Voters for Peace has issued a call for people to Sign the Iraq Pledge:
“I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign.”
VotersForPeace is trying to get 2 million voters to sign its Peace Pledge in time for the 2006 elections. The Pledge is a statement of support for peace candidates: “who publicly oppose wars of aggression.”
The Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba will be in Salt Lake this Saturday. The Desert Greens Green Party Candidates have endorsed the event. I have a quote in the press release that was issued today. The Green Party of the United States published our press release on its home page under “local news”.
Yesterday I was interviewed by the Deseret News as participant with People for Peace and Justice of Utah. There will be an article in Saturday’s religion section of the D-News about Saturday’s event. HOpefully the press will come to the press conference at 5pm on Saturday to interview the caravanistas.
I am a strong advocate of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I do not believe that our government, or any government for that matter, has the right to forbid its citizens from contributing aid to those in need in other countries, let alone forbid its citizens from free travel across borders.
Pastors for Peace and hundreds of volunteers from the US and 7 other countries are slated to cross the US border into Mexico on July 2nd challenging US restrictions on travel and aid to Cuba. This is the 17th annual Caravan. The Caravan will be stopping in Salt Lake City on Saturday, July 24th. People for Peace and Justice of Utah has organized a free public event at Free Speech Zone (2144 South Highland Drive) beginning at 5pm for the Press and 7pm for the public.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged government, human needs, human rights, immigrant issues, immigration laws, politics, Utah
(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
June 21
Summer Solstice
1877
Four members of the “Molly Maguires” were hung in what was then Mauch Chunk, and in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, charged with murder. The Molly Maguires were a secret and violent Irish-Catholic organization of coal miners formed to combat the oppressive working and living conditions in the anthracite region of the state.
The Molly Maguires the movie
A Women’s Sunday Suffrage rally, supporting the right of women to vote, drew several hundred thousand to London’s Hyde Park from all over the country.
Women were encouraged to wear “the colours” – white (for purity), green (hope) and purple (dignity) – and in “as fetching, charming and ladylike a manner as possible.” As the Yorkshire Daily Post put it: “At least one half of the crowd was composed of the sort of people you would expect to see at a suburban garden party.”
1964
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three young Freedom Summer workers, disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while registering Blacks to vote. Their bodies were found six weeks later, having been shot and buried in an earthen dam.
Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan eventually went to prison on federal conspiracy charges related to the disappearance; none served more than six years.
Schwerner and Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Chaney was a local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963.
100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper workers in Detroit after nearly two years on the picket line.
See a complete list of COTG hosts at COTG Hosts.
This week’s Carnival of the Green is being hosted by Savvy Vegetarian.
Global Warming and Climate Change top the list of posts this week, followed by other posts relevant to our species and our planet.
Green Summer Vacations ideas are next followed by a variety of posts by other green bloggers. This week’s carnival ends with some humor on animal rights.
(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
June 20
1960
Nobel laureate for Chemistry Linus Pauling defied Congress by refusing to name circulators of petitions calling for total halt of nuclear weapons testing. Pauling later won a second Nobel, a Peace Prize for his work championing nuclear disarmament.
Linus Pauling
Muhammad Ali convicted of refusing to be drafted
1982
2,500 were arrested during a two-day blockade of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California, the principal American nuclear weapons research site.
1995
Shell Oil gave in to international pressure and abandoned its plans to dump the Brent Spar oil-drilling platform in the North Atlantic. The environmental group Greenpeace spearheaded the effort to prevent Shell from sinking the rig, its members boarding and occupying it as a tactic to stop the deep sea disposal.
Shell’s plan would have dumped toxic and radioactive sludge into the ocean just west of the British Isles. A month later, at the Oslo and Paris Commission (OSPARCOM) meeting, 11 out of 13 countries agreed on a moratorium on the dumping of offshore installations, pending agreement on a outright ban.
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Greenpeace climbers on Brent Spar platform |
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read more about Greenpeace and Brent Spar
Shell ships use water cannons against Greenpeace activists on board the rig. |
Today’s Salt Lake Tribune has an article and photo gallery called Life on the Divide.
One employee in a store on the border stated that folks are calling the border fence as the new “Berlin Wall” and that many see the scenario now as more dangerous than pre-border fence days.
Daniel Beltran, a 30-year-old Mexican truck driver who lives in San Luis Río Colorado, crosses the border legally for work each week. He said he can’t believe the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on the border when it can use the
“They should be helping the people,” Beltran said in Spanish. “The wall doesn’t help anyone.”
My point exactly.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged government, immigrant issues, immigration laws, politics, Utah
The San Francisco Indy Media has reposted an article from Information Clearing House on the Take Back America Event.
The author gives his perspective with a delightful sarcastic twist on how the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are touted as “progressives”, which we all know is way further than the truth.
(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)
June 19
1865
More than two years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, TX, with news that the war had ended and all slaves were now free. Still celebrated as Juneteenth.
Massive demonstrations a year earlier insured passage of the Acts
Read about the Civil Rights Acti (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965)
1964
One thousand landowners occupied key islands in protest against French nuclear tests at Kwajalein Atoll. Kwajalein Atoll is located in the western Pacific Ocean, about 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii and 1,400 miles east of Guam. The island is now home to USAKA (United States Army Kwajalein Atoll), the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, and about 2,000 support personnel and family members on Kwajalein and Roi-Namur islands.
I’ve updated my Other Blogs and Forums page to include women’s blogs.
I just received a call from a former colleague of mine who is purusing a PhD in Special Education at the University of Utah. She and I stay in contact over various things. I have been asked by her to speak to one of her University Classes in the fall on Tourette’s Syndrome (TS). The reason my friend asked me is because this disorder has been a significant part of my life for about 13 years.
My son, now 21, was diagnosed with TS when he was 9. We have been through hospitalizations, medications, behavior problems, learning difficulties, co-morbid conditions, socialization issues – you name it, we’ve been through it. My son has had some of the more severe symptoms associated with TS. Although he did not complete high school, I am happy to say that he is self-sufficient and has a decent job with salary and benefits. I am quite proud of him and the way he continues to cope with his disability.
I will be happy to share my perspective as a parent with the University students. As I reflect on the past decade+, memories begin to flood back that I haven’t thought about in awhile. Many are painful. Some experiences continue to be painful since my son is about to become a father and is scared to death because he never wanted to pass on his (what he calls) “defective” genes onto any offspring. But my experiences as a parent of a disabled child should bring some concrete-ness to many who can only know about the disorder from textbooks.
As an educator, I feel I possess the compassion to know the difficulties that children with disabilites face in school. As a candidate, I promote the concept of accomodations for all children in our educational system. As a human being, I advocate services and basic necessities for all – all based on my experiences which have given me the knowledge and compassion to advocate for these things.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 