Category: History

Peace & Justice History for 12/2

December 2, 1914
 
Karl Liebnecht
Karl Liebknecht was the only member of German Parliament to vote against war with France and Britain. He was arrested shortly thereafter and conscripted into the German Army. Refusing to fight, Liebknecht served on the Eastern Front burying the dead.
More about Karl Liebnecht
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December 2, 1942
Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directed and controlled the first self-sustaining fission reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.The result of this experiment made the atomic bomb possible and ushered in the nuclear age. Upon successful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”

More on Fermi and the bomb 
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December 2, 1954
The U.S. Senate voted 65 to 22 to censure Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”The condemnation, with all the Democrats and about half the Republicans voting against him, was related to McCarthy’s controversial, abusive and indiscriminate investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society. The House of Representatives and many states continued their own investigations.

Senator Joseph P. McCarthy with chief counsel Roy Cohn (L)
See a video clip of McCarthy reacting to the censure 
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December 2, 1961
 
Fidel Castro
Following a year of severely strained relations with the United States and his country, Cuban leader Fidel Castro openly declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist.
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December 2, 1964
Thousands who were part of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement gathered on the steps of Sproul Hall, the administration building at that University of California campus, to protest four students being disciplined for distributing political literature; Joan Baez performed in support. The next day, police arrested 773 who began a sit-in at Sproul Hall. 10,000 more students then went on strike and shut down the school.
photo: © Ron Enfield
The Free Speech Movement had begun in October, when three thousand students surrounded a police car for 36 hours. Inside the car was a civil rights worker, Jack Weinberg, who had been arrested for distributing political literature on the UC-Berkeley campus.
 
Jack Weinberg in police car.
What was the Free Speech Movement?  
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December 2, 1977
A demonstration erupted outside a South African court after a magistrate ruled that security police were to be exonerated in the death of black consciousness leader Steve Biko, who died while in their custody.
The demonstrators chanted, “They have killed Steve Biko. What have we done? Our sin is that we are black?”
Biko’s funeral

His funeral had been attended by more than 15,000 mourners, not including the thousands who were turned away by the police. He had been arrested for writing inflammatory pamphlets and “inciting unrest” among the black community.
Steve Biko

The news story
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December 2, 1980
Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sr. Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Marie Donovan were raped, murdered, buried outside San Salvador, and unearthed shortly thereafter.


American Nuns Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Marie Donovan- killed in El Salvador in 1980.

U.S.-trained and -supported Salvadoran national guardsmen, widely known to act as death squads, were suspected.The Reagan administration, taking office seven weeks later, and relying in part on the Salvadoran military to rid Central America of communism, denied the National Guard’s involvement. General Alexander Haig, the president’s secretary of state, explained the churchwomen’s deaths to Congress as an accident caused by nervous soldiers who “misread the mere traveling down the road (of the nuns’ van) as an effort to run a roadblock.” The FBI and CIA later reported this as a total fabrication, and five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.
More about the Maryknoll Sisters 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december2

Peace & Justice History for 12/1

December 1, 1891 
The International Peace Bureau was launched in Rome, Italy, “. . . to coordinate the activities of the various peace societies and promote the concept of peaceful settlement of international disputes.” The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910 for its work, and is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.
December 1, 1948 
Following a brief but bloody civil war in 1948, Costa Rican President Jose Figueres helped draft a constitution that abolished the military and guaranteed free election with universal suffrage (all adult citizens can vote).

Money not spent on a military allowed the country to adequately fund health care and education, yielding one of the highest literacy rates on the continent, ninety-six percent. This is judged to be a factor in the nation’s never having fallen prey to corruption, dictatorships, or the bloodshed that has marred the history of much of the region.
Costa Rica stands apart 
December 1, 1955 
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress active in the local NAACP, was arrested by police in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Mrs. Parks faced a fine for breaking the segregation laws which said blacks had to vacate their seats if there were white passengers left standing. The same bus driver had thrown her off his bus twelve years prior for refusing to enter through the rear door.

Rosa Parks
Mrs. Parks had not been the first to defy the Jim Crow (the system of legalized or de jure segregation) law but her arrest sparked the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. The Montgomery bus company couldn’t survive without the revenue from its black passengers who, for the next year, created car pools and other means to avoid using the city busses.

The bus restored in Henry Ford Museum
The boycott was successful and Mrs. Parks became known as the “mother of the civil rights movement.“
The story of the bus 
Rosa Parks biography 
Arrest record of Rosa Parks 
December 1, 1959 
Representatives of 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity. President Eisenhower said the treaty and its guarantees “constitute a significant advance toward the goal of a peaceful world with justice.”
December 1, 1966
 
Comedian Dick Gregory was convicted in Olympia, Washington for his participation in a Nisqually Native American fishing rights protest. 
 
Interview with Dick Gregory
December 1, 1969 
A lottery was held to determine which young men would be drafted into the armed services for the ongoing Vietnam War. A large glass container held 366 blue plastic balls each marked with a birth date. The drawing determined the order of induction for draft-eligible men between 18 and 26 years old, and was broadcast live nationally. The first draft lottery was held in 1942.

Rep. Alexander Pirnie, R-NY, draws the first capsule in the
draft lottery held on December 1, 1969. The capsule contained the date, September 14.
December 1, 1997 
A silent march of women in Khartoum, Sudan, protesting conscription, was met by a police attack and the arrest of 37 women.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december1

Peace & Justice History for 11/30

November 30, 1215

Pope Innocent II, in a papal bull (or major sacred pronouncement of canon law), ordered that Jews, “whether men or women, must in all Christian countries distinguish themselves from the rest of the population in public places by a special kind of clothing.” The rule was interpreted as requiring a badge on clothing as determined by each country. In England, for example, the tablets with the 10 commandments were used.

Read more 
November 30, 1967
Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota) announced that he would run on an anti-Vietnam war platform against President Lyndon Johnson for the nomination of the Democratic Party. McCarthy, though a contender to be Johnson’s running mate in 1964, had since become increasingly disenchanted with U.S. policy toward Vietnam, and opposed the war in his campaign.


McCarthy on the campaign trail

“I am not for peace at any price, but for an honorable, rational and political solution to this war; a solution which I believe will enhance our world position, encourage the respect of our Allies and our potential adversaries, which will permit us to get the necessary attention to other commitments . . . and leave us with resources and moral energy to deal effectively with [the] pressing domestic problems of the United States itself.”
Read more, see photos  Jo Freeman
November 30, 1993
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act became law. It provided for a waiting period before the purchase of a handgun, and for the establishment of a national instant criminal background check system to be used by firearms dealers before the transfer of any handgun.The law was named for James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who became a paraplegic after being shot in the assassination attempt on Reagan. Following his recovery, he and his wife, Sarah, became leading proponents of controlling the proliferation of handguns.

James Brady watches President Clinton sign the bill
November 30, 1999

Tens of thousands of activists, students, union members and environmentalists demonstrating for global justice shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle, Washington. International media coverage ignored both the blockade and the police riot (and an enormous labor-sponsored rally and march), focusing instead on minor property damage committed by a few dozen self-described anarchists.

photo Elaine Brière

What the protests were about 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november30

Peace & Justice History for 11/29

November 29, 1864
A U.S. Army cavalry regiment under Colonel J. M. Chivington (a Methodist missionary and candidate for Congress), acting on orders from Colorado’s Governor, John Evans, and ignoring a white surrender flag flying just below a U.S. flag, attacked sleeping Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, killing nearly 500, in what became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. Captain Silas Soule, however, not only refused to follow Chivington’s lead at Sand Creek, but ordered his troops not to participate in the attack.
The Indians, led by Black Kettle, had been ordered away from Fort Lyon four days before, with the promise that they would be safe. Virtually all of the victims, mostly women and children, were tortured and scalped; many women, including the pregnant, were mutilated. Nine of 900 cavalrymen were killed. A local newspaper called this “a brilliant feat of arms,” and stated the soldiers had “covered themselves with glory.”
At first, Chivington was widely praised for his “victory” at the Battle of Sand Creek, and he and his troops were honored with a parade in Denver. However, rumors of drunken soldiers butchering unarmed women and children began to circulate, and Congress ordered a formal investigation of the massacre. Chivington was eventually threatened with court martial by the U.S. Army, but as he had already left his military post, no criminal charges were ever filed against him
Eyewitness Congressional testimony of John S. Smith, a white Indian agent and interpreter
 
Two different paintings of the Sand Creek Massacre
November 29, 1963

Earl Warren and LBJ
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
More about The Warren Commission 
November 29, 1967
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation during the Vietnam War.

Robert McNamara
The Fog of War a movie about the Vietnam War 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november29

US economy grows at 2.8% pace in third quarter on consumer spending

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/us-economy-grows-28-pace-quarter-consumer-spending-116269393

The American economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual pace from July through September on strong consumer spending and a surge in exports, the government said Wednesday, leaving unchanged its initial estimate of third-quarter growth

ByPAUL WISEMAN AP economics writer
November 27, 2024, 8:39 AM
 

The American economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual pace from July through September on strong consumer spending and a surge in exports, the government said Wednesday, leaving unchanged its initial estimate of third-quarter growth.

U.S. gross domestic product — the economy’s output of goods and services — slowed from the April-July rate of 3%, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

But the GDP report still showed that the American economy — the world’s largest — is proving surprisingly durable. Growth has topped 2% for eight of the last nine quarters.

Within the GDP data, a category that measures the economy’s underlying strength rose at a solid 3.2% annual rate from July through September, up from 2.7% in the April-June quarter. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.

Still, American voters — exasperated by high prices — were unimpressed by the steady growth and chose this month to return Donald Trump to the White House to overhaul the nation’s economic policies. He will be supported by Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

 

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, accelerated to a 3.5% annual pace last quarter, up from 2.8% in the April-June period and fastest growth since the fourth quarter of 2023. Exports also contributed to the third quarter’s growth, increasing at a 7.5% rate, most in two years. Still, the third-quarter growth in both consumer spending and exports was lower than the Commerce Department initially estimated.

But growth in business investment slowed sharply on a drop in investment in housing and in nonresidential buildings such as offices and warehouses. By contrast, spending on equipment surged.

When he takes office next month, President-elect Trump will inherit an economy that looks broadly healthy.

Growth is steady. Unemployment is low at 4.1%. Inflation, which hit a four-decade high 9.1% in June 2022, has fallen to 2.6%. That is still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, but the central bank felt satisfied enough with the progress against inflation to cut its benchmark interest rate in September and again this month. Most Wall Street traders expect the Fed to cut rates again in December.

Wednesday’s report also contained some encouraging news on inflation. The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge — called the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — rose at just a 1.5% annual pace last quarter, down from 2.5% in the second quarter. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core PCE inflation was 2.1%, down from 2.8% in the April-June quarter.

 

The public still feels inflation’s sting: Prices are about 20% higher than they were in February 2021, just before inflation started picking up

Trump has promised an economic shakeup. On Monday, for example, he vowed to slap new import taxes on goods from China, Mexico and Canada. Mainstream economists view such taxes — or tariffs — as inflationary. That is because they are paid by U.S. importers, who then seek to pass along the higher costs to their customers.

Wednesday’s report was the second of three looks at third-quarter GDP. The Commerce Department will issue the final report on Dec. 19.

___

This story has been corrected to show that consumer spending rose at the fastest pace since the fourth quarter, not the first quarter, of 2023.

Needs No Intro

The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

I hope each and every reader is having a fine day today! 🌞 ☮

Poetry: Meetings

Elizabeth Woody

Twice on other travels a wolf stood on the periphery of lamplight.
Our eyes intensified in the silent distance between sanctity.
There is one who appreciates secondhand revelations of wolves.

Sparrow hawk waves fast hinges of small capture in its apex of watch.
Where are the absent coyotes of Willamina?
Winter-sleepy mice are slow.

The salmon pass the fishers’ drift into deadline.
The count is a button pushed in the rapture of instinctual homing.
An eye squint records the shrapnel glimpses of Chinook.

Our river’s low, as manly winds blur the edges of inland clouds.
Aspiring rain is a sleepy feminine whisper.
Grasses sweep patterns of mock celestial visitations.

Otter pelts feel soothingly moist in the rich depth of velvety pelage
Small bare edged ears are symbolic of ocean’s chill.
One secret otter strip is owned for future weaving.

Otter woven into a  1Ravenstail robe is royal and tide riddled.
The otter dances on prominent lineage hidden through survival.
Copper light resumes ceremony from absence to embrace our shoulders.

1. Tlingit weaving and a form that nearly died out.

Copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Woody. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Read more about this poem, and the poet, here.

Peace & Justice for 11/28

November 28, 1891

Early IBEW delegates
The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (now International, the IBEW) was founded when 10 men met at Stolley’s Dance Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. Their goal: the joining together of electricians in a common organization to make a better life for all.
The original logo adopted at the First Convention.
Read more 
November 28, 1905

The political party Sinn Fein (meaning “we ourselves” in Gaelic) was founded in Dublin by Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. Its objective was to end British rule in Ireland and seek national self-determination as a sovereign state.

Sinn Fein’s story of its origins 
November 28, 1991
The U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Threat Reduction Act (the Nunn-Lugar legislation), which provided up to $400 million to assist with the destruction of Soviet nuclear and chemical warheads.
The legislation was initiated by Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november28

A Poem for Wednesday

The Home of the Sacred Ofelia Zepeda

Sublime landscapes were those rare places on earth where one had more chance than elsewhere to glimpse the face of God. —“The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” by William Cronon

The “sublime landscape” is not a place to catch a glimpse.
These places are where the creators, Gods, deities and powerful beings live.
At Waw Giwulig I’itoi’s home is found.
O’odham climb the peak to be in the goodness of the Creator.
At Mauna Kea the Goddess Pele resides.
Hawaiians climb a volcano and humble themselves there.
At San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff Kachinas and Ye’ii Bi Cheii
spirits live.
They climb down the mountain blessed with songs and prayers
when Navajo and Hopi call them.
In the Grand Canyon many Gods, deities, and
powerful beings stay in these rock walls and cliffs
holding vigil for their people.
In this powerful place are all the sacred beings.
The Hualapai, Havasupai, Zuni, Hopi, Navajo and others know they
are there. The people simply don’t “catch a glimpse” of holy beings
they sing them; they pray them in these places.

Copyright © 2024 by Ofelia Zepeda. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 26, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

See (and hear!) more about this poet, and this poem on this page.

Peace & Justice History for 11/27

November 27, 1095
Pope Urban II called on all Christians to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land: “Deus vult (God wills it)!” What is currently called the Middle East was then in control of the Turks who frequently barred Christian pilgrims entrance to the city.
At the Council of Clermont in France, the pope promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ. The mobilization of 60,000 to 100,000 Christians throughout Europe in this effort became known as the First Crusade. 
November 27, 1914
The No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) was founded by two English pacifists, Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway. They opposed the Military Service Act which introduced conscription, and then mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment and imprisonment of conscientious objectors.
They were consistently opposed to the war in Europe.

Early Fellowship members 

Fellowship members at a recent protest

Read more about Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway and No-Conscription Fellowship 
More on the No-Conscription Fellowship from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection 
November 27, 1957
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, made an impassioned speech appealing to the United States and the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) to end testing and begin nuclear disarmament. The two superpowers were the only nations with atomic weapons at the time.
Nehru had fought to free his country from British colonial authority through acts of nonviolent passive resistance with Ghandi, and they achieved independence. He stressed the urgency for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to “save humanity from the ultimate disaster.”Nehru’s Congress Party government nevertheless pursued an aggressive nuclear program, starting in 1948, publicly committed to peaceful purposes exclusively. Nehru acknowledged that the possession of fissionable materials and growing expertise could readily be directed toward production of such weapons. In the absence of universal nuclear disarmament, he feared acquisition of such weapons by potential adversaries. In particular for India, this meant Pakistan or China.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru
Nuclear India – a short history 
November 27, 1965
In Washington D.C., 35,000 anti-war protesters circled the White House then marched on to the Washington Monument for a rally against the war in Vietnam.
November 27, 1967
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. announced the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, a movement to broadly address economic inequalities with nonviolent direct action. “It must not be just black people,” argued King, “it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites.”

Why a Poor People’s Campaign? 
November 27, 1969
Over one hundred members of the U.S. 71st Evacuation Hospital and the 44th Medical Detachment at Pleiku, Vietnam, organized a Thanksgiving protest fast called the “John Turkey movement.” In Home before Morning, nurse Lynda Van Devanter recalled her change in attitude.

Nurse Lynda Van Devanter
“Earlier in my tour, when I had heard about the war protesters, I had felt angry at them for not supporting us.  Now I wished I could march with them . . . Most others in Pleiku felt the same way . . . We even held our own Thanksgiving Day fast—the John Turkey movement — as a show of support for those who were trying to end the war through protests and moratoriums. We heard that the fast had spread to units all over Vietnam.” The fast received considerable media coverage when Denise Murray, a nurse at Pleiku and daughter of a distinguished admiral, made antiwar statements to the press.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november27