Category: Military

Mother Jones with The Mill Children, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 7/7

July 7, 1863
The first military draft was instituted in the U.S. to provide troops for the Union army in the American Civil War. Once called, a draftee had the opportunity to either pay a commutation fee of $300 to be exempt from a particular battle, or to hire a replacement that would exempt him from the entire war.
July 7, 1903

The March of the Mill Children  watch a video – highly recommended
Labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the “March of the Mill Children” over 100 miles from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, New York, to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work week. It is during this march, on about the 24th, she delivered her famed “The Wail of the Children” speech.
Roosevelt refused to see them.
“Fifty years ago there was a cry against slavery and men gave up their lives to stop the selling of black children on the block. Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.” –from Mother Jones’s autobiography
 
Read more about Mother Jones 
July 7, 1957
Convened at the onset of the Cold War, a group of scientists held their first peace conference in the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada. The mission of the Pugwash Conference was to “. . . bring scientific insight and reason to bear on threats to human security arising from science and technology in general, and above all from the catastrophic threat posed to humanity by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction . . . .”

Bertrand Russell
Wealthy industrialist and Pugwash son Cyrus Eaton had invited the world’s greatest minds to his family home in Nova Scotia and address the emerging threat of nuclear war. The Conference became the basis for an ongoing organization that deals with issues of weapons of mass destruction. The 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Joseph Rotblat (one of the original signatories of the Pugwash Manifesto) and to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Albert Einstein
Pugwash home 

Fifty years later . . .
25 scientists, diplomats and former military officers from 15 countries gathered for a “Revitalizing Nuclear Disarmament” strategy workshop. The meeting was held near the Thinkers’ Lodge, the site of the first meeting in 1957.
“Fifty years ago from Pugwash, Nova Scotia, nuclear scientists helped alert the world to the dangers of nuclear weapons, and especially the newly developed hydrogen bomb,” said Paolo Cotta-Ramusino, Secretary General, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. “Today, we are working with experts from around the world for global action to revitalize nuclear disarmament and the final elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Senator Roméo Dallaire, Honorary Patron of the Pugwash Peace Exchange, said “It is appalling to observe the increasing potential for many regional nuclear arms races, shameless plans to modernize nuclear arsenals and bald-faced threats of pre-emptive nuclear use,” said Senator Dallaire. “Only by revitalizing discussion and implementation of disarmament leading to abolition can we ensure that these genocidal devices will never again be used.”
July 7, 1977
The United States conducted its first test of the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb was a tactical thermonuclear weapon designed to cause very little physical damage through limited blast and heat but was designed to kill troops through localized but intense levels of lethal radiation.
A neutron bomb explosion at a test site
July 7, 1979
2,000 American Indian activists and anti-nuclear demonstrators marched through the Black Hills of western South Dakota to protest the development of uranium mines on sacred native lands.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july7

The Roads to the Declaration of Independence….

Sounds like everything tRump is ding.  Can we have a rebellion against him?  Hugs

Baby Strikers, Barbara Gittings, & More in Peace & Justice History, 7/3, 7/4

July 3, 1835
Children employed in the silk mills at Paterson, New Jersey, went on strike for an eleven-hour workday and a six-day workweek rather than 12-14 hour days. With the help of adults, they won a compromise settlement of a 69-hour week.
More on the Baby Strikers 
July 3, 1966
4000 Britons chanting, “Hands off Vietnam,” demonstrated in London against escalation of the Vietnam War. U.S. warplanes had recently bombed the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi as well as the port city of Haiphong. Police moved in after scuffles broke out at the demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square; 31 were arrested.

Actress Vanessa Redgrave joins 25,000 two years later at Anti-Vietnam war protest, Grosvenor Square.
Read more 
July 3, 1974
At the Moscow Summit talks between President Richard Nixon and President Leonid Brezhnev, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to hold bilateral talks on the prohibition of chemical weapons.
July 4, 1776

The United States declared its independence from King George III and Great Britain, thus beginning the first successful anti-imperial revolution in world history. Signed in Philadelphia by 56 British subjects who lived and owned property in thirteen of the American colonies, the document asserted the right of a people to create its own form of government. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of the 2nd Continental Congress which had voted two days earlier to separate from the British crown.
Read the Declaration
see some quotes on nationalism and patriotism
July 4, 1827
Slavery was outlawed in New York State as the result of the Gradual Emancipation law passed ten years earlier. This freedom applied only to those who had been 18 at the time of its passage. Enslaved children born during the subsequent ten-year period were not be freed until they reached the age of 21.
At the urging of Reverend William Hamilton, a freedman and carpenter, and others, the end of slavery was celebrated in churches. The Fourth of July had in the past been marred by young white men attacking black Americans.
More on William Hamilton  and others
July 4, 1829
Speaking at Boston’s Park Street Church, newspaper editor and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave a seminal speech on “Dangers to the Nation.” Though Massachusetts had banned slavery in 1781 and there was strong anti-slavery sentiment, most understood that a national ban of slavery would threaten the union of the states. Compensation to slaveholders and return of the enslaved to Africa was considered the best solution.
Garrison, on the other hand, called attention to the hypocrisy of celebrating the the day the document was signed declaring, “All men are created equal” while two million were in bondage. He proposed four propositions that day to guide the abolitionist movement:
1. Above all others, slaves in America deserve “the prayers, and sympathies, and charities of the American people.”
2. Non-slave-holding states are “constitutionally involved in the guilt of slavery,” and are obligated “to assist in its overthrow.”    
3. There is no valid legal or religious justification for the preservation of slavery.
4. The “colored population” of America should be freed, given an education, and accepted as equal citizens with whites.

William Lloyd Garrison
July 4, 1894
The Republic of Hawaii was proclaimed with Sanford B. Dole as president. It was recognized immediately by the United States government under President Grover Cleveland. This was the result of the successful overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, then held by Queen Lydia Liliuokalani, and the support by white Americans involved in the sugar trade on the islands for annexation by the United States. Shortly after she had come to office, she had promulgated a new constitution which increased the power of the monarchy and that of native Hawaiians.
July 4, 1965

Barbara Gittings at the Philadelphia picket
The first of an annual picket in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall was held by gay and Lesbian Americans. Jack Nichols and Frank Kameny and members of the New York and Washington Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had earlier demonstrated in Washington, and wished to change the general perception that homosexuals were perverted or sick.

“By those protesters coming out publicly, and placing themselves very strategically in front of the building that evoked the Declaration of Independence and the idea that all men are created equal, it suggested it [gay rights] was no longer a moral or national security or psychiatric issue … it was a civil-rights issues,” 
David K. Johnson wrote in The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.
July 4, 1966
The Freedom of Information Act, P.L. 89-487, became law. It established the right of Americans to know what their government is doing by outlining procedures for getting access to internal documents.
July 4, 1969

“Give Peace a Chance” by the Plastic Ono Band was released in the United Kingdom.
The song was recorded May 31, 1969, during the “Bed-In” John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal as part of their honeymoon. John and Yoko stayed in bed for 8 days, beginning May 26, in an effort to promote world peace.
Some of the people in the hotel room who sang on this were Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Petula Clark. Smothers also played guitar. This event promoting peace received a great deal of media attention.“All we are saying . . .”  
watch & listen – give it a chance
July 4, 1969
A national anti-war conference in Cleveland, Ohio, mapped out activities against the Vietnam War and resulted in the founding of New Mobe (mobilization).
More about the Mobes
July 4, 1983
The Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice began an eight week stay on a farm just outside the Seneca Army Depot near Romulus, New York. The purpose of the gathering was for the women to learn about and together protest the escalation of militarism and the weapons build-up being led at the time by the Reagan administration.
visit PeaCe eNCaMPeNT HeRSToRy PRoJeCT 
July 4, 2007
The first of several Peace Caravans (Caravanes de Paix) set out from South Kivu and traveled across Africa’s Great Lakes region, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Rwanda. The Scout Associations of the countries in the violence-ridden area trained hundreds of young people in conflict resolution through their focus on education for peace.

Members of the Caravan for Peace in Burundi
The classes and the caravans included hundreds of young people in Scouts and Girl Guides from many ethnic groups (often with a history of mutual hostility) who act as community mediators.
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july3

Updated: You Know The Numbers; Get On The Phones With Your US Reps

Yes, this passed in the Senate, thanks to the VP’s tiebreaking vote. However, it’s still got rows to hoe in the US House; Spkr. Johnson wants to vote tomorrow. The thing to remember about our US Reps is, they’re up for election each 2 years. So, while firmly directing them in dealing with this dreadful bill, also firmly yet lovingly remind them that the OBBB will be hanging around their necks every step of the way of their campaigns like a bubblegum machine golden giant dollar sign necklace, if they vote in favor.

(Actually, if you didn’t when you contacted your Senators last week, you can still remind them of the same thing, unless they voted against, in which case, Thank Them. It took bravery to vote against, and they need to know we have their backs. And thank you very much. Now call.)

We Really Hate The Billions for Billionaires Bill

ICE arrests of veterans and their families on the rise

https://www.tumblr.com/juicetrump2/787628152816009216/ice-arrests-of-us-military-veterans-and-their

Civil Unions in VT, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 7/1

I hope everyone and their pets enjoy at least some peace these next few days! I hate fireworks, though I don’t mind them far away or on TV. I did used to like them, when I was a kid. 🎆

July 1, 1917
8000 anti-war marchers demonstrated in Boston. Their banners read:
“IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION?
WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI?
WE DEMAND PEACE.”
The parade was attacked by soldiers and sailors, on orders from their officers.
July 1, 1944
A massive general strike and nonviolent protest in Guatemala led to the resignation of dictator Jorge Ubico who had harshly ruled Guatemala for over a decade.

Juan José Arévalo Bermejo
On March 15 of the following year, Dr. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo took office as the first popularly elected president of Guatemala, and promptly called for democratic reforms establishing the nation’s social security and health systems, land reform (redistribution of farmland not under cultivation to the landless with compensation to the owners), and a government bureau to look after native Mayan concerns.

Jorge Ubico
A decade of peaceful democratic rule followed, until a CIA-backed coup in 1954 ushered in a new, even more brutal era of dictatorial and genocidal regimes. [see June 27, 1954]
July 1, 1946
The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
July 1, 1968
Sixty-one nations, including the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which set up systems to monitor use of nuclear technology and prevent more nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. 190 countries are now signatories; Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the Treaty. North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty.
Text of the Treaty 
July 1, 1972

The first issue
Publication of the first monthly issue of Ms. Magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off,”
Letty Cottin Pogrebin “Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else,” and others.
Ms. Magazine today  (It’s still Ms. Magazine! -A.)
July 1, 2000

Vermont’s civil unions law went into effect, granting gay couples most of the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage under state law.
In the first five years, 1,142 Vermont couples, and 6,424 from elsewhere, had chosen a Vermont civil union.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july1

The US Ratifies The 26th, Spain Got With The Program, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/30

Also, to commemorate the final day of PRIDE month 2025, here’s an historic dance music video to celebrate. No matter what, we should never not dance again! 🎶 🌈 🎶 🫶

June 30, 1966
The first GIs—known as the Fort Hood Three, U.S. Army Privates James Johnson, Dennis Mora and David Samas—refused to be sent to Vietnam. All were members of the 142nd Signal Battalion, 2nd Armored Division stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. The three were from working-class families, and had denounced the war as “immoral, illegal and unjust.” They were arrested, court-martialed and imprisoned. The Pentagon reported 503,926 “incidents of desertion” between 1966 and 1971.
1961-1973: GI resistance in the Vietnam War 
View their pamphlet
 Ballad of The Fort Hood Three  Pete Seeger
June 30, 1971
The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, lowering the minimum voting age to 18 in all elections, was ratified after ¾ of the 50 state legislatures had agreed to it, a mere 100 days after its passage by Congress.
June 30, 1974
The Selective Service law, authorizing the draft, expired, marking the official end of conscription in the U.S. and the beginning of the all-volunteer armed forces.
June 30, 2005
Spain legalized same-sex marriage by a vote of 187-147 in parliament. Such couples were also granted the right to adopt and receive inheritances. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero spoke in support of the bill, “We are expanding the opportunities for happiness of our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends and our relatives. At the same time, we are building a more decent society.
Read more 

Three Belle of the Ranch videos that are important to watch

 

PRIDE In An Anniversary & More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/28

June 28, 1916
A one-day strike by 50,000 German workers was organized to free Socialist anti-war leader Karl Liebknecht, charged with sedition for his criticism of the government and the war later known as World War I. He was the first ever to be expelled from the Reichstag, the German parliament, voted out for his opposition to Germany’s role in the war.
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June 28, 1969
Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, being subjected to routine anti-homosexual harassment by the New York City police raiding the bar, spontaneously fought back in an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement.
Riot veteran and gay rights activist Craig Rodwell said: “A number of incidents were happening simultaneously. There was no one thing that happened or one person, there was just . . . a flash of group, of mass anger.”
About Craig Rodwell 
A group of drag queens, who had been mourning the death earlier in the week of Judy Garland, mocked the police and threw things at them, and police were forced to retreat into the bar as the crowd of supporters grew; disturbances continued for days.
The bar is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stonewall and all it has inspired
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June 28, 1987
The Iranian Kurdish town of Sardasht was attacked by Iraqi aircraft with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein had started the war expecting an easy victory against the new Shiite Islamic republic, even though Iran had three times the population.

Victims of the mustard gas attack on Sarsasht, Iran
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June 28, 2005
Seen in New York City on June 28, 2005
   

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june28

Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported

How is this possible in the land of the free and the home of the brave?  Is this a democracy anymore?  Have we become a thug nation of lawlessness?  Hugs

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2025-06-04/texas-man-born-to-u-s-soldier-on-u-s-army-base-abroad-deported/

He has no citizenship to any country, despite SCOTUS case

By Maggie Quinlan, 1:08PM, Wed. Jun. 4, 2025

Jermaine Thomas, who says he was deported to Jamaica without a passport though he’s never been to the country (Provided by Jermaine Thomas)

Ten years ago, Jermaine Thomas was at the center of a case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court: Should a baby born to a U.S. citizen father deployed to a U.S. Army base in Germany have U.S. citizenship?

Last week, Thomas was escorted onto a plane with his wrists and ankles shackled, he says. He arrived in Jamaica, a country he’d never been to, a stateless man.

“I’m looking out the window on the plane,” Thomas told the Chronicle, “and I’m hoping the plane crashes and I die.”

Thomas has no citizenship, according to court documents. He is not a citizen of Germany (where he was born in 1986) or of the United States (where his father served in the military for nearly two decades) or of his father’s birth country of Jamaica (a place he’d never been).

Thomas doesn’t remember Germany. He says he thinks his first memory is in Washington state, but he moved around so much in his military family that it was hard to keep track.

He spent most of his life in Texas, much of it homeless and in and out of jail, he says. His parents divorced when he was too little to remember. His mother, a nurse, remarried to another man in the Army. They moved a lot, and as she and the stepfather had their own kids, Thomas says he struggled in the new family setup.

So at about about 11 years old, he went to stay with his biological father in Florida. By then, his dad was retired from an 18-year career in the U.S. military, he says. His dad died from kidney failure not long after, in 2010.

“If you’re in the U.S. Army, and the Army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there, and your child makes a mistake after you pass away, and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be okay with them just kicking your child out of the country?” Jermaine says, phoning the Chronicle from a hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. “It was just Memorial Day. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”

From Killeen to Kingston

Thomas says it all began with an eviction in Killeen, Texas, which is about an hour north of Austin. Thomas didn’t know where he’d go next, so to get things out of the apartment quickly, he says he moved all of the stuff into the front yard.

While he was gathering things up in the yard, he was joined by his rottweiler, Miss Sassy Pants, whose leash he had tied to a pole.

Then Killeen police showed up. Thomas says they asked for his ID without telling him what he was in trouble for. He says he responded: I haven’t committed a crime and I don’t want to talk to you. They told him that they’d gotten a call about a dog being tied up. Next, they asked if he had the dog’s immunization records or chip number. He said they checked her chip and didn’t see Sassy’s name, so they told Thomas they’d be taking her to the pound.

The dog was loaded into a truck, and Thomas says at this point, he was arrested. Killeen police confirmed that he was arrested for suspected trespassing with no other charges. That’s a misdemeanor in Texas. He went to the Bell County Jail, where he says a court-appointed lawyer told him he could be sitting in a cell for eight months if he wanted to take the case to trial.

After about 30 days in jail, which resulted in losing his job as a janitor, Thomas says he signed paperwork to be released with conditions. But instead of being released, he was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Waco. He was there only a few hours before being transferred again to an ICE detention camp in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston.

He says he spent two and half months incarcerated in Conroe, and it seemed like no one knew the status of his case. According to Thomas, a deportation officer told him repeatedly that he had a very unique case, and that it was out of their hands in Texas, and now in the hands of “Washington, D.C.”

“You keep explaining to me that I’m being detained in suspended custody, in detention, but if I don’t have a release day and I don’t get to see a judge, that’s pretty much a life sentence,” Thomas says.

Feeling frustrated with his indefinite imprisonment, Thomas says he called the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Inspector General to file a report about what he thought was unlawful detention.

His case only got more confusing after that, he says. After a guard told him he would soon be released, Thomas was allowed a mesh bag to put his property in. He says all he had was some paperwork from his citizenship case and a phone. The phone didn’t have service – naturally, as he hadn’t been able to pay his phone bill since being incarcerated.

Officers brought Thomas to a room full of Spanish speakers. Thomas says he found one man who spoke “broken English” who said they were all being deported to Nicaragua. “So I get to banging on the door, and I’m like: Hey, why am I in here with them?”

Jermaine Thomas in Kingston (Provided by Jermaine Thomas)

Thomas says he decided then that if officers asked him to put his hands behind his back, he just wouldn’t. “I thought, I’m not gonna do it,” he says. “I’m gonna refuse to do it: Respectfully, I don’t mean to be a problem or anything like that, but you’re not gonna just kidnap me and traffic me across the lands and international lines and deport me like I’ve been seeing y’all do on the news.”

The Back of the Airbus

At least they sent him to Jamaica, says Thomas’ new friend and fellow deportee Tanya Campbell. It may be a country he’s never stepped foot in, and it may be he’s only there because of his “appearance,” as she puts it, but at least the language is English. Campbell, who actually grew up in Jamaica, was imprisoned for manslaughter more than a decade ago in New York. Upon her release from prison a few weeks ago, ICE picked her up. On May 29, she says she was one of roughly 100 people brought to a plane on a tarmac in Miami, bound for Kingston.

At the airport, as she exited a van and was being shackled, she noticed a man surrounded by between eight and 10 officers. That’s how she describes first seeing Jermaine. He was the last to board the plane, “And it was like a walk of shame,” she says. He was seated at the back with officers on either side. She assumed he was a fugitive.

Thomas says he sat in the 31st row. Landing was “bizarre, too real,” he says. “It was like a stampede. Everybody just got up and got off the plane.”

Thomas waited in the last row.He says an ICE officer got on the plane and said: “I don’t have records for more than half of these people. There’s something wrong.”

ICE and DHS did not respond to our questions.

Thomas says he doesn’t know what to do in Jamaica. He finds people difficult to understand, plus many speak Patois, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to get a job. He doesn’t know if it’s the Jamaican or U.S. government paying for his hotel room, and for how long that will last. He’s not sure if it’s even legal for him to be there.

Editor’s Note Friday, June 6, 4:44pm: This story has been updated to correct the year of Thomas’ father’s death. The Chronicle regrets the error.