Today in history

May 15

International Conscientious Objectors Day(Since the 1980’s)
International Conscientious Objectors Day, established to honor those who leave or refuse to enter their country’s armed forces for reasons of principle.

Read the stories of 4 Conscientious Objectors
Are you a CO? Find more info at PEACE-OUT

1869
The National Woman Suffrage Association is formed with Elizabeth Stanton as its first president.

1870
Julia Ward Howe, suffragist, abolitionist and author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” proposed Mother’s Day as a peace holiday.
She had seen firsthand some of the worst effects of war — the death and disease which killed and maimed, and the widows and orphans left behind on both sides of the Civil War — and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle. Mother’s Day did not become a national holiday until declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.

“Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.”

read her Mother’s Day Proclamation

1935
The National Labor Relations Act was passed, recognizing workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively with their employer.

1957
Britain tested its first H-bomb over Christmas Island in the south Pacific, after just two years of development.

Mushroom cloud over Christmas Island.

1962
Women in Madrid walked the Central Plaza to show solidarity with striking miners; 70 arrested.
1966
American Friends Service Committee, SANE, & Women March for Peace sponsor a 10,000+ person anti-war picket at White House & 63,000+ rally at the Washington Monument with four other organizations.
1966
Buddhist altars placed in streets to stop troops arresting dissidents, South Vietnam.
1970
The American Friends Service Committee, SANE (The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy), and Women March for Peace, with four other organizations, sponsored a 10,000+ person anti-war picket at White House and a 63,000+ rally at the Washington Monument to oppose the Vietnam War.

1970
In response to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia (an expansion of the Vietnam War) and the killings at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, several million U.S. students held campus strikes opposing the Vietnam War.

1971
Native American Rights Fund files suit on behalf of Hopi to prevent strip mining on sacred Black Mesa, Arizona.
1982
40,000 demonstrate against military electronics fair, Hanover, West Germany.
1988
USSR begins withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
1994
Stone commemorating conscientious objectors unveiled, Tavistock Square, London.