group, dating back to 1966, was the first one established in the U.S. Today there are more than 100 in 32 states. All of these are monitored by David Hawk and his staff of 20 full-time workers at their Westside office. The $750,000 annual U.S. budget comes from members' contributions, foundations, and church agencies. Hawk assumed the leadership of A.I.-U.S.A. in 1974. "In the early '60s I worked in the civil rights movement in the Deep South," he recalls. "From 1967 to 1972 I was one of the organizers of the Moratorium Against the War. Then I worked in the McGovern campaign." At about the same time he graduated from Union Theological Seminary, and from there went to Oxford University in England, where he found out about Amnesty International. Returning to the U.S., he applied for the vacant post of executive director and was accepted. Ever since then he has been a resident of the West Side. David's wife Joan, a potter, is the editor of _Matchbox_.