ICE’s Homan Spews Nonstop Lies And Baseless Accusations

Women’s Equality Day, Samantha Smith, & So Very Much More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/26

August 26, 1789
The French National Assembly agreed to document known as the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” It was a set of principles for gauging the legitimacy of any governing system, and included (in summary):
• “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”
“ Those rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression”
“ Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else”
• “The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man”

Declaration des Droits de L’Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen)
• Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society and law is the expression of the general will. “ Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation.”
• No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except when in violation of a public law, all persons are held “innocent until they shall have been declared guilty,” and receive punishments “only as are strictly and obviously necessary”
• The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces, and a “common contribution” is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration, and that public servants are obliged to account for use of those funds
• Property is an “inviolable and sacred right,” and no one shall be deprived thereof

The complete text: 
August 26, 1839
The Amistad (“Friendship”), a Spanish slave ship seized by the 54 Africans who had been carried as cargo on board, landed on Long Island, New York.
The leader of the mutiny was Joseph Cinque, a Mende, from the part of Africa that is now Sierra Leone.

Cinque-one of the revolt leaders

The Amistad 
More on the story of the Amistad
August 26, 1920

The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, officially became part of the U.S. Constitution: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
This day has been known since 1971 as Women’s Equality Day.

More on Women’s Equality Day
The document itself, from the National Archives (And it is still there.)
August 26-29, 1968
Police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey for president inside the Amphitheater.
Club-swinging Chicago police indiscriminately tear-gassed, kicked and beat anti-war demonstrators, delegates, reporters and innocent bystanders outside, arresting 500. 11,900 Chicago police, 7500 Army troops, 7500 Illinois National Guardsmen and 1000 Secret Service agents were ultimately involved.
Protesting what was later officially designated a police riot, members of the Democrats’ Wisconsin delegation attempted to march to the convention hall, but police turned them back.
When Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut) delivered his nominating speech, he infuriated Mayor Richard Daley by saying, 
“with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.”

Julian Bond, the first black member of the previously all-white Georgia state legislature, seconded the nomination of anti-war presidential candidate Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. Bond added that he had seen such police behavior before, but only in segregationist Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
a narrative account
Arthur Miller on the Convention
August 26, 1970
Betty Friedan leads a nationwide protest called the Women’s Strike for Equality in New York City on the fiftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage.
August 26, 1971
Six thousand turned out for a National Organization for Women-organized Women March for Equality in New York City. They were calling for equal rights, including the demand “51 percent of everything,” reflecting women’s proportion of the U.S. population.
This first “Women’s Equality Day,” instituted by Bella Abzug, was established by Presidential Proclamation and reaffirmed annually.
August 26, 1985
Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old from Manchester, Maine, was invited to visit the Soviet Union by its Premier, Yuri Andropov.

Statue of Samantha Smith at the Maine State Library, Augusta, Maine
She had written him a letter asking if the Soviet Union intended to attack the United States. She visited him in the U.S.S.R. and became a young ambassador for peace. She died in an airplane crash at age 13 on this day returning home with her father from a peace mission.

Grade school student, peace activist 1972-1985 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august26

What We Can Do, And What We Can Help Our Leaders Do-

Linked on TenBears’s blog.

A key point: Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

======================================

As Real As It Gets

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 25, 2025

Something Jason Sattler wrote yesterday needs repeating this morning:

Everything we do makes it easier for our neighbors to stand up or sit down for this regime. We all know there’s a crisis coming that will force all who pay attention to make a choice that could define the rest of their lives.

Will people do it? In most cases, it depends on what they see us doing next.

SEE us doing. That’s the key.

How the less-engaged make up their minds about political matters, Anand Giridharadas observed (based on Anat’s work), is more akin to how they decide to buy pants: What’s everyone else wearing this year? What are normal people like me doing? Not in one-and-done big rallies but every day. Your resistance must be visible and persistent for that to work and give the less engaged permission to join the resistance movement. Calling your senator five days a week is fine, but which of your neighbors sees that?

Plus, if you want people to join your party, throw a better party. We’re out in the streets multiple times a week now. I bring dance music.

A friend pointed to this TikTok by someone going by @logicnliberty. She advocates a unified front by blue-state governors with trifectas. It’s not that they are not already unified, coordinating, and suing. They are. Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul are speaking out and holding press conferences. (State AGs too.) But not necessarily as a team. Are they leveraging their trifectas proactively to erect firewalls in their states against Trump’s gutting of the Constitution? They should.

(snip-TikTok video embedded on the page)

Would the press cover it if they did? We are already in the slow civil war Jeff Sharlet described. The blue and the gray meets the blue and the red. Run with it. The press loves controversy. Generate more, blue state governors.

Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

And those actions must be not only public, but in-your-face public. Their actions and yours.

Update: Read it. It’s where your neighbors are.

The human heart hangs on to hope until there’s no other choice. People will not fight back in the ways that will work, until they realize there is no other choice, until the only other choice is their own imprisonment or death, or that of someone they love. For many of us, that moment is already here. But for most of us, it’s not.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 – Labor Day events
May Day Strong Labor Day Events
No King’s One Million Rising movement
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink – Search on Labor Day events near you
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

A Letter To An Editor In Regard To Ottawa PRIDE

(If you click through, you can read Dr. Hogans own story on his page.)

When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder by Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA

null Read on Substack

Narrative Word Count: 289

Bio: Richard Francis Hogan is a Canadian writer, Poet and advocate on several levels based in Ottawa. His work explores hope, resilience, identity, faith, and the quiet power of public spaces.

(snip-personal contact info)

https://richardhogan1.substack.com

Cover Letter for Submission

Subject: Op-Ed Submission: When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder

Dear  Editor,

I am submitting the attached op-ed for consideration in the Ottawa Citizen. It reflects on the recent cancellation of the Ottawa Gay Pride Parade and the deeper cultural and spiritual implications of that absence. As a longtime resident and advocate for inclusive public spaces, I believe this piece speaks to a moment of reflection for our city and its commitment to visibility, dignity, and belonging. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Richard Hogan

(snip-personal contact info)

Full Narrative

When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder

By Richard Francis Hogan

The cancellation of the Ottawa Gay Pride Parade due to protests is more than a logistical decision. It is a cultural silence, a civic absence, a spiritual pause that demands reflection.

For decades, Pride has been more than a celebration. It has been a procession of courage, a public hymn of identity, a communal act of love. It has been where the marginalized found visibility, where joy became resistance, and where the city itself remembered its promise to all its people.

To cancel such a gathering is not merely to postpone an event. It is to interrupt a ritual of belonging.

As a Christian, I believe in the sacredness of every human soul. As a Buddhist, I recognize the impermanence of all things—but also the importance of showing up, again and again, with compassion. And as someone with Irish blood, I know that humor and heartache often walk hand in hand. We laugh because we’ve cried. We march because we’ve been still for too long.

This year, there will be no rainbow flags waving down Bank Street. No music echoing through Centretown. No cheers from sidewalks lined with families, allies, and elders who remember when Pride was a protest, not a party.

But let us not confuse absence with apathy.

Let us write, speak, gather, and remember. Let us honor those who came before, and those who still wait to be seen. Let us make sure that when the parade returns, it does so not just with glitter—but with grit.

Because Pride is not a date on the calendar. It is a declaration of dignity.

And dignity, like love, does not disappear. It waits. It endures. It marches on.

Mahatma Gandhi, Baltic Hands, in Peace & Justice History for 8/23

August 23, 1933
Mahatma Gandhi, weighing only 90 pounds, was released unconditionally from Sassoon Hospital in Poona because, after 5 days of his latest “fast unto death,” the doctors feared that his body could no longer stand the strain of fasting.
He had been taken to the hospital from Yeravda jail, which he had described as his “permanent address,” when he started his fast. He was protesting official refusal to allow him to continue his work with the Untouchables (he had called them harijan, or “children of God”) while in prison.


Gandhi leaving hospital, 1933
He had deliberately courted arrest, rejecting an order permitting him to reside only within the limits of Poona, and had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
Gandhi and his fasts 
August 23, 1945
In a letter to his friend Anne Marie Petersen shortly before the end of British colonial rule in India, Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “When there is independence, why should you fear the majority? If you have God with you and the majority have not, should you still fear? And if both have God between them who should fear whom? Is there then any question of majority and minority?
Let us pray.
Love.
Bapu”
August 23, 1989
Over one million joined hands across the three Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in a 400-mile-long chain of resistance against control by the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
It was the 60th anniversary of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany who had negotiated it.
Generally called the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it secretly agreed to Soviet control of Latvia and Estonia, and German influence over Poland and Lithuania. Germany, again secretly, later ceded control over Lithuania to the Soviets for 7.5 million dollars in gold ($115 in 2008 dollars).


Baltic hands
The Baltic Way  (with pictures of the action)

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august23

Nat Turner, Prague Spring, Benigno Aquino, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/21

August 21, 1831

Nat Turner, a 30-year-old man legally owned by a child, and six other slaves began a violent insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia.They began by killing the child’s stepfather, Joseph Travis, and his family. Within the next 24 hours, Turner and, ultimately, about 40 followers killed the families who owned adjacent slaveholding properties, nearly 60 whites, while freeing and inciting other slaves to join them.Militia and federal troops were called out, and the uprising was suppressed with 55 African Americans including Turner executed by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia, and hundreds more killed by white mobs and vigilantes in revenge.
More about Nat Turner
Nat Turner’s confession 
August 21, 1968
The Czechoslovakian people spontaneously and nonviolently resisted invasion of their country of 14 million by hundreds of thousands of troops and 5000+ tanks from the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact countries.The troops were enforcing the overthrow and arrest of Alexander Dubcek and his government. They had been implementing significant democratic reforms known collectively as “socialism with a human face,” or the Prague Spring.
 
Cover of the magazine Kvety, with a photograph of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague. Graffiti on the statue reads “Soldiers go home” in Russian and “Dubcek – Svoboda” in Czech.

Hundreds attempted to obstruct invading tanks.
Both Czechs and Slovaks argued with the soldiers and refused all cooperation with the occupying armies while showing broad support for the deposed government and its reform program. Moscow relented and returned Dubcek to office, at least temporarily.
Prague Spring in retrospect
Czech perspective 
August 21, 1971
Two grenades killed and wounded members of the leadership of the Philippines’ Liberal Party during a rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos accused a leader of the party, Benigno Aquino, of the bombing and arrested him, labeling him a communist. Liberal Party Secretary-General Aquino, an effective young leader and Marcos opponent, was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for seven years until allowed exile to the U.S., ostensibly for medical treatment.
August 21, 1976
Approximately 20,000 people, mainly women, from both Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended a Peace People’s rally at Ormeau Park.
August 21, 1983
Exiled popular Philippine political leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated by soldiers of the Aviation Security Command as he crossed the tarmac at Manila International Airport.

Benigno Aquino
He had spent three years of asylum in the U.S. Upon his return, he intended to lead the political opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos and the martial law he had imposed.
During the plane trip across the Pacific, he had commented to reporters, 
“I suppose there’s a physical danger because you know assassination’s part of public service . . . My feeling is we all have to die sometime and if it’s my fate to die by an assassin’s bullet, so be it.”

Hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Marcos.


Ferdinand Marcos
The Aquino funeral drew millions and gave impetus to the broad-based People’s Power movement which eventually forced Marcos from power.
Read more about Aquino 
August 21, 1991
A coup against Soviet Union President Mikhail S. Gorbachev by hard-line Communist Party members (State Emergency Committee), collapsed in the face of popular opposition. Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, having quit the Party the previous year, had called for a general strike.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev | Boris N.Yelsin
August 21, 1998
Samuel Bowers, the 73-year-old former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, of ordering a firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer 32 years before. Bowers had also been instrumental in the killing of three other civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi for which he was never charged.
On Vernon Dahmer’s tombstone are the words,
“If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

Samuel Bowers
32 years to justice

Dahmer’s home after the bombing

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august21

And From Lit Hub, “This Week In Literary History”

(It’s a newsletter I receive, and I don’t have a link for what I’ve copied and am pasting, but there are links within the piece. Enjoy.)

AUGUST 17 — AUGUST 23
Angela Davis debuts on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
In 1969, the legendary author and activist Angela Davis was a newly minted assistant philosophy processor at UCLA. But she was also an avowed Communist, and as a result, then-Governor Ronald Regan tried to have her fired before she’d begun any actual teaching. No luck: Davis’s dismissal didn’t hold up in court, and her first class had to be moved to a bigger classroom to accommodate the 2,000 students who had signed up for it—but she would finally be fired again nine months later, for “inflammatory rhetoric” in public speeches.  Davis was an outspoken supporter of the Black Panthers and was fervently against the Vietnam War, but arguably her most scandalous activist activities at the time were in defense of the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates imprisoned in Soledad, CA, who were accused of killing a white guard. In 1970, guns registered to Davis were used in an attack on the nearby Marin County Civic Center; the perpetrators hoped to take hostages to bargain for the inmates’ release, but instead left four casualties. Davis, despite not being at the scene, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges. She couldn’t be found, and so on August 18, 1970, by order of J. Edgar Hoover, Davis became the third woman ever to be included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Eight weeks later, Davis was finally arrested in a New York motel; the trial that followed catapulted her to international fame—and turned her into a revolutionary icon—as her supporters, who viewed her as a political prisoner, chanted “Free Angela!” across the globe.In 1972, after 16 months in prison, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. “It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Miss Davis,” noted one of her attorneys, Howard Moore Jr., but it shouldn’t have. “Justice should be the routine of the system,” he added.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism

Angela Davis on International Solidarity and the Impacts of Black Radicalism

Angela Davis on Protest, 1968, andHer Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuse
THIS IS WHY THEY BAN IT:
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ”
–Angela Davis

So Far, So Good-

It’s Not Only The One Or Two, After All-

More than 2.8m people in US identify as trans, including 724,000 youth, data shows

Exclusive: largest data analysis of its kind counters Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny trans minors’ existence

View image in fullscreen A protester is silhouetted against a trans pride flag during a pro-transgender rights protest outside of Seattle children’s hospital on 9 February. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/AP

More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state.

The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities.

The report builds on federal data collection efforts that the White House is now eliminating. The authors warn their study could be the last comprehensive portrait of the nation’s trans population for a decade or more as trans people are erased from vital US surveys, including health reports and crime data analyses.

The Williams Institute primarily relied on data from 2021 to 2023 from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys and records disclosed by state health agencies. Some of the key findings include:

  • 1% of the total US population ages 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults (more than 2.1 million people) and 3.3% of youth ages 13 to 17 (roughly 724,000 people).
  • Young adults ages 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as trans (2.72%) than those 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those 65 and older (0.26%).
  • Of the 2.1 million trans adults, 32.7% (698,500) are trans women, 34.2% (730,500) are trans men and 33.1% (707,100) are trans non-binary people.
  • The trans populations are fairly consistent across regions, with 0.9% of adults in the west, midwest and north-east identifying as trans, compared with 0.7% of adults in the south.
  • Minnesota had the highest rate of adults who identify as trans (1.2%), and Hawaii had the highest rate of trans youth (3.6%), though the ranges were similar across states.

“Trans people live everywhere and are represented in every state,” said Dr Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and co-author of the report, noting the total US trans population was greater than the individual populations of more than a dozen states. “This is a substantial population that has unique concerns and barriers to getting their needs met, and lawmakers need to keep that in mind.”

The Williams Institute, a leading LGBTQ+ policy research center, has published national trans population counts since its 2011 report, which was the first of its kind as state-level data on gender identity became available. The estimates are considered the best available data and were cited by the US supreme court in its recent majority opinion upholding Tennessee’s ban on trans youth healthcare.

The quality and sources of the researchers’ data have improved from one report to the next, the researchers said, making it difficult to assess changes over time. But the researchers noted that the overall estimates of trans adults have remained relatively steady, while the latest data shows how younger people are now significantly more likely to identify as trans than older groups.

There are many factors contributing to youth identifying as trans at higher rates, including that younger people are more likely to answer these kinds of survey questions, said Dr Andrew Flores, Williams Institute distinguished visiting scholar and associate professor of government at American University.

“Younger people are growing up among other younger people who already hold more accepting attitudes toward LGBT and transgender people more broadly,” said Flores, a report co-author, citing increasingly visible signs of support, such as student walkouts in Florida in protest of anti-trans policies. “In this generation, they might be more willing and safe to identify that they are transgender, because they don’t see as much of a harm or threat as older generations.”

While some conservatives and anti-trans advocates have presented a reported rise in trans youth as a “social contagion”, suggesting youth are copying their peers, “the growth comes as people are now in an environment that allows them to fully express who they are,” Flores said.

Shifting language also affects generational differences, he said, noting how older groups were more likely to identify as lesbian or gay while younger people are more likely to identify as bisexual or pansexual. And while older trans people are more likely to identify as men or women, younger trans people more frequently identify as non-binary.

The report also found that the race and ethnicity of trans people was largely similar to broader US demographics, with Indigenous, Latino and multiracial adults slightly more likely to identify as trans than other groups.

The Trump administration, which has widely attacked data collection efforts across government, has moved to remove trans identity questions from two critical CDC behavioral health surveys and from Department of Justice surveys on crime victimization and sexual violence. The US Census Bureau has also taken steps to exclude gender identity from multiple surveys, according to the former director who resigned in February.

Those efforts followed Trump’s day-one executive order “restoring biological truth” to the government, which suggested that trans identity was “false” and directed the state department to deny trans people accurate passports.

The data loss will make it impossible for the Williams Institute to continue its analyses in their current form, and even if the next administration restored the surveys, the public would still be losing up to 10 years of data, which would be a devastating erosion of knowledge, the researchers said.

“We didn’t really have decent national data until around 10 years ago, so we just very recently got a grasp on how many people identify as trans in the US and what their characteristics are,” said Herman. “For these data sources to just suddenly disappear, it is a major setback. The population is not going to go away; we’re just not going to know more about them than what we have from our current sources.”

The data has frequently been cited by journalists, school boards, public health experts, civil rights lawyers, advocates fighting discriminatory legislation and lawmakers expanding trans rights. The researchers had hoped federal data could help illuminate how trans people were moving within the US as some have fled red states due to anti-trans laws, but that will be hard to track without national surveys, they said.

“In some policy circles, they say if you can’t be counted, you don’t count,” Flores added. “And for members of the LGBTQ+ community, to be able to see numbers that reflect their lived experiences is quite important.”

Imara Jones, founder of news organization TransLash Media, said there was no easy fix for the loss of national data backed by federal resources.

“It is meant to erase, and that erasure is meant to have real-world impacts, making it harder for people to be who they are,” Jones said.

Flores said the institute and others were discussing ways to fill the gaps and continue data collection without the federal government: “We’re not just going to close up shop. We’re going to try to find a way to keep telling these stories and be persistent.”

I could use some Watermelon Wine

Hi All. These pictures caught my attention and each put a smile on my face. When I realized they were affecting my spirit like this I knew I had to share them with you all. As I was getting the post ready, I found I had this song going through my mind sung by the consummate story teller, Tom T. Hall. I miss this type of peaceful music. I hope this post brings you a touch of peace today. -randy

First Enslaved Africans Arrive in VA, & The Equal Opportunity Act Is Signed, In Peace & Justice History for 8/20

August 20, 1619
The first enslaved Africans brought to North America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship.
August 20, 1964
A nearly $1 billion (about $5 billion in current dollars) anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and other programs that became part of the “War on Poverty,” was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.


Sargent Shriver & LBJ
Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, drafted the legislation and became director of the Office of Equal Opportunity which implemented the new law.
The “Great Society” 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august20