Category: Businesses / Corporations / Industry

David Bruce, Laurie McBride, 13,000 PATCO Members, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/3

August 3, 1882
Congress passed the first U.S. law to restrict immigration of a particular ethnic group into the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act. It stopped all further Chinese immigration for ten years, and denied citizenship to those already in the country, most of whom had been recruited by American railroad and mining companies.
The law remained in effect until 1943.

Chinese rail workers
Very cool site from the National Archives and Records Administration
August 3, 1913
Four died and many others were injured in the Wheatland Hop Riot when police fired into a crowd of California hop pickers trying to organize (with the help of the IWW, or Industrial Workers of the World). At the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, the state’s largest single agricultural employer, hundreds of workers—whites, Mexicans, and Filipinos—had put down their tools because of terrible working conditions, low wages, and an almost complete lack of sanitation and decent housing. It was one of the first attempts to organize agricultural workers.
The story of the Wheatland Hop Riot 
August 3, 1981

Nearly 13,000 of the nation’s 17,500 air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), went on strike.After six months of negotiations with PATCO President Robert Poli, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had offered less than 10% of what the union had sought. Due to the stressful nature of their jobs, managing the nation’s ever-increasing volume of airport landings and take-offs without up-to-date equipment, they had asked for a shorter workweek, an increase in pay and retirement after 20 years. 95% of PATCO members rejected the FAA’s final offer.
The union had endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980 (one of very few to do so), but President Reagan said they were violating U.S. law banning strikes by federal workers, and would all be terminated unless they returned to work within 48 hours.
A Reagan Letter to Robert Poli, PATCO (October. 20, 1980) 
Dear Mr. Poli:
     I have been briefed by members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation’s air traffic control system.  They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation’s air travellers in unwarranted danger.  In an area so clearly related to public safety the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly.
     You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety….
     I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and the air traffic controllers.
Sincerely,
Ronald Reagan
More about the strike 
August 3, 1986
Laurie McBride and seven other Motherpeace members of the Nanoose Conversion Campaign were arrested for picnicking on Winchelsea Island, east of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. They, along with dozens of volunteer witnesses and supporters who had set off by boat from the town of Nanoose Bay, were protesting the ten-year extension of free use by the U.S. of the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range (CFMETR). It is a joint Canadian-American facility for torpedos, other maritime warfare and detection equipment; the island held the command and control center. The Campaign advocated conversion of the area back to peaceful purposes.
Laurie McBride’s story 
August 3, 1988
One hundred forty-three white English and Afrikaans conscripts from four cities in South Africa announced their refusal to serve in the South African Defense Force. The SADF was engaged in actions to preserve apartheid, the social and economic system of racial separatism, in South Africa, and to occupy and thwart independence for South Africa’s neighbors, Angola and Namibia
[see July 31, 1986].

24-year-old David Bruce had just been sentenced to six years in prison for refusing to serve; he was released after two. He works today with The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation on issues of integrity, conduct and accountability in democratic policing.
 David BruceThe Police That We Want .pdf 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august3

Some News Of The Day

Senate Democrats Estimate DOGE Caused Billions of Dollars In Government Waste by TPM
Read on Substack

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

What DOGE Cost Us

Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations yesterday released a jaw-dropping report attempting to document the scope and scale of financial waste, personnel upheaval, and human suffering caused by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk’s giddily uninformed strike force of Peter Thiel acolytes. In all, the Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal (CT), estimated DOGE cost the government $21.7 billion.

“DOGE-generated waste could also have easily funded monthly food assistance for the 5.3 million families losing an average of $146 in monthly food security assistance ($9.3 billion per year) under the new budget; or it could have been used more broadly to support the 40 percent of taxpayers that will see a net increase to their taxes as a direct result of the Trump tax plan,” the report contends.

Major news coverage focused on the cost of the government paying over 150,000 federal workers who accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation incentives, under which they had to stop working but are continuing to be paid through September or even December. The minority’s report, which estimated that 200,000 workers took these buyouts, calculated that paying workers for not working cost the government $14.8 billion.

Neither the buyouts nor paying workers while on administrative leave (costing an additional $6.1 billion) increased government efficiency, as was always obvious and predictable. The report details many other costs, from the petty and pointless (millions of hours of wasted employee time writing the Musk-required email listing their weekly accomplishments) to the catastrophic (the elimination of the United States Agency for International Development, “projected to cause millions of additional deaths globally while simultaneously endangering domestic public health by reducing essential medical staff and programs.”)

As it rampaged through the government, DOGE destroyed valuable assets, wasting money already set aside to be spent, or depriving the government of income-generating programs. Product spoilage of USAID supplies of food and medicines cost the government nearly $10 million. DOGE’s elimination of the Internal Revenue Service’s Direct File program, the report estimates, wasted a more than $33 million investment in it, not to mention that taxpayers no longer have a free electronic filing option. DOGE caused the loss of more than $263 million of interest and fee income by shutting down Department of Energy loans from a program to modernize the electricity grid. The actual cost of the mass cancellations of medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health has yet to be fully calculated.

This summary represents a fraction of the entire report, and much is still not even known about the scope of the DOGE destruction. Yesterday, Blumenthal wrote to the inspectors general at 27 agencies, requesting they “initiate a comprehensive review of DOGE’s activities within your agency in order to determine the full scope of costs that DOGE’s careless actions have imposed,” particularly “the financial impact of the reorganization of federal agencies through mass layoffs, the canceling of grants, contracts, and other projects for partisan reasons, and the stifling of income-generating activities.”

Is MAGA Turning on Trump over Israel?

I spotted two stories this week in the inside-the-Beltway press, one in Politico and the other in Axios, suggesting MAGA is turning on Trump because of his continued support of the Netanyahu regime and its assault on Gaza that even Israeli human rights organizations have called a genocide. The Axios piece even suggests a “GOP realignment” on the issue may be underway. The Politico piece is more measured on that possibility, but neither piece mentions the critical role of Christian Zionists — that is, evangelicals who vigorously support Israel’s far right, like Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — in the Trump coalition.

It is hard to know now this possible coalitional split will play out. In the meantime, can we talk about how the MAGA figures turning against Israel are saying things that have gotten foreign students detained and universities’ funding cut off?

(snip-MORE, + other subjects)

Last Day Of July In Peace & Justice History

July 31, 1896
The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was established in Washington, D.C. Its two leading members were Josephine Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. Founders also included some of the most renowned African-American women educators, community leaders, and civil-rights activists in America, including Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harper, Margaret Murray Washington, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Mary Church Terrell
The original intention of the organization was “to furnish evidence of the moral, mental and material progress made by people of colour through the efforts of our women.” 
However, over the next ten years the NACW became involved in campaigns favoring women’s suffrage and opposing lynching and Jim Crow laws. By the time the United States entered the First World War, membership had reached 300,000.
The NACW and its founders  
July 31, 1986
25,000 people rallied in Namibia for freedom from South African colonial rule. In June, 1971 the International Court of Justice had ruled the South African presence in Namibia to be illegal. Eventually, open elections for a 72-member Constituent Assembly were held under U.N. supervision in November, 1989. Three months later Namibia gained its independence, and maintains it today.
More on Namibia’s independence 


Namibian flag
July 31, 1991
The United States and the Soviet Union, represented by President George H.W. Bush and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as START I. It was the first agreement to actually reduce (by 25-35%) and verify both countries’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons at equal aggregate levels in strategic offensive arms.
The Soviet Union dissolved several months later, but Russia and the U.S. met their goals by December, 2001. Three other former republics of the U.S.S.R., Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, have eliminated these weapons from their territory altogether.
Comprehensive info from the Federation of American Scientists:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july31

Four important clips from The Majority Report. Each video clip is a different subject

A look at what LGBTQ bills Ohio lawmakers have introduced so far

As I keep saying this is a small very loud mostly religious driven minority using ever tool and lie they can to change perception of the LGBTQ+ to erase them from society to create the cis straight society they want to force on everyone.  We must counter them by being as loud and forceful to not only refute their lies but also promote the joy of living freely as an inclusive society.  Hugs

https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/07/24/a-look-at-what-lgbtq-bills-ohio-lawmakers-have-introduced-so-far/

By:  – July 24, 2025 4:50 am

 Close-Up of rainbow flag with crowd In background during LGBT Pride Parade. Getty Images.

Ohio lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced several LGBTQ-related bills so far this General Assembly.

Republicans have put forth a drag ban bill, a piece of legislation that would make it harder for a student to use a different name or pronoun at school, and a bill requiring transgender political candidates to list their deadname, among others. 

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats have introduced the Ohio Fairness Act and a bill that would ban conversion therapy.

Lawmakers passed several anti-LGBTQ bills that became law during the last General Assembly — including prohibiting gender affirming care to transgender youth, blocking trans athletes from playing on teams that align with their identity, a transgender school bathroom ban, and requiring educators to out a students’ sexuality to their parents.

An Ohio court partially overturned a ban on gender-affirming care for LGBTQ youth earlier this year, meaning doctors can still prescribe puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

Anti-LGBTQ bills

Ohio House Bill 249 would ban drag performers from performing anywhere that is not a designated adult entertainment facility. State Reps. Angie King, R-Celina, and Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony.  

This is a re-introduction of a bill from the previous General Assembly that did not make it out of committee and faced much opposition.

Ohio House Bill 190 would require parental permission for schools to use different pronouns or different names for students that don’t match up with the biological sex or birth name. 

Williams and state Rep. Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony.

Ohio House Bill 172  would ban children 14 and older from receiving mental health services without parental consent. Newman also introduced this bill, which has had sponsor testimony. 

Ohio House Bill 196 would require political candidates to list their former names on candidacy petitions. This, however, would not apply to names that have been changed due to marriage. King and state Reps Rodney Creech, R-West Alexandria, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony. 

Three transgender candidates filed to run for state office in Ohio last year, but encountered challenges over the names they put on their paperwork. 

The ACLU is tracking nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ bills nationwide.

Ohio House Bill 262 would designate the weeks from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day as Natural Family Month. Williams and state Rep. Beth Lear, R-Galena, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor and opponent testimony. 

Pro-LGBTQ bills

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, has introduced a few bills that support LGBTQ people. Antonio is the only openly gay lawmaker in the Ohio General Assembly. 

Ohio Senate Bill 70, also known as the Ohio Fairness Act, would expand anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity. House Bill 136 is a companion bill. 

Antonio has introduced the Ohio Fairness Act in every General Assembly since she was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 2011 and this is the first time since 2018 the bill has no Republican support.

Ohio Senate Bill 71 would ban any licensed health professionals from doing conversion therapy when providing mental health treatment to minors. Antonio and state Sen. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, introduced the bill. House Bill 300 is a companion bill. 

Ohio Senate Bill 211 would designate the first full week of June as “Love Makes a Family Week.” Antonio introduced this bill as well. 

None of these bills have had any hearings so far this General Assembly. Ohio lawmakers are on summer break and will come back to the Statehouse this fall. 

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.

Some Bits From My Monday

Not necessarily in order of the day. For instance, just now, which is 8:30 PM Monday night, I am beginning to feel like the worst doggy mom in the world again. Ollie, dear little broken guy that he is, practically perfect in every way but for the fear he gained from his early abuse, has to be tranquilized before visiting the vet. Also muzzled right before the vet comes in the exam room, but. I Have To Slip My Little Doggy Mickeys! He gets one at night, one with breakfast on appointment day, and one an hour before the appointment, along with a couple of Solliquin, which are supplements with calming homeopathic calming substances. He loves those. Not so much the tranqs because he has no idea what’s happening to him or why. Tonight, though, he’s dealing with it better than a couple of weeks ago, which was his first time. He has to go in tomorrow for a follow-up heartworm test because we switched him from one flea protection to another that also protects from various other bugs that can bite him and cause him illness. At least he’s getting to where he doesn’t mind riding in the car as much as he used to! Of course, he’ll be tranquilized, so there’s that. There’s a kinda funny King Clarence YouTube about getting slipped mickeys; they do it like one of those TV lawyer ads. Pretty comical. Have not shown that to Ollie.

Moving on; a thing I like to do is buy the raw organic nuts and cashews off the ugly produce shelf; these are excellent products that are fine, but cheap because they need to be used quickly. Frequently, I’ll split a bag with the birds and squirrels; I’ll chop and freeze some for our use, and chop the rest to scatter outside. Earlier today, I decided to chop some cashews to take outside for birds and squirrels. The chopper is one of those “armstrong” choppers (photo below); you put your stuff in the cup, put the chopper over it, and start pumping the handle, which is on a spring. I remember a spokesperson ad for the “Slap Chop”, if anyone else does; my chopper is like that, but it’s a Zyliss. Not advertising. My chopper is 20 years old, the blades are beginning to dull, but I keep thinking that as long as I do things by hand instead of electricity, things in the world will be better. Well, today I get the chopper down, and the cup for the stuff, which is also the storage base of the chopper, has the ooky sticky feel that old plastics get when the PVCs or PFCs or whatever start leaching out. sigh. It wasn’t on the inside of the cup; only the outside, so I trashed the cup, and used a solid bowl to chop after I washed the chopper to make sure. Don’t want to mess up the birds’s systems with plastic chemicals!

When things like this happen, the words “planned obsolescence” always come into my mind. These days many, including myself, might say “enshittification,” though I think it’s reasonable that a 20 year old chopper cup might be worn out enough to leach. But still. Anyway, the words “planned obsolescence” always bring Jimmy Carter to mind. Why, you might ask?

Or maybe you didn’t, but here’s why. I was not of voting age when he was elected. His speaking accent annoyed me a great deal. I liked his ideas, definitely didn’t want Ford, was relieved when Carter won and wished him well, but that accent made my teeth hurt. So, of course, when the time for his initial SOTU arrived, what did my Speech & Forensics instructor instruct us, but to listen to that SOTU, and judge it using the very guidelines judges would use on us later in tournaments. We were to pay close attention to everything, but our work was to judge the speech without factual or political consideration, only his delivery skill.

Now, my recollection is he did fine; aside from his accent, which was not a judgeable item, he spoke of “planned obsolescence” a great deal. Enough that it became a bit redundant as to the speech itself, though not to his actual points. Of course, I had to mark that. However, that term stayed with me, and I learned from that, about designing and manufacturing, sales, consumerism, etc., etc. And that term comes to me when something fails after some use, and I think of Jimmy Carter, which reminds me to be all around nicer.

Speaking of this: do you think Jimmy Carter would use the term “enshittification” these days (not in an SOTU, of course!)? Let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoyed my Monday mind’s wanderings!

The 1st Grape Boycott, & Capital Punishment Ruled Unconstitutional, In Peace & Justice History for 7/29

I wasn’t an adult in 1972, but it was a relief to me, that there was no more death penalty! Four years later, it was back, and I cannot explain how that happened. My town had a death penalty trial almost immediately. A teacher had access to an execution film; the state was required to keep that on record for a while, whenever anyone sat on Ol’ Sparky; we viewed it before the trial (no one present was on the jury, of course.) It was medieval. And, here we still are in 2025, killing people in the names of everybody who lives here. There are ways to work against it; let me know if there is interest in comments.

July 29, 1970

Signing the contract
After a five-year strike, the United Farm Workers (UFW) signed a contract with the table grape growers in California, ending the first grape boycott.

Exploring the United Farm Workers’ History
July 29, 1972
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote. The Court called the wide discretion in application of capital punishment, including the appearance of racial bias against black defendants, “arbitrary and capricious” and thus in violation of due process guarantees in the 14th Amendment [see July 28, 1868].
Influence of race on imposition of the death penalty 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july29

Let’s talk about Trump taking money from Nuke programs for his plane….

Light Entertainment From Jeff Tiedrich

You have to go there to read it all, and it’s worth it, but below are some snips that could make the coffee taste a tiny bit better!

Preznit Fuckwit gets the Scottish welcome he deserves by Jeff Tiedrich

he’s such an international embarrassment Read on Substack

oh wait! cheer up, Donny — I finally found a bunch of Scots who are overjoyed at your presence on their home turf! just look at these happy campers!

oh wait [taps earpiece]. I’m being informed now that these are not Scots. apparently this is a file photo from April 2023, of the flag-waving crowd that greeted President Joe Biden when he visited County Mayo, Ireland.

oops, sorry — my bad.

(Note from A: The Mexican flag house story is great, and is on the Substack page, along with lots more juicy stuff that isn’t simply depressing.)

W.E.B. DuBois & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/28

(I should know better than to try to set up this post while I’m making supper. Thanks, WP, not; it’s much easier Any Other Time. 🤬)

July 28, 1868
Passed in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing due process, equal protection of the law, and full citizenship to all males over 21, including former slaves,
went into effect.

Booklet on the 14th Amendment from the Damon Keith Collection of
African-American Legal History at Wayne State University Law School

More on the amendment and the context of post-Civil War Reconstruction 
July 28, 1917

Anti-Lynching Parade in New York City, 1917
W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
Read about W.E.B. DuBois
Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, and the film 
July 28, 1932

Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps
Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression.
More on the Bonus Army  (It’s WaPo; you can read it for free, but you have to sign in)
Film of the confrontation in Washington  (Watch on YouTube for free without sign in)
July 28, 1965

Pfc. John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens.
[Khe Sanh, February 1968.]” Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar. 1968. cover
President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled.
Lyndon Johnson told the
nation
Have no fear of escalation

I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really
war

We’re sending fifty thousand more

To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese
— part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation”
Full lyrics of the song
President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.””
July 28, 1982
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july28