Category: History

Peace & Justice History for 12/16

December 16, 1942
Heinrich Himmler, head of the German Gestapo, made public an order that Gypsies, or Roma, and those of mixed Roma blood already in labor camps be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.”Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed “inferior,” as well as “asocial” types, (hardcore criminals, homosexuals, Communists, Slavs, Catholic priests). Gypsies fell into both categories according to Nazi ideology and had been executed widely in Croatia, Poland and the Soviet Union.

Gypsy arrivals to the Belzec death camp.
The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) — literally Devouring — is a term coined by the Romani to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of their people in Europe.
Read more
Video 
December 16, 1950
President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism.” This followed major Chinese intervention in the Korean War, launching a counter-offensive with 300,000 men against Republic of Korea, United States and United Nations troops.The U.N. command, under General Douglas MacArthur, had attacked the North Korean Army at Inchon three months earlier, liberating Seoul, destroying three divisions and forcing a retreat by the North Korean People’s Army.

North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung (second from L) with the Korean-Chinese joint military command

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december16

Let’s talk about running government like a business and what it gets you….

Peace & Justice History 12/15

December 15, 1791
The Bill of Rights became law when Virginia ratified the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution.
Read The Bill of Rights 
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee  (emphasis mine -A. It’s an important site these days!)

December 15, 1930

Albert Einstein, 1930
Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund. Einstein stated in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people.
He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, “slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us.”
Einstein on Peace and World Government 
December 15, 1946
Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent a note to French Premier Leon Blum congratulating him for his selection as French Premier and asking for peace talks. France had exercised colonial power over the Vietnamese as part of French Indochina, formed in October 1887 from the provinces of Annam, Tonkin, Cochin China, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added in 1893. Vietnamese nationalists, however, had demanded independence for the three provinces at the end of World War II.
December 15, 1973

The American Psychiatric Association reversed its long-standing position and declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness and
“…deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation…”
Read the APA policy on discrimination against [gays]
December 15, 2000
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after becoming the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident ever. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – dozens of times as much as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – were released in the explosion.
The radioactive fallout affected 23% of Belarus, with 4.8% of Ukrainian territory and 0.5% of Russia. The Belarussian government spends 30% of its annual budget dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december15

Let’s talk about Trump, Musk, and math problems….

She explains how the equation makes it simple, you can not cut your way out of the debt problem as it is a revenue issue.  The country needs to take in more money.  How does the country take in money, taxes.  The poor are already taxed out, but there is a group whose taxes keep getting cut, they will have to pay more.  Oh listen to the ones with more money than they will ever need cry about that idea.  They would prefer the debt than pay an extra nickle.  Hugs 

Covers Everything Well

This Week in the Name of “God” …

None on Friday, Two on Saturday

As always, the titles are links to learn more about the poets and their poems.

Rican Issues Carmen Bardeguez-Brown

Say What?
Could you please, Pleeeeeeeeeeease repeat
Did you say: Molleta?
Prieta?
Morena?
Ohh African!
Hmmm Soy Puertorriquena
Yes, Puertorican

That I don’t look What ?
Oh, I guess I don’t look cafe con leche
mancha de plátano
Mulata,
high yellow
grifa
By the way
I did not know that there was a puertorican look.
And what exactly is that?
That I just look more what?
Well,    Y   Tu   abuela    dónde      Está?
I should say abuela, tío, Tía, y to el barrio
Let me tell you something
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Most ricans are a mix of Africans, Spaniards, and Native Americans called
Taínos
By the way, no one has seen a Taíno in the last 500 years.
Sooooo   exactly … You know what that means
My     English is covered with spices
spices from the Caribbean
Spices that you might find Strange
Because you were born in this cold fast food of a mall of a country
Where Spanish is a foreign word
That you are ashamed to learn

And when you try
Is not there
Only mumbles of a murmur
Susurando el olvido
A reganadientes
Pretendiendo
Escondiendo la vergüenza
You remember Puerto Rico on the 2nd Sunday of every June
When everybody is suddenly proud to be Puerto Rican
No the word is Boricua
Boricuas Here, Boricuas THERE, Boricuas everywhere
And everyone waves the flags
The flags that they don’t even understand
And no one knows why they are here
Yes HERE Now
Do you Know?
why your parents or grandparents vinieron aqui?
De que Pueblo?
Cuando te bañaste en las aguas calientes del Caribe?
Better yet
Do you really know that …?
We all came from the Motherland
Africa
Even the Spanish people that came with Colon, Columbus
However you want to say it
Lived 700 hundred years under the Moors
You heard that right
The moors as in Arabs as in black Arabs
SO … in other words
Not only I
But we
Have over 500 years of African mestizaje
The so called “white people” that everyone is so proud of
As in “my grandparents are from Spain
Well if they are …
They
Too have negrITOs in them
Remember the Gitanos
But that is another story …
Getting back to the Boricua’s  issue

What history do you know?
Ever heard of
Agüeybaná
Albizu Campos
Luis Palés Matos
Rafael Betances
Arturo Schomburg
Francisco Oller
Julia De Burgos
Rafael Hernández
Segundo Ruiz Belvís
Enrique Laguerre
Mariana Bracetti
Pedro Pietri

Still havING problems figuring me out?
Or is it that you just don’t know
Who you are?

Copyright © 2024 by Carmen Bardeguez-Brown. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 12, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

=====

Domino Nights Puma Perl

On Water Street,
scaffolds envelop the buildings,
wire screens surround the benches,
iron fences line the street.
You must walk a hot summer block
in either direction to cross.

To the east, construction continues.
To the west, trucks sit, waiting.

Approaching or leaving,
it feels like a detention center
without passports or means of escape.

Late nights on Water Street,
beneath the scaffolding,
behind the steaming sidewalks,
and the screens and the fences,
the men set up their dominoes table
and their friends watch them play,
awaiting their turns.

We wave on our way to walk our dogs
and when returning home in the humid air.

There are no passersby on Water Street,
no loitering without intent or purpose
but I will reply to the questions
they might have asked had they existed.

Why, they might wonder, do the men sit
at a bridge table in the stifling heat
beneath scaffolds, behind screens and fences?
Surely, there are air-conditioned apartments
where they might socialize and yell Capicu!

Because, I would answer, it is our street,
this is our Lower East Side that we breathe,
this is our space where neighbors smile
as they pass by and call out, Otra vez
you’re still at it, as time slowly propels
us closer to wherever we are headed,
but until we get there, the table is set
for another night of apocalyptic dominos.

Copyright © 2024 by Puma Perl. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 13, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Peace & Justice History for 12/14

December 14, 1917
U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O’Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing World War I.
Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and anti-war critic was imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O’Hare was one of a number of prisoners Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs cited in his “Canton Speech” for which he in turn was imprisoned.
More about activist Kate Richards O’Hare 
Read the speech 
December 14, 1961
In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced the United States would increase aid to South Vietnam, including the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam, wrote: “We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort.”

President Ngo Dinh Diem

President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara
Kennedy – Diem letter exchange 
December 14, 1980

At Yoko Ono’s request, John Lennon fans around the world mourned him with 10 minutes of silent prayer. In New York over 100,000 people converged on Central Park in tribute, and in Liverpool, England, his hometown, a crowd of 30,000 gathered outside of St. George’s Hall on Lime Street.
johnlennon.com  “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.”
Time capsules to mark John Lennon’s legacy 
December 14, 1985
Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe when she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Wilma Mankiller on the day in 1985 when her election as chief of the Cherokee Nation was announced
December 14, 1994
After eight years of negotiations, the United States finally agreed to honor New Zealand’s ban on nuclear weapons in its territory.
U.S. Navy ships armed with nuclear weapons no longer visited New Zealand’s ports.
December 14, 1995
Leaders of the states that were parts of the former Yugoslavia signed the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of bloody and vicious ethnic/religious conflict. The Dayton Accords, as they are known, committed the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina to accept a division of territory, a process to deal with the more than 2 million refugees, and the introduction of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping forces.
The negotiations were led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, and held principally at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
The Dayton Accords 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december14

ERA Now!

The Case for the Equal Rights Amendment: Understanding Ratification

Israel Executing Land Grabs In Syria

Debunking Trump’s Plan to End Birthright Citizenship

“[Trump’s] been very open for a while about how he plans to end this core constitutional principle, end birthright citizenship.” Watch Mehdi Hasan break down the flaws in Donald Trump’s argument against the 14th Amendment.