Category: History

Peace & Justice History for 2/14

February 14, 1957
The organization that would shortly be called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) chose its leadership at a meeting in New Orleans.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Ralph David Abernathy led the group which sought to coordinate civil rights protests throughout the South.
Organizers of bus boycotts, inspired by the one in Montgomery, Alabama, had met in Atlanta a month earlier. During that meeting, Dr. Abernathy’s home and church were bombed.

Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference history 
February 14, 1971

President Richard Nixon ordered a secret taping system to be installed for his offices in the White House.
Listen in on the presidents  
February 14, 1989
At a meeting of the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua agreed to release a number of political prisoners and hold free elections within a year. In return, Honduras promised to close bases established by the U.S. for and used by the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels.
Just over one year later, elections were held (with international observers including former President Jimmy Carter) though the nation was threatened with a continuing U.S. economic boycott, and was experiencing ongoing Contra violence. The Sandanista Front candidate was defeated 55% to 41%.

Peace & Justice History for 12/13

February 13, 1912
Labor leader Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was placed under house arrest at Pratt (Kanawha Co.), West Virginia, for inciting to riot. An organizer for the United Mine Workers, she had come to the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek mines where a long and nasty struggle had escalated.

Jones was known for her fiery (and often obscene) verbal attacks on coal operators and politicians. A native of Ireland, she had been organizing for more than 15 years.The coal operators had hired mine guards to intimidate the workers and discourage formation of a union. Besides asking to be paid what other area miners were making, the union demanded
• the right to organize
• recognition of their rights to free speech and assembly
• an end to blacklisting of union organizers
• alternatives to company stores
• an end to the practice of using mine guards
• prohibition of cribbing
• installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies’ checkweighmen were not cheating the miners who were not paid hourly, but by the ton.
68 years old (though claiming to be over 80) and suffering from pneumonia, Jones was never charged with a crime (martial law had been declared). A few weeks later, the new governor, Henry Hatfield, was sworn in and examined Mother Jones (he was also a doctor) but refused to release her from house arrest for two months.
Mother Jones biography 
Mother Jones magazine  (They have a great free newsletter!)
February 13, 1960
France became the world’s fourth nuclear power, conducting its first plutonium bomb test at the Reggane base in the Sahara Desert in what was then French Algeria. “Gerboise Bleue” was detonated from a 330-foot tower and had a yield of 60-70 kilotons (equivalent to nearly 70,000 tons of TNT).
February 13, 1967
Carrying huge photos of Vietnamese children who had been victims of Napalm (a flammable defoliant used extensively in the war there), 2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace stormed the Pentagon, demanding to see “the generals who send our sons to Vietnam.” When Pentagon guards locked the main entrance doors, the women took off their shoes and banged on the doors with their heels.

They were eventually allowed inside, but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara would not meet with them.
Senator Jacob Javits (R-New York) agreed to meet a few hundred of the women, but he was booed by the women when he denied the U.S. was using toxic gas in Vietnam.
February 13, 1968
Five soldiers were arrested at a pray-in for peace in Vietnam at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Two were court-martialed for refusing to stop praying. The pray-in was repeated a year later.
February 13, 1991
Two precision-guided missiles destroyed the Amiriyah subterranean bunker in Baghdad while being used as an air-raid shelter by 408 Iraqi civilians during the first Gulf War. The resulting deaths of all inside made it the single most lethal incident for non-combatants in modern air warfare. The U.S. had detected signals coming from the bunker and considered it a military command and control center.
There was an antenna atop the bunker but it was connected by cable to the actual command center 300 yards away, which was not hit by the 2000 lb. bombs which landed precisely on their intended target, penetrating ten feet of hardened concrete. Only 3% of the 250,000 bombs and missiles fired during that conflict were considered such “smart bombs.”

Visitors tour the Amiriyah Bunker.
The Iraqi government has preserved the bunker as a public memorial.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february13

Peace & Justice History for 2/12

Feb. 12th always reminds me of the time we were sitting in a Wendy’s eating on the way to/from a karate tournament. Someone in the restaurant sneezed (it wasn’t crowded,) and I automatically said “God bless you!” then the kid said, “Science could have prevented that.” It was pretty awesome. Happy Darwin Day!


February 12, 1809
Charles Robert Darwin, who first described the process of evolution of species in the plant and animal kingdoms through natural selection, was born.
It is now celebrated as Darwin Day, when the common language of science, bridging language and culture, is recognized and appreciated.
Darwin Day ideas 
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February 12, 1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by sixty Americans, both black and white, in a call to safeguard civil, legal, economic, human, and political rights of black Americans.

The call was partly in reaction to a race riot in 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, home of Abraham Lincoln. The call was issued on the centennial of his birth, and principally written by Oswald Garrison Villard, president of the N.Y. Evening Post Company: “If Mr. Lincoln could revisit this country in the flesh, he would be disheartened and discouraged.”

Oswald Garrison Villard
NAACP’s beginnings
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February 12, 1947

An estimated 400-500 veterans and conscientious objectors from World Wars I and II burned their draft cards during two demonstrations, in front of the White House and at New York City’s Labor Temple, in protest of a proposed universal conscription law.
This was the first peacetime draft-card burning.
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February 12, 1993
About 5,000 demonstrators marched on Atlanta’s State Capitol to protest the Georgia state flag (on left) because its principal element was the Confederate battle flag. That flag was adopted in 1956 by the state legislature in reaction to the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education ordering the racial integration of public schools. Several newspaper editorials opposed the flag as well as 18 local patriotic organizations, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy, stating the flag “would cause strife.”


In 2001 the Georgia state flag was redesigned, shown above.
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February 12, 1997

In “Prince of Peace Plowshares,” six activists poured blood and symbolically disarmed U.S.S. The Sullivans, a nuclear-capable Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. All were eventually convicted of destruction of government property and conspiracy.
Read more about this action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february12

Peace & Justice History for 2/11

February 11, 1790

The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, composed mostly of Quakers and Mennonites, petitioned Congress for emancipation of all slaves. Benjamin Franklin had become vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Society which not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society.
The proposed resolution was immediately denounced by pro-slavery congressmen and sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate.
More on early Abolitionist and Anti-Slavery Movements 
February 11, 1916
Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control, presumed a violation of the 1873 Comstock Law which prohibited distribution of literature on birth control, considered obscene under the act.
Goldman considered such knowledge essential to women’s reproductive and economic freedom; she had worked as a nurse and midwife among poor immigrant workers on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1890s. She also organized for womens’ suffrage, later opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, and was imprisoned for allegedly obstructing military conscription.
Emma Goldman speaking on Birth Control -Union Square, New York City May 20, 1916
“. . . those like myself who are disseminating knowledge [of birth control] are not doing so because of personal gain or because we consider it obscene or lewd. We do it because we know the desperate condition among the masses of workers and even professional people, when they cannot meet the demands of numerous children.”
– Goldman letter to the press following her arrest

Emma Goldman’s courageous efforts
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February 11, 1937
Forty-eight thousand General Motors workers won their 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. On December 30 workers at Fisher Plants 1 & 2 sat down and refused to leave, forcing workers around them to stop work and preventing the next shift from starting.

The sit-down strike ended when the company agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers union as the representative bargaining agent for the striking hourly employees. Other automakers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union. The success of the sit-down was an inspiration to workers in other industries to organize their own unions.
Nearly 100 images on the Flint sit-down from
Detroit’s Wayne State University Walter Reuther Archive
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February 11, 1978
Native Americans began The Longest Walk, a march from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to Washington, D.C.
Native American Activism: 1960s to Present

A Brief History of the
American Indian Movement


photo Ilka Hartmann
The Walk was intended to be a reminder of the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands across the continent, and drew attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community, particularly joblessness, lack of health care, education and adequate housing.
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February 11, 1979
Poet John Trudell, a former national chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), burned an upside-down flag and spoke from the steps of the FBI building in Washington, D.C. during a vigil for Leonard Peltier. Peltier, also a leader of AIM, was imprisoned (and is still today after 30 years,) and is considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International. (NOTE: Leonard Peltier’s sentence was commuted to home confinement in 2025.)
Twelve hours later Trudell’s wife Tina, her mother, and their three children died in an arsonist’s attack of their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. The FBI did not investigate even though the crime fell under its jurisdiction.
Learn about Leonard Peltier 
Remembering John Trudell 
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February 11, 1990

Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in a South African prison following months of secret negotiations with South African President F.W. (Frederik Willem) de Klerk.
In 1952, Mandela became deputy national president of the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest black political organization in South Africa, having joined as a young lawyer in 1944.
He advocated nonviolent resistance to apartheid – South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy, black disenfranchisement and rigid racial segregation.
However, after the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Mandela helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government.


He and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1993 “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”
Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/11/newsid_2539000/2539947.stm

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february11

I Really Like This.

I think you will, too.

What Does DOGE Really Mean?

Any doubt the family did not pass this feeling teaching down to Emo Boy Musk.

Why Elon Musk’s Family Moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950

Sure, We’ll Do That …

I don’t know if it’s a scam, phish, spam, or real. I wonder if anyone else got one of these, though, so let me know, and please don’t click anything within it. Meanwhile, I got a macabre giggle out of this email I received this morning from noreply@studentaid.gov ; Help your child submit their FAFSA form today. (You know how I love my giggles.)

Yeah, after all the news for over a week about access to such sites by unauthorized, unsworn, unelected, non-government employees actually younger than our “child,” who needs no help with such things nor even needs such things, we’re gonna log right on and put all that info in there! (Yes, we did it way back when he did need it done.)

The graphic won’t show here, but the body is very like my recollection of things from FAFSA.

I don’t know if anyone here has or knows someone who will need to fill out these forms with their kids for college in Fall. I simply hope we all remember to not click through from anything in an email, but to go directly to the site to do our work, OK? Thanks!

Peace & Justice History for 2/10

February 10, 1961

Pirate radio ship
The Voice of Nuclear Disarmament, a pirate radio station, began operation offshore of Great Britain. It was run by John Hasted, a physicist, a musician, and a radio expert in World War II. He was active with mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, a group that practiced Gandhian an nonviolent civil disobedience.
February 10, 1964

Bob Dylan’s ”The Times They Are A-Changin’” was released. The album’s title song captured the emerging, principally generational gap in American culture concerning war and racism.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
watch video (1964)
the lyrics 
February 10, 2003
Iraq acceded to U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there.The 60 weapons inspectors in Baghdad and Mosul were under the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), led by Hans Blix, and the International Atomic Energy Agency under Mohamed El Baradei.
The U.N. had destroyed all of Iraq’s banned weapons by 1994, as well as production and development facilities later, though Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. representatives in 1998.

U-2 spy plane.

Hans Blix gives his report at the UN as Mohamed El Baradei listens.
The economic and trade embargo during the inter-war period prevented resumption of the weapons programs. CIA and other intelligence estimates, however, insisted upon the existence of WMDs in Iraq. None have ever been found.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february10

Two More Poems I Ran Across Yesterday,

posted in observance of Black History Month. The titles link to the pages with more info about the poet and their works.

Surrender

Angelina Weld Grimké 1880 – 1958

We ask for peace. We, at the bound  
O life, are weary of the round  
In search of Truth. We know the quest  
Is not for us, the vision blest  
Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned,  
We go, with heads bowed to the ground,  
And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned.  
Let us forget the past unrest,— 
               We ask for peace.

Our strainéd ears are deaf,—no sound 
May reach them more; no sight may wound 
Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best,  
And, while we totter down the West,  
Unto that last, that open mound,— 
               We ask for peace.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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

Expectancy

William Moore

I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile 
For Love to come out of the darkness, wait
For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate
Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile 
Of moon and star and joy of that last mile 
Before I reach the sea. The ships are late
And mayhap laden with the precious freight
Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.

And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream—
The oranges of love and mating song—
I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem 
Endless and ships full laden with a throng 
Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me 
Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Here’s An Important Resource!

Jekyll and Hide-n-Seek