(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
July 1
1656
First Quakers arrive in America, having come to what will be Boston.
1917
8000 anti-war marchers demonstrated in Boston. Their banners read:
“IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION?
WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI?
WE DEMAND PEACE.”
The parade was attacked by soldiers and sailors, on orders from their officers.
A massive general strike in Guatemala led to the resignation of dictator Dictator Jorge Ubico who had harshly ruled Guatemala for over a decade.
On March 15 of the next year, Dr. Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo took office as the first popularly elected President of Guatemala and promptly called for democratic reforms establishing the nation’s social security and health systems, land reform (redistribution of farmland not under cultivation to the landless with compensation to the owners), and a government bureau to look after Mayan concerns.
Juan José Arévalo Bermejo
1958
700 protest at White House against nuclear testing.
1968
Sixty-one nations, including the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which set up systems to monitor use of nuclear technology and prevent more nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. 190 countries are now signatories; Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the Treaty. North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty.
1970
Women Against Daddy Warbucks destroy 1-A files in eight New York City draft boards.
2000
Vermont’s civil unions law went into effect, granting gay couples most of the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage under state law. In the first five years, 1,142 Vermont couples, and 6,424 from elsewhere, had chosen a Vermont civil union.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 