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Peace History

Posted on November 20, 2006 | Leave a comment

November 20, 1816

 

The term “scab” was first used in print by the Albany (N.Y.) Typographical Society.

 

What is a Scab?


read The Scab by Jack London

November 20, 1945

The International War Crimes Tribunal began in Nuremberg, Germany, and continued until October 1, 1946, establishing that military and political subordinates are responsible for their own actions even if ordered by their superiors.

Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis were on trial for atrocities committed during World War II, ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain.

The Nuremberg defendants

read more

November 20, 1959

The United Nations proclaimed “The Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” because “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.”

Read the text of the Declaration:

November 20, 1987

SANE (The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) and FREEZE (the campaign to freeze all testing of nuclear weapons) merged at their first combined convention in Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the largest U.S. peace organization.

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Peace History

Posted on November 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

November 2, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

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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. King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and 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 of the laws that enforced racial segregation.

MLK Day by Coretta Scott King 

the history of Martin Luther King Day 

(pdf)

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Peace History

Posted on November 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

November 1, 1929
Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.

November 1, 1954

 

The north African nation of Algeria began a war of independence against French colonial rule.

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French troops clash with Algerian civilians

November 1, 1961

50,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests.

The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to founding of Women Strike for Peace.

 

 

read more

 

“Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.

 

November 1, 1970

The Detroit City Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces

from Vietnam.

November 1, 1990
As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. or Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of federal law.

November 1, 2003

A Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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The Significance of Today – 47 and Kicking!

Posted on July 27, 2006 | 2 comments

I been unable to post my daily peace historical events since I’ve been on the road (that will resume upon my return next week). I thought that I would post something today, however, since it is my birthday.  I will be spending the day in workshops and meetings here in Tuscon, but when I return I will be posting some great photos of our country’s landscape.

I feel fortunate that at age 47 I can climb mountains while carrying 30 pounds on my back.  I can scale boulder fields (not as gracefully as some, but I least I do it!), ford streams, and walk across steep snow fields.  Pretty good for not only my age, but also considering the fact that less than 15 years ago I was pretty significantly disabled with deteriorrating knees and hips causing me to have to use two canes to walk.  That is, until I took charge of my own health.    You’d never guess now that I had been in that condition.

As I have traveled the country this month I have seen lots of beautiful things in nature.  My favorite so far has been the desert in New Mexico and Arizona.  As I hiked a mountainside yesterday just west of Las Cruces, NM, and gazed about the valley from the top of one of the hills and marveled at the plant and animal life, I could not help but wonder why our precious land and life has suffered from the effects of nuclear testing.  Surely those who make the decisions to drop bombs in our deserts have not sat on top of a mountain, as I did yesterday, and witnessed the beauty of our surroundings or pondered the web of life.

My birthday wish would be to have as many people as possible to begin walking – around their neighborhoods, valleys, states, and regions.  Just walk – and see what you see.  You will be amazed and hopefully will see things you took for granted and begin to understand the changes we all must make to stop the destruction of our planet and all its life.

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Today in history

Posted on July 12, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 12

1817
Henry David Thoreau born.

Henry David Thoreau


On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe–“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.”
Read the rest….


1974

John Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate someone’s civil rights. Ehrlichman, while in the White House, had approved a recommendation for a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing on a memo: “If done under your assurance that it is not traceable.”
They had sought to discredit Daniel Ellsberg by breaking into the office of his psychiatrist. Ellsberg, a former Defense Dept. analyst, had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers, documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public scrutiny.

John Ehrlichman

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Today in history

Posted on July 11, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

World Population Day, sponsored by the United Nations to focus attendion on population issues.

July 11

 


The Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was founded in Buffalo, New York.

1968

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


1969

 


The federal appeals court in Boston reversed the convictions of Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Ferber who had been found guilty of conspiring to counsel evasion of the military draft in 1968. The judges considered his activity covered under his right to free speech opposing the Vietnam War.

 

read A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority co-authored by Dr. Spock (1967)

 
   

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Today in history

Posted on July 10, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 10

Emma Goldman was jailed two years for inciting  U.S. draft resisters.

Emma Goldman

1976

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members near Georgetown, Illinois, gathered for an ill-fated cross burning. The meeting started an hour late. When the Klansmen went to plant their cross, it was too heavy to move. Three hours later, after the cross was chopped down to a portable size, it was planted, but would not light. Finally, the Klan members gave up and went home.

1985

The Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior (named after a North American Indian legend), was blown up in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, killing one and sinking the ship.

read about the sinking


The Rainbow Warrior then

The attack had been authorized by French President Francois Mitterand because the environmental organization had plans to protest France’s nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific.

 

The Rainbow Warrior today

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Today in history

Posted on July 9, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 9

1623
English negotiate treaty with Potomac River tribes; after a toast symbolizing eternal friendship, Chiskiack chief & 200 followers drop dead from poisoned wine.


1917
During World War I, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, leaders of the No-Conscription League, spoke out against the war and the draft. Both were found guilty in New York City of conspiracy against the draft, fined $10,000 each and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with the possibility of deportation at the end of their terms.

1955

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and seven other scientists warned that the development of weapons of mass destruction had created a choice between war and survival of the human species. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was published in London .

read the manifesto

Bertrand Russell

1963

Arinell Ponder of SCLC & 5 students arrested & beaten for using white Trailways bus bathrooms, Winona, Miss.


1984

150,000 march in London, England for nuclear disarmament, protest Cruise missiles.

1993

Police ban vigil of Women in Black, Belgrade, Serbia.


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Today in history

Posted on July 8, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

June 8

1917

The Women’s Peace Crusade organized a Sunday mass demonstration in Glasgow; from two sides of the city processions wound their way toward Glasgow Green accompanied by bands and banners. They merged into one massive colorful demonstration of some 14,000 people protesting World War I.

1859

Vietnamese guerillas ambushed two U.S. “advisers,” making them the first U.S. casualties since 1946 in Vietnam.

1965

 

Roy Wilkins became the executive director of NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He had edited the organization’s magazine, Crisis, for fifteen years, and was one of the most articulate of civil rights leaders.

 

 

the Roy Wilkins Memorial in Minneapolis


1996
The International Court Of Justice declared that in almost all circumstances use of nuclear weapons is illegal.

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Today in history

Posted on July 7, 2006 | Leave a comment

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 7

1863
First military draft by US (exemptions cost $100).

1903
Labor organizer Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones led the “March of the Mill Children” over 100 miles from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work week. It is during this march, on about the 24th, she delivered her famed “The Wail of the Children” speech. Roosevelt refused to see them.


“Fifty years ago there was a cry against slavery and men gave up their lives to stop the selling of black children on the block. Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.”
from Mother Jones’s autobiography


1957
Scientists held their first peace conference in the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada. The mission of the Pugwash conference was to “… bring scientific insight and reason to bear on threats to human security arising from science and technology in general, and above all from the catastrophic threat posed to humanity by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction….”

1977


The United States conducted its first test of the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb was a tactical thermonuclear weapon designed to cause very little physical damage through limited blast and heat but was designed to kill troops through localized but intense levels of lethal radiation.

a neutron bomb explosion at a test site

1979
2,000 American Indian activists and anti-nuclear demonstrators marched through the Black Hills of western South Dakota to protest the development of uranium mines on native sacred lands.

1988

The first of many syringes, blood vials & other hospital souvenirs — some contaminated with the AIDS virus — washes ashore on Long Island, forcing the closing of miles of beaches in the midst of the worst East Coast heat wave of the decade.




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