Category: Death

Peace & Justice History for 9/1

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september1

September 1, 1939
Nazi Germany invaded Poland, overwhelming the Polish Army with 58 German divisions and air cover from the German air force, the Luftwaffe. This action started the second world war, prompting England and France to declare war on Germany two days later.
September 1, 1945

The Emperor of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the U.S. and its allies in a ceremony on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, ending the second world war.
September 1, 1986
Angelo (Charlie) Liteky & George Mizo, both Vietnam veterans, began an open-ended Fast For Life on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They were calling attention to their opposition to U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras and repressive regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala.

“our expression of a deeply felt desire to do everything and anything we can . . . to stop the war with Nicaragua.”
Charles Liteky, George Mizo
Liteky was a Catholic chaplain in the Vietnam War and had received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Charles Liteky and his subsequent peace efforts 
September 1, 1987
During a nonviolent protest at the Concord (California) Naval Weapons Station, a Navy munitions train ran over Brian Willson.
An Air Force and Vietnam veteran, Willson and the other protesters were attempting to stop shipment of weapons to Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Brian Willson bird-watching California, 1997.

They considered U.S. policy in Central America a violation of the Nuremberg Principles. (Here is a link to those principles)
Willson lost both legs and suffered other injuries but has remained an active and articulate leader in the anti-military movement.

Ron Kovic (author ‘Born on the Fourth of July’)
and Brian Willson (also born on the Fourth of July)
Willson’s testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations
September 1, 1989
White House staffers decided to purchase some crack cocaine so President George H.W. Bush could hold the illegal drug in his hands during a national address. On the first attempt, the drug dealer didn’t show up. On the second try, an undercover drug agent’s body microphone didn’t work. Trying for the third time, Bush’s team managed to purchase the crack, but the camera operator videotaping the deal missed the action as a homeless person assaulted him.
September 1, 1997
Kurdish and British activists blockaded an arms trade exhibition outside London. 89 members of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT)were arrested for protesting the presence of Turkish, Chinese and Indonesian government representatives in Britain to purchase weapons. The Labour government had pledged “[We will] not permit the sale of arms to regimes that could use them for internal repression or external aggression . . . .” Great Britain is the world’s second largest arms manufacturer (by dollar volume) after the U.S.
Campaign Against the Arms Trade home 
September 1
– International Day of War Tax Resistance.
“Refusing to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied for warfare…”
War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee

Kansas women rally adjacent to J.D. Vance fundraiser, with vulnerable plea for reproductive rights

By: Grace Hills – August 24, 2024 8:28 am

First some content warning; the article has a warning that it references rape. The article is below, but I’ll leave some space here; the first mention is in the first sentence beneath their warning. The article will be beneath the Xs; I can’t get formatting to leave space. Also, Sen. Marshall lies like a Trump.

Amber Dickinson spoke on reproductive rights at the "Kansas Women for Harris" rally Aug. 22. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)

 Amber Dickinson speaks on reproductive rights at the “Kansas Women for Harris” rally Aug. 22, 2024, in Leawood. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)

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Trigger warning: This story references rape. 

Help is available. 

LEAWOOD — Amber Dickinson took a personal and vulnerable stand for reproductive freedom as she talked publicly for the first time about being raped.

Before her speech Thursday in Leawood at a rally of “Kansas Women for Kamala Harris,” only a handful of people knew she is a survivor. Through tears, she explained that she was worried she would stand in front of strangers and cry, when she was supposed to be strong.

“But whose definition of strong are we obligated to adhere to? It is time that women create their own definition of strength,” Dickinson said. “Because strength is not sexually abusing women like Donald Trump. Strength is not belittling women like J.D. Vance.”

Dickinson, a political science professor at Washburn University who has written opinion columns for Kansas Reflector, joined speakers who highlighted the ways Harris’ and former President Donald Trump’s policies affect Kansans. The rally was a counter-protest to Vance’s nearby fundraiser, where Republicans claimed he raised $1.5 million.

Dickinson spoke on reproductive rights, highlighting experiences of women in Oklahoma, a neighboring state with a total abortion ban. She spoke of a fetus found in an Oklahoma college residence hall bathroom. She said this is what the future looks like “if you allow wicked men like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump get what they want from us.”

After Dickinson spoke on reproductive rights, other women spoke on gun safety and funding in public schools. 

Kristen Blackton, a former middle school teacher and part of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said she witnessed the rise of mass shootings in schools, resulting in her students asking her: “Can you protect us?”

“In our state, in Kansas, the rate of gun deaths has increased 48% from 2013 to 2022 and gun violence also disproportionately affects communities of color, with Black people in Kansas being over two times more likely to die by guns than white people in Kansas,” Blackton said. “This is not normal.”

Child paints a "we're with her" sign at the "Kansas Women for Kamala Harris" rally on Aug. 22. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)
 A child paints a “we’re with her” sign at the “Kansas Women for Kamala Harris” rally on Aug. 22, 2024, in Leawood. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)

She talked about legislation introduced by Rep. Linda Featherston, D-Overland Park, that would make safe storage of firearms a requirement. Blackton and other Moms from the group pushed for the bill, which failed to advance.

“Do you know why? We currently have a Republican supermajority in Topeka,” Blackton said. “This means that Republican lawmakers often act like they have no need to listen to their constituents and work across the aisle to improve the lives of Kansans.”

Rep. Mari-Lynn Poskin, D-Leawood, spoke about Moms for Liberty, a group that is known for challenging books in public schools.

Poskin praised Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend formerly a whites-only school after Brown v. Board, as a Civil Rights icon. Poskin said she donated copies of “Ruby Bridges’ Walk to School,” a children’s book written by Bridges, to local elementary schools.

“Moms for Liberty attempted to ban this sweet book from the second and third grade curriculums in the state of Tennessee,” Poskin said. “And if you don’t think it’s coming here, you’re wrong.”

Ten miles away from the Democratic women rally, at Indian Hills Country Club in Mission Hills, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance dined with donors who paid $5,000 to $50,000 to attend. Former U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kansas U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall and Oklahoma U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin also were part of the fundraiser.

Mike Brown, chairman for the Kansas Republican Party, called the dinner a “huge success” in the party’s weekly newsletter Friday. Brown said more than 300 people attended, and raised $1.5 million.

On Tuesday, Marshall told KWCH, a radio station in Wichita, that he has heard from Kansans whose top concerns are inflation, border security, and government overregulation.

Peace & Justice History for 8/29

August 29, 1758
The first Indian reservation, Brotherton, was established in New Jersey. A tract of three thousand acres of land was purchased at Edge Pillock, in Burlington County. The treaty of 1758 required the Delaware Tribes, in exchange for the land, to renounce all further claim to lands anywhere else in New Jersey, except for the right to fish in all the rivers and bays north of the Raritan River, and to hunt on unenclosed land. History Of The Brotherton Reservation 
August 29, 1949
The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in a test at Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan. It was known as Joe 1 after Josef Stalin, then General Secretary of the Communist Party.
” Joe 1, the first Soviet atomic bomb
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, key developer of the Soviet bomb, later worked for peace

August 29, 1957
Following consultations among the NATO allies and other nations, the Western (non-Communist) countries presented to the United Nations a working paper entitled, “Proposals for Partial Measures of Disarmament,” intended as “a practical, workable plan to start on world disarmament.” The plan proposed stopping all nuclear testing, halting production of nuclear weapons materials, starting a reduction in nuclear weapons stockpiles, reducing the danger of surprise attack through warning systems, and beginning reductions in armed forces and armaments.
August 29, 1957
African Americans in Milledgeville, Georgia, wait in line to vote following the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
The U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first such law since reconstruction. The bill established a Civil Rights Commission which was given the authority to investigate discriminatory conditions. A Civil Rights Division was created in the Department of Justice, allowing federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote, among other things.In an ultimately futile attempt to block passage, then-Democrat, former Dixiecrat, and later Republican Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set the all-time filibuster record: 24 hours, 19 minutes of non-stop speaking on the floor of the Senate.
A filibuster is the deliberate use of prolonged debate and procedural delaying tactics to block action supported by a majority of members. It can only be stopped with a 60% majority voting to end debate.
Senator Strom Thurmond with his 24-hour filibustering speech
August 29, 1961
Robert Moses, leader of SNCC
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was pursuing its voter registration drive in Amite County, Mississippi. Of 5000 eligible Negro voters in the county, just one was registered to vote. SNCC leader Robert Moses was attacked and beaten this day outside the registrar’s office while trying to sign up two voters. Nine stitches were required but the three white assailants were acquitted.
Hear Moses recall the time 
August 29, 1970
Between 15 and 30 thousand predominantly Chicanos (Americans of Mexican descent) gathered in East LA’s Laguna Park as the culmination of the Chicano National Moratorium. It was organized by Rosalio Munoz and others to protest the disproportionate number of deaths of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam (more than double their numbers in the population).

There had been more than 20 other such demonstrations in Latino communities across the southwest in recent months.
Three died when the anti-war march turned violent. The Los Angeles Police Department attacked and one gunshot, fired into the Silver Dollar Bar, killed Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times columnist and a commentator on KMEX-TV (he had been accused by the LAPD of inciting the Chicano community).
The Chicano Moratorium 
Ruben Salazar LA Times 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august29

Let’s talk about Trump’s withdrawal claims and 18 months….

Peace & Justice History 8/25

August 25, 1969
Company A of the 3rd Battalion, the 196th Light Brigade, refused to advance further into the Songchang Valley of Vietnam after five days of heavy casualties; their number had been reduced from 150 to 60.
This was one of hundreds of mutinies among troops during the war.
“He [President Nixon] is also carrying on the battle in the belief, or pretense, that the South Vietnamese will really be able to defend their country and our democratic objectives [sic] when we withdraw, and even his own generals don’t believe the South Vietnamese will do it.” –James Reston in the New York Times
GI resistance in the Vietnam War: https://libcom.org/article/gi-resistance-vietnam-war

(Note from A: Sometimes, people recall things that don’t make it into these newsletters. I referred someone one time to the page, where you can contact the owner/writers, and let them know. They appreciate that, and you’ll see the item next time! Just in case.)

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august251969

Let’s talk about updates, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia….

Let’s talk about Walz’s time in Afghanistan….

Peace & Justice History for 8/19

August 19, 1791

Benjamin Banneker, the first recognized African-American scientist, a son of former slaves, sent a copy of his just-published Almanac to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal about “the injustice of a state of slavery.”
More about Benjamin Banneker, his achievements and his letter to the president
August 19, 1953
Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq
Royalist troops surrounded, bombarded and burned the residence of the Mohammed Mosaddeq, the recently dismissed elected Iranian Prime Minister. After having briefly fled his country for Italy due to the rioting over his unconstitutional dismissal of Mosaddeq, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was returned to the Peacock throne with dictatorial power. All this was done with the planning, financing and assistance of the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.

Background on Mosaddeq
Stephen Kinzer on the U.S.-Iran relationship in perspective 
August 19, 1958
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council in Oklahoma City, led by Clara Luper, a high school history teacher, began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, inspired by success in Wichita, Kansas.
[see August 11, 1958].

Clara Luper
TV interview with Clara Luper  More about Clara 
August 19, 1970
The U.S. deployed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles near Greeley, Colorado. It was the first missile with multiple (then three-170 kiloton) nuclear warheads known as MIRVs (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles).

The MIRV: each cone is a warhead
All the details about this fearsome armament 
August 19, 1989

Anglican Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu was among hundreds of black demonstrators, members of Mass Democratic Movement who were whipped and blasted with sand stirred up by helicopters as they attempted to picnic on a “whites-only” beach near Cape Town, South Africa.

Peace & Justice History for 8/18

I’ve been away from the computer a lot again today, and I apologize. I’ve had ideas, decided against them, maybe one or two will still make it but another day, you know how it goes. I would be unforgiveably remiss to not post this history for this date, though, so here it is!

August 18, 1914
In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar. Chronology of the Armenian Genocide
❎💃🥂⭐🥂💃❎
August 18, 1920
Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890.

This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before. “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.” In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification.  At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage.
“
Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives)
August 18, 1963
 James Meredith
James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards.
.
James Meredith being escorted to his classes by
U.S. marshals and the military.  Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964
South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system.
Read more 
August 18, 1977
Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed.

Steve Biko
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.””The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971

Peace & Justice History for 8/16

August 16, 1953
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the constitutional monarch of Iran, dismissed the elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, without the approval of the parliament. In appointing Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi in his place, the Shah was following the coup plan, code-named TPAJAX, developed by the CIA under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore), and Great Britain’s intelligence service, MI6.
About Mohammad Mosaddeq:  https://www.iranchamber.com/history/mmosaddeq/mohammad_mosaddeq.php
The real story according to CIA records: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/ciacase/EXL.pdf

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August 16, 1963
Buddhists staged protests across South Vietnam against the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who removed Buddhists from important government positions and replaced them with Catholics. Buddhist monks protested Diem’s intolerance of other religions and the methods he used to silence them. Several Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest of the war being waged against insurgents in the south, and against North Vietnam.
The Buddist monk Quang Duc became the first to kill himself in an anti-government protest in Vietnam in June, 1963 20,000 Buddhists in silent march for peace, Hue, South Vietnam. 1966