I love summer because I get to do so many cool things. Like hiking, backpacking and traveling. I’ll be sharing links to my adventures here. So many activists get burned out because they spend all their time doing activist stuff. The passion remains but the energy to continue the activism wanes sometimes. So it’s good to get out and just enjoy being alive.
Yesterday we hiked White Pine Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains. My word for the day was “stunning”.
(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
July 3
1835
Children strike in Paterson, New Jersey, for an 11-hour work day and a 6-day work week.
1860
Birthday of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author (Herland); feminist and a founder of the Women’s Peace Party.
1966
At least 31 people were arrested in London after their protest against the Vietnam War turned violent. Police moved in after scuffles broke out at the demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
Actress Vanessa Redgrave joins 25,000 two years later at Anti-Vietnam war protest, Grosvenor Square.
As I see the increasing incidences of flag displays and fireworks sales as Independence Day approaches, I cannot help but wonder of people acutally really know what the significance of July 4 is.
Ruben Navarrette has had a piece published in today’s Salt Lake Tribune from SignOn San Diego, entitled Being an American by a technicality.
Navarrette is a hispanic american. He lists the reasons why he is an American.
Here is his list – go to the article (linked above) to read his explanations:
Navarrette’s ending intrigued me the most:
an immigration restrictionist – recently took issue with something I’d written and informed me that the fact I was an American citizen was just a “technicality.”
If that’s the case, it’s a technicality for which I’m immensely grateful.
My comment: We are all, by default, then, American citizens by technicality because America was founded by immigrants to a land already inhabited.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged government, human needs, human rights, immigrant issues, immigration laws, politics, Utah
Earlier last month I posted about Senior Citizens being evicted from their long established homes.
Today’s Salt Lake Tribune has a follow up story on this issue.
This appears to be a growing trend in the real estate world. With Utah’s land values increasing, developers eye up mobile home parks for the building of luxury homes for the rich.
It’s the seventh mobile-home-park displacement Virginia Marrufo Martinez, community organizer for Salt Lake Community Action Partnership, has assisted with since September 2001.
I am wondering if people who purchase homes in these new developments are ever made aware of the cost of human needs to provide them the “home of their dreams”.
(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
July 2
1776
New Jersey becomes the first Colony to grant women’s suffrage.
1777
Vermont becomes first American colony to abolish slavery
Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh called on all Indians to unite and resist. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandotte nations.
For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region.
Chief Tecumseh
1839
Early in the morning, Africans on the Cuban slave ship Amistad, led by Joseph Cinquè (a Mende from what is now Sierra Leone), mutinied against their captors, killing the captain and the cook, and seized control of the schooner. Jose Ruiz, a Spaniard and planter from Puerto Principe, Cuba, had bought the 49 adult males on the ship, paying $450 each, as slaves for his sugar plantation.
Slave ship
Joseph Cinquè
1964
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1976
The Supreme Court rules that Capital Punishment does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”.
I was reading an update from David Rovics on his tour and he had a paragraph about his MySpace Account. David switched to MySpace from LiveJournal recently. Here are some links to info in today’s news about Rupert Murdoch and MySpace:
Continue reading
Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen has a post on her Blogher Blog on Food Blogs Joining a Fast for Peace. The project encourages bloggers to either fast or engage in a virtual blog fast in a campaign designed to build pressure for withdrawing U.S. troops from the Iraq war.
Troops Home Fast is the name of the hunger strike by CodePink Women for Peace which initiated the campaign.
Read Kalyn’s Blogher Blog for more ideas on participating in this Fast for Peace.
Logo designed by Laura Rebecca’s Kitchen
A farm which has been feeding 350 families on a daily basis for the past 15 years has been bulldozed to make way for commercial development. The land had been transformed from a desolate vacant lot to a thriving garden of edibles that benefitted the hungry in the area.
From Infoshop News:
On Tuesday, June 13, 2006, a combined force of sheriffs, LAPD, fire department and bulldozers raided and destroyed the South Central Farm, a community garden and farm located in southern Los Angeles. The violent eviction was met with resistance and protest, both inside and outside of the gardens. Around 45 people were arrested, including actor Darryl Hannah. Protests inside the farm had included a tree sit and a lckdown by farmers and activists. The garden was bulldozed by late in the afternoon, but protests and actions continue.
Photo: by Marcus, L.A. Indymedia
Antidevelopment Protesters Are Arrested at Farm Site in Los AngelesHollywood stars removed from urban farmFarmers Kicked Out of Community Farm in South-Central Los AngelesThis came across my email desk today:
Sir, No Sir!, a David Zeiger documentary film about the GI movement against the Vietnam War. Never before seen footage is included in the film and myths are dispelled about protestors during the era.
The Ruckus Society has produced a
flash presentation called “Punk Ass Crusade”, a great little piece geared towards counter-recruitment for young people and promotion for the “Sir, No Sir!” film.
This film is NOW being shown in Salt Lake City at the Tower Theater during these days and times:
(2:30), 7:00
(2:30) Fri – Sun Only, June 20 – July 2
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In other counter-recruitment news, grandmothers for peace were arrested at a military recruiting station in Phildelphia last week for being told they were “too old to enlist”.
Yesterday I wrote about the campaign financial disclosure reports in Utah, and in particular in my race for Salt Lake County Council.
I conducted a google search for Salt Lake County Council Candidates, inserting the names of the three candidates in my race. My name was the only one that came up with a candidate website.
Additionally, I am the only woman in my race. A candidate’s list can be viewed here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 