Category: Diversity / Inclusivity

Peace & Justice History for 10/16:

It is World Food Day. (Among other things; this is a busy date!)

October 16, 1649
The British colony of Maine granted religious freedom to all citizens the same year that King Charles I was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church.
October 16, 1859
Abolitionist John Brown led a group of 21 other men, five black and sixteen white, in a raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
They had hoped to set off a slave revolt — throughout the south — with the weapons they had planned to seize.
 John Brown
Virtually all his compatriots were killed or captured by General Robert E. Lee’s troops; Brown was wounded and arrested, and hanged for treason within two months.
Read more
  
The Tragic Prelude (John Brown)mural by John Steuart Curry (1937-1942)
Former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said of Brown that he was a white man “in sympathy a black man, as deeply interested in our cause as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.”
October 16, 1901
President Theodore Roosevelt
President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute and the most prominent African American of his time, to a meeting in the White House. The meeting went long and the president asked Washington to stay for dinner, the first black person ever to do so. Newspapers in the both the South and North were critical, but the South with more venom. The Memphis “Scimiter” said that it was “the most damnable outrage that has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States.” Roosevelt claimed he had invited a friend to dinner with his family and it was no one else’s business.
Booker T. Washington
October 16, 1934
Dick Sheppard, who volunteered and joined the Army as a chaplain in World War I, started the Peace Pledge Union in England. In a letter published in The Guardian newspaper and elsewhere, Sheppard, a well-known priest in the Church of England, invited those who would be willing to join a public demonstration against war to send him a postcard. Within a few weeks he had received 30,000 replies. Members of the Peace Pledge Union vowed to “renounce war and never again to support another.”

Reverend Sheppard had been the first ever to broadcast religious services on the radio and, when Vicar of St. Martin-in-the Fields, Trafalgar Square, he had opened the building to the homeless of London.“Up to now the peace movement has received its main support from women, but it seems high time now that men should throw their weight into the scales against war.” -Dick Sheppard
Read more about the Peace Pledge Union 
October 16, 1964
China detonated its first atomic bomb, becoming the fifth nuclear-armed nation. The 20-kiloton fission device (equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT) was detonated in the vicinity of Lop Nor, a lake in a remote region of the Central Asian province of Sinkiang.
” To defend oneself is the inalienable right of every sovereign State. And to safeguard world peace is the common task of all peace-loving countries. China cannot remain idle and do nothing in the face of the ever-increasing nuclear threat posed by the United States.China is forced to conduct nuclear tests and develop nuclear weapons . . . In developing nuclear weapons, China’s aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear Powers and to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Chou En-lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, sent messages to all heads of government for a world summit conference on nuclear disarmament. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a news conference that the United States did not regard Communist China’s proposal “as having any practical value.”Deng Jiaxian. The father of the chinese bomb.
TRINITY AND BEYOND™ (The Atomic Bomb Movie), a documentary by Peter Kuran
October 16, 1967

Joan Baez the day after the arrest
Folksinger Joan Baez was arrested in a peace demonstration as rallies took place across America during “Stop the Draft Week.” 1158 young men returned their draft cards in eighteen U.S. cities. Baez was among 122 anti-draft protesters arrested for sitting down at the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California; she was sentenced to 10 days in prison.
Read more 
October 16, 1968
During medal presentations at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, winning sprinters Tommie Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) raised their black-gloved fists while the U.S. national anthem was played. They were suspended from the team at the insistence of the International Olympic Committee, and expelled from the Games two days later.
Smith later told the media that he raised his right fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos’s left fist represented unity in black America.
They were wearing just socks to represent
world poverty.

Peter Norman (silver medalist, left) from Australia also wears an OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge in solidarity with Smith and Carlos. He was castigated upon return to Australia and throughout his life for his support of these two brave athletes.
Read more 
October 16, 1973
Henry Kissinger
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, though accused of war crimes by some for the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho (who refused the honor) for the cease-fire agreement they had negotiated. This occurred just a month after the bloody military coup, fully supported by the Nixon administration and aided by the CIA, that overturned the democratically elected government of Chile, and installed General Augusto Pinochet as military dictator for the next 17 years.
October 16, 1984

Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of South Africa, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in fighting apartheid. He has gone on to be a relentless advocate for justice around the world.
Desmond Tutu – Nobel peace prize recipient 
October 16, 1998
In a human rights and international law breakthrough, British authorities, after receiving an extradition request from Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, placed former Chilean dictator, and senator-for-life, General Augusto Pinochet under arrest for “crimes of genocide and terrorism that include murder.”
Augusto Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher
Chronology of Pinochet’s rule 
October 16th every year
United Nations’ World Food Day is recognized every year.
About the annual day of hunger awareness

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october16

Peace & Justice History for 10/15:

October 15, 1965
In demonstrations organized by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning of a draft card in the United States took place.

David Miller burning his draft card, 1965.
These demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across the country. In New York City, David Miller, a young Catholic pacifist, became the first U.S. war protester to burn his draft card, doing so in direct violation of a recently passed federal law forbidding such acts. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation later arrested him; he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
Memoirs of a Draft-Card Burner 
October 15, 1966

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California. Its revolutionary agenda, and the fact that its members, all U.S. citizens, were armed, prompted FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to refer to it as as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”
First 6 members – Top Left to Right: Elbert “Big Man” Howard; Huey P. Newton, Sherman Forte, Chairman, Bobby Seale.
Read the Panthers’ Ten Point Platform and Program:

Bobby Seale(L) and Huey Newton(R)
Black Panther Party Legacy and Alumni 
Black Panther Party pin
October 15, 1966
The “Endangered Species Preservation Act” became law. It allowed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to identify plant and animal varieties threatened with extinction, and to acquire land to preserve their habitats.
How the law has evolved 
October 15, 1969
22 million took part in the National Moratorium, a protest against the continuing war in Vietnam. This was an effort by David Hawk and Sam Brown, two anti-war activists, to forge a broad-based movement against the war.The organization initially focused its effort on 300 college campuses, but the idea soon grew and spread beyond colleges and universities. Hawk and Brown were assisted by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which was instrumental in organizing the nationally coordinated demonstrations.

One of the largest of the many events involved 100,000 people converging on Boston Common, but activities nationwide also included smaller rallies, marches, and prayer vigils. The demonstrations involved a broad spectrum of the population, including many who had never before raised their voices against the war. This was considered unprecedented: Walter Cronkite (then CBS news anchor) called it “historic in its scope. Never before had so many demonstrated their hope for peace.”
Later, a declassified Kissinger (then Nixon’s National Security Advisor) file revealed that these protests discouraged a plan by Nixon to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
Read more  
Reissued: The original Vietnam Moratoium Peace Dove button

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october15

Peace & Justice History for 10/14:

October 14, 1943
As the result of an uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, about 300 of its Jewish prisoners escaped, though only about 50 survived until the end of the war.Following the escape, the remaining inmates were killed and the camp was promptly closed by the Germans. Though Sobibor’s six gas chambers could exterminate 1200 people at a time, it was the smallest of the death camps.
Some of the people who took part in the uprising at Sobibor (picture taken in 1944).
The story of Sobibor 
October 14, 1979

The first national gay and lesbian march for civil rights in Washington, D.C., drew over 100,000 demanding an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people.
More info about the March 
October 14, 1981
Dock workers in Darwin, Australia, began a seven-day strike, refusing to load uranium on board “Pacific Sky” for eventual use by the U.S. military. After a week, the ship was forced to leave without its cargo.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october14

Vote Blue-From Janet

Understanding the Threat to Trans People: A Call to Vote

Peace & Justice History for 10/12:

October 12, 1492

Natives of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October 12, 1945
Pfc. Desmond Doss became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays. On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them, one by one, down a 400-foot cliff.

The guest house at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor.
Read more (includes movie trailer)
October 12, 1958
A Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally.

From Georgia PBS 
October 12, 1967
British zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist’s perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo.
Read more 
October 12, 1967
“A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to do the same.”
This document became the main basis for the federal government’s criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin.
Read the Call 
October 12, 1970
Lt. William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident. 
The full sad story 

   
Lt. Calley
October 12, 1977
“Regents of the University of California v. Bakke” was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke’s application for admission to its medical school?
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october12

ABC’s Bird Library 

Rock Wren

“Pebbled Pathways”

Rock Wren

OT Distraction Stuff About A Good Human/Genius I Admire

Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

Transgender Youth-reblog from Janet:

“We need cis allies to speak up for us. Vote to remove the bigots from positions of power. The biggest thing you can possibly do right now is to vote. Vote for Democrats. Because, no, they aren’t perfect, and no one is. But they are a darn sight better than the alternative.”

Suicide Rates Among Transgender Youth: A Call to Action

They’re part of a community ‘who have the most to lose.’ So they’re showing up for Harris.

(Note from Ali: I’ve seen a couple of headlines that the Don’s campaign plans to run heavy anti-trans ads in the swing states. I’ve used all my free NYT articles for life, but they have a story about it. So this is of interest to All Women.)

Black trans women are a small subset of trans voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate — but they’re also longtime leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement who know what’s at stake.

Originally published by The 19th

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Five years ago, Democratic presidential primary hopeful Kamala Harris stepped onto a stage at a CNN LGBTQ+ town hall in Los Angeles.

“My pronouns are she, her and hers,” Harris said in her introduction.

Offering her pronouns, which wasn’t nearly as commonplace in 2019 as it is now, showed solidarity with transgender and nonbinary Americans. It was a simple but impactful gesture for a community in the midst of an unprecedented homicide crisis, whose rights and humanity had been challenged by former President Donald Trump, who was in office at the time, and other Republicans

In standing shoulder to shoulder with transgender people, Harris began to shift a relationship that had been dogged by decisions of her past, like her support for bills cracking down on sex work during her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco and, while California’s attorney general, her state’s opposition to gender-affirming care for an incarcerated transgender woman in 2015.

Today, Black transgender women, some of the same people who questioned her candidacy five years ago, are supporting Harris on and off the campaign trail. One way they have shown up is by raising money and drumming up support, like a Zoom call in August that was joined by more than 1,000 transgender people, the brainchild of veteran Black trans activist Zahara Bassett.

“I felt that we need to let people know that our voices are at the ballot,” Bassett said. “When we speak to you about our rights, about our visibility of being here, that needs to be respected.” 

Bassett enlisted the help of several trans luminaries, including Precious Davis, who had long heard criticism of Harris among her LGBTQ+ peers. Davis, chief strategy officer of Center on Halsted, Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ community center, said she knew it would be critical for Black trans women to show up for Harris, in part as a way of signaling to Black trans women and queer communities they had permission to vote for the vice president.

“We are a part of a community who have the most to lose,” Davis said of Black trans women. “Our rights and freedom are at stake. We have seen Donald Trump’s attacks against the trans community time and time again.”

Many LGBTQ+ advocates have argued that even if Harris has room for growth on LGBTQ+ issues, it’s nearly impossible to compare her with Trump, who regularly misgenders trans women and refers to trans people as “insane.” 

“I will say that I would rather have a fighting chance with her than have no chance at all with Trump,” said Hope Giselle-Godsey, executive director of the National Trans Visibility March, another organizer of the Zoom call for Harris. 

While she was roundly criticized four years ago for mixing up language in referring to transgender women, overall, Harris’ record on LGBTQ+ rights is largely viewed positively. She provided some of the earliest support for marriage equality of any presidential hopeful when, as district attorney in San Francisco, in 2004 she officiated a same-sex wedding in California. She also opposed so-called gay and trans “panic defenses,” where perpetrators attempted to claim that fear or disgust of LGBTQ+ people was reasonable motivation for attacking them. 

She lost significant ground going into 2020 after her support of FOSTA/SESTA, a  2018 package of bills that aimed to crack down on websites used by sex workers. Transgender people are disproportionately forced into underground economies like sex work due to a lack of employment opportunities.  

Trump, however, has fared much worse. During his four years as president, the National Center for Transgender Equality labeled his cabinet the “Discrimination Administration” and the media advocacy group GLAAD logged 210 attacks on queer people. He also barred transgender people from serving in the military, banned Pride flag displays at embassies and gutted transgender health care protections under the Affordable Care Act, among other things. 

Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of the Brave Space Alliance, which serves trans and gender nonconforming youth on the south and west sides of Chicago, speaks about both candidates with resignation. She, too, helped organize the Zoom for Harris, though less enthusiastically than her peers. 

Parker has worked with street-based and unhoused youth for more than 10 years and has seen Democratic candidates come and go, all of them with different promises for the community; for example, Biden pledged to trans kids that he “had their backs.” 

Meanwhile, the kids she works with still face the same challenges. Many are still kicked out of their homes by their own parents and they’re particularly vulnerable to the anti-trans laws and hate that has also flourished across the country.

“I have never seen a candidate where I feel completely safe, and I’ve ever been able to breathe a full sigh of relief, never,” Parker said. “So, I don’t know if Kamala is going to be any different in that regard.”

Black trans women are a small subset of the transgender voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate. An estimated 825,100 transgender adults of all races will be eligible to vote in November, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. As of last year, 161 million Americans were registered to vote. 

Queer Americans now make up 7.6 percent of the overall population, Gallup reports. According to GLAAD, 94 percent of those LGBTQ+ Americans are motivated to vote.  Black trans women have an outsized influence on these voters, a group that tends to lean heavily Democratic. 

In recent years, advocates have invested heavily in giving credit to Black trans activists for leading the charge at the Stonewall uprising in 1969, where queer people famously fought back against homophobic policing in New York City. 

At the same time, Black trans women have been overrepresented in the numbers of trans homicide victims and often underrepresented in the media.

At the 2019 LGBTQ+ Town Hall, where Harris introduced herself with her pronouns, Black trans women made headlines by interrupting the event repeatedly, noting that not a single Black trans woman had been invited to ask candidates a question.

The town hall also included a gaffe: Immediately after Harris shared her pronouns, CNN’s Chris Cuomo replied, “Mine too.” To transgender people, the moment highlighted how, even at an event centered on LGBTQ+ communities, transgender issues could become an afterthought. And in the four years since, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have repeatedly attacked transgender people; 176 anti-trans bills have become law; and none of the debates have delved meaningfully into LGBTQ+ issues. 

The Black trans women backing Harris see the setbacks — and also an opportunity if Harris wins. Davis said she is ready to lobby Harris on trans issues the moment Harris takes the oath of office. Bassett has at the ready a wish list of policies that would make gender-affirming care more accessible and less stigmatized. 

And Parker is clear about one thing: Supporting a candidate doesn’t mean agreeing with them unconditionally. It means challenging them to be better. 

“We’re going to provide you with all the necessary tools and resources and individuals to help you to get this right,” she said. “If you don’t use those tools, meaning the individuals who are providing you with the level of access and education needed, then shame on you.”

To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.

Pertinent To Many Interests, Especially Those Who Feel Marginalized

Kerry Washington Throws Her Support Behind Black-Owned Alternative to MAGA Elon Musk’s Twitter/X

Washington is just one celeb putting her star power behind a Black-owned alternative to the popular social media platform

By Angela Johnson

One of the most disturbing things about billionaire tech leader Elon Musk’s insistence on backing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is that he’s the CEO of X, the massive social media platform which reported more than 170 million daily active users worldwide on its mobile app in February 2024.

Considering many of X’s Black users — who have made Black Twitter a thing of legend over the years — don’t believe that Trump has our best interests at heart, some have attempted to create other digital spaces for us to shed that X business, and they’re being helped by the likes of Kerry Washington.

Washington is throwing a major investment into SPILL, a Black-owned Twitter alternative created by Alphonzo Terrell, one of the nearly 4,000 employees laid off from the social media platform formerly known as Twitter when Musk acquired the company in November 2022 for $44 billion.

Rather than sulking over his job loss, Terrell linked with friend and former co-worker DeVaris Brown to formulate a plan to make something for us, by us.

“I called [Brown] and I said, ‘I think it’s time to build and if we do this together, I think this can be really successful,’” Terrell told CNN in a September 2022 interview.

Since its 2022 launch, SPILL has grown its customer base to more than 200,000 users. One of the most unique features of the app is SPILL Spades, a live, multiplayer Spades game the company says keeps users engaged for an average of 30 minutes.

In addition to her financial contribution, Washington has hosted live conversations on the platform known as “Tea Parties.” The actress says she’s proud to support a platform in which underrepresented groups are top of mind.

“In a digital world where marginalized groups, especially Black, Brown, and LGBTQIA folks, rarely feel prioritized, SPILL stands out,” Washington said in a statement. “I’m proud to be part of this community as both a user and an investor.”

Terrell says as the company keeps looking for ways to stand out, he is confident SPILL will make a big splash in the social media space.