Some morning humor and history

A fellow Green recently hooked me up with Peace History – a service of peacebuttons.info.

This morning, this cartoon by Gark Huck came across:

Here is some selected info for this week on peace history. You can read more details and see photos on each event at the site.

October 31, 1978
Thirty thousand Iranian oil workers strike against the repressive rule of the U.S.-installed Shah, and for democracy, civil and human rights.

November 1, 1952
U.S. successfully detonates “Mike”, the world’s first hydrogen bomb, at the its proving grounds in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton bomb, approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices, gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.

November 1, 1954
The West African nation of Algeria began a war of independence against French rule.

November 1, 1961
Fifty thousand women join protests in at least 60 U.S. cities against resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests, leading to founding of Women Strike for Peace.

November 1, 1970
The Detroit City Council votes for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.

November 1, 2003
A Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, is transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the militant policies of prime minister Ariel Sharon

November 2, 1972
Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties” Native American march occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain positive media coverage and to garner support from the general public to start a policy of self determination for American Indians.

November 2, 1983
A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be observed on the third Monday of January is signed by President Ronald Reagan.
In 1955 King organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

November 3, 1969
President Nixon announces “Vietnamization” program to shift U.S. troops from fighting North Vietnamese to U.S.-trained local troops fighting North Vietnamese.

November 3, 1979
Five members of the Communist Workers Party are murdered and eight others injured when their anti-Klan rally is attacked by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party thugs in Greensboro, North Carolina.

November 4, 1956
Two hundred thousand Russian troops attack an anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and install a new pro-Russian government. Civilians set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest with soldiers and Hungarian National Guard troops participating in the resistance. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came.

November 4, 1984
Nicaragua’s ruling left-wing Sandinista party claims a decisive victory in the country’s first elections since the revolution five years earlier.

November 5, 1872
Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in a presidential election.

November 5, 1920
Eugene V. Debs, Convict #9653, receives nearly one million votes as Socialist Party presidential candidate while in jail serving a ten-year sentence for opposing World War I.

November 5, 1982
Protests at Alliant continue today.
36 are arrested during a demonstration at Honeywell, Minnesota’s largest defense contractor. The “Honeywell Project,” a local campaign to target arms maker, has dogged the company for over three decades, at times with enormous success. It continues today, targeting Alliant Technologies, the arms-making branch of Honeywell spun off in the 1990s.

November 6, 1913
Mohandas Gandhi arrested after leading 2,500 Indian miners in a march to Transvaal, South Africa. They were protesting registration laws and are violently arrested. Gandhi refuses to pay a fine and is jailed.

November 6, 1962
The 17th session of the U.N. General Assembly passes resolution 1761 condemning apartheid and calling on all member states to terminate economic and military relations with South Africa.