Category: Gun Violence / Mass Shootings

2 For Women’s History Month

Today Would Have Been Aretha Franklin’s 82nd Birthday

Rest in power, queen.

By Frances Langum — March 25, 2025

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While Trump Sows Division, Women Leaders Chart a Path Forward for Democracy

Snippet:

During the same week as the president’s address to Congress, RepresentWomen held our annual Democracy Solutions Summit (DSS). This solutions-oriented event allowed us to imagine what our democracy could look like with better policies and better representation.

Here, women leaders, elected officials, advocates and experts discussed the problems facing our democracy and uplifted actionable solutions to improve women’s representation and strengthen our democracy overall. This year’s summit addressed the critical need for more women in local, state and federal leadership roles.

The Democracy Solutions Summit clearly contrasts with the uncertainty of Trump’s address to Congress. The DSS is the only democracy summit featuring only women speakers and panelists committed to actionable, data-driven solutions and building coalitions that bolster American democracy at this critical time. Furthermore, our research has found that when multiple structural solutions are combined, we can bolster women’s representation in every level of government.

Complete recordings of the summit are available online, but here is a quick recap of all three days. (snip-More)

Peace & Justice History for 3/10

March 10, 1968
Cesar Chavez ended a 23-day fast for U.S. farm workers in a Delano, California, public park with 4000 supporters at his side, including Senator Robert Kennedy (D-New York). Cesar Chavez led the effort to organize farm workers into a union for better pay, working and living conditions.

The story of Cesar Chavez 
March 10, 1969
James Earl Ray was sentenced to prison for 99 years by a court in Memphis, Tennessee, after admitting he murdered American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King, who preached and practiced nonviolence, was shot dead by a sniper in Memphis as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
The building now houses the National Civil Rights Museum.
Witnesses pointing toward the source of the shot that killed King.
National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel 
March 10, 2006
Turkish conscientious objector (CO) Mehmet Tarhan was released unexpectedly from a military prison after being held for having refused service in the army. A court decided that he had already been held longer (23 months) than any possible sentence for the crime. 
 Mehmet TarhanMehmet Tarhan’s supporters
He was ordered, however, to present himself again for military service and thus be subject to re-arrest for the same offense.

War Resisters’ International(WRI) led an international support campaign for him along with other CO activists in Turkey.
More on Mehmet Tarhan and other Turkish COs 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march10

Russian war against Ukraine.

Again I had a new video I was very happy with that got swallowed by my ill computer.  Hugs

Trump And Vance Berate “Disrespectful” Zelensky
Felon: “Zelensky Disrespected US In The Oval Office”
Trudeau: Canada Continues To Stand With Ukraine
EU Leaders Send Messages Of Support To Ukraine
Starmer Reacts: UK Support For Ukraine Is Unwavering
Kremlin Reporter Sat In On Trump-Zelensky Meeting
Trump Had Rubio Eject Zelensky From White House
US Drops Project To Restore Ukraine’s Energy Grid

Some clips of Adam Mockler

Ron has followed this young man for a while.  This morning he was telling me how smart and well grounded he was.  I decided to check him out.  I found out I really like his content.  Here are a few clips.  Hugs

Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network breaks down Donald Trump’s botched Ukraine meeting.

Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network breaks down Donald Trump and JD Vance throwing a fit while meeting with President Zelenskyy. 

Peace & Justice History for 2/8

February 8, 1962
More than 20,000 attended a demonstration in Paris against the Secret Army Organization (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète or OAS), a group of European-Algerians which used terrorist methods to keep Algeria a French colony.
They set off bombs in Metropolitan France and made multiple attempts on President Charles DeGaulle’s life.
DeGaulle had chosen a referendum among Algerians to decide their independence; Europeans were outnumbered 9:1 by the native population of Sunni Muslim Arabs and Berbers.
The demonstration was held in violation of a declared state of emergency (because of OAS actions) and, in the subsequent rioting, at least eight people were killed and 240 injured (half of them police officers).

The terrorist crimes of the OAS 
February 8, 1968

The Orangeburg Masssacre


Three black students were killed and 50 wounded in a confrontation with highway patrolmen at a South Carolina State rally supporting arrested civil rights protesters. Orangeburg’s only bowling alley, the All Star, was still segregated years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed discrimination based on race in such public accommodations.
On the previous two days, college students had entered the bowling alley, refusing to leave after they were not allowed to bowl. Fifteen of the second group were arrested.
The Orangeburg Massacre (2 links)
February 8, 1980
President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce
draft registration.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february8

Peace & Justice History for 2/1

February 1, 1960

Greensboro first day: Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond leave the Woolworth store after the first sit-in on February 1, 1960.

Four black college students sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and were refused service because of their race. To protest the segregation of the eating facilities, they remained and sat-in at the lunch counter until the store closed.
Four students returned the next day, and the same thing happened. Similar protests subsequently took place all over the South and in some northern communities.
By September 1961, more than 70,000 students, both white and black, had participated, with many arrested, during sit-ins.

On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“Segregation makes me feel that I’m unwanted,” Joseph McNeil, one of the four, said later in an interview, “I don’t want my children exposed to it.”

Listen to Franklin McCain’s account of what happened 
February 1, 1961
On the first anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, there were demonstrations all across the south, including a Nashville movie theater desegregation campaign (which sparked similar tactics in 10 other cities). Nine students were arrested at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and chose to take 30 days hard labor on a road gang. The next week, four other students repeated the sit-in, also chose jail.
February 1, 1968

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Nguyen Van Lem a NLF officer.

Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executed Nguyen Van Lem, suspected leader of a National Liberation Front (NLF aka Viet Cong) assassination platoon, with a pistol shot to the head on the street. AP photojournalist Eddie Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the incident became one of the most famous, ubiquitous and lasting images of the war in Vietnam, affecting international and American public opinion regarding the war.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february1

Peace & Justice History for 1/30

Longest. January. Ever. But it’s also Fred Korematsu Day-Woot!

January 30, 1948
Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in Delhi by an assassin, a fellow Hindu, who fired three shots from a pistol at a range of three feet.
An American reporter who saw it happen
January 30, 1956
As Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the pulpit, leading a mass meeting during the Montgomery, Alab
ama, bus boycott, his home was bombed. King’s wife and 10-week-old baby escaped unharmed. Later in the evening, as thousands of angry African Americans assembled on King’s lawn, he appeared on his front porch, and told them:
“If you have weapons, take them home . . . We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence . . . We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and wife Coretta Scott, 1960
January 30, 1968
The Tet (lunar new year) Offensive began as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched surprise attacks against major cities, provincial and district capitals in South Vietnam.
Though an attack had been anticipated, half of the South’s ARVN troops (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) were on leave because of the holiday. There were attacks in Saigon (the South’s capital) on the Independence Palace (the residence of the president), the radio station, the ARVN’s joint General Staff Compound, Tan Son Nhut airfield, and the United States embassy, causing considerable damage and throwing the city into turmoil.
January 30, 1972
In Londonderry (aka Derry), Northern Ireland, unarmed civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by British Army paratroopers in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The protesters, all Catholics, had been marching in protest of the British policy of internment without trial of suspected Irish nationalists.
British authorities had ordered the march banned, and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, ultimately killing 14 and wounding 17. By the end of the year 323 civilians and 144 military and paramilitary personnel would be dead.

Mural: Bloody Sunday martyrs
Eyewitness accounts 
January 30, 2010

Thousands of protesters from across Japan marched in central Tokyo to protest the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.
Some 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, with more than half on the southern island of Okinawa. Residents have complained for years about noise, pollution and crime around the bases.
News about the protest (This link is to the 2016 protest; P&J’s link for the 2010 protest links to Not Found.)
January 30, since 2011 Fred Korematsu Day

Fred Korematsu
Fred Korematsu, was born in Oakland, California, to a Japanese-American family. When World War II broke out Japanese-American citizens were subject to curfews and, following an executive order from Pres. Roosevelt,
were sent to internment camps. Fred Korematsu refused to go and was convicted and sent to a camp.
He challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944 the Supreme court ruled against him. Finally in 1983, a Federal court in San Francisco overturned the original conviction. In 1988 Congress passed legislation apologizing for the internments and awarded each survivor $20,000.
The “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution” is observed every January 30th and in an increasing number of states.
“Protest, but not with violence. Don’t be afraid to speak up. One person can make a difference, even if it takes 40 years…” – Fred Korematsu 
More about Fred Korematsu 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january30

Peace & Justice History for 1/25

January 25, 1930
Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the anti-colonial movement in India pledged to achieve complete independence, or Purna Swaraj, from Great Britain.
Nehru said:
“The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually . . . We hold it to be a crime against men and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country.”
January 25, 2002

Israeli Refuseniks
A group of Israeli reservists issued a declaration saying they would not serve the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) if assigned to the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip. It was called the Combatants’ Letter, and the organization Courage to Refuse grew out of their resistance.
Captain David Zonshein and Lieutenant Yaniv Itzkovits, officers in an elite unit, realized the missions assigned to them as commanders in the IDF had in fact nothing to do with the defense of the State of Israel, but were rather intended to maintain control of the occupied territories at the price of oppressing the local Palestinian population.
Within three months, 69 such refuseniks had been jailed. 629 Israeli soldiers ultimately signed the pledge. Over 280 members of Courage to Refuse were court-martialed and jailed for periods of up to 35 days as a result of their refusal.

The Israeli refusnik movement today 

Some The Majority Report from this last week. You should check out their YouTube channel and if you want to see the fun half free I can explain how. Hugs

Jon Stewart DISMANTLES Right Wing Grifter On His Show | Hasanabi reacts