April 22, 1963 The Mothers for Peace, a group made up of Catholic Workers, members of PAX (which became Pax Christi in 1972), Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and others, met with Pope John XXIII to plead for a condemnation of nuclear war and the development of nonviolent resistance. About Women Strike for Peace
April 22, 1970 Banner at the first Earth Day On the first Earth Day observance, an estimated 20 million participated in peaceful demonstrations of concern for the environment across the U.S. including ten thousand grade schools and high schools, two thousand colleges across one thousand communities. 1st Earth Day, 1970 Beginnings of Earth Day from then Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) One on the 1st buttons
April 22, 1992 50,000 attended “Don’t Count On Us,” an anti-war rock concert in Belgrade, Serbia. It was to the nationalist regime of President Slobodan Milosevic an expression of the resistance within society to the military aggression he had been pursuing in the name of Serbian nationalism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the various constituent republics of the former Yugoslavia—Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina—had declared their independence. Following a military draft call-up, fewer than 10% had reported for duty, and there was considerable dissension within what was then still called the Yugoslav People’s Army.
April 22, 1997 On Earth Day, Plowshares activists Donna and Tom Howard-Hastings used handsaws to cut down three poles in northern Wisconsin supporting the ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) transmitter for communication with submerged Trident nuclear submarines. After the poles were cut they were decorated with photos of children and posted with documents about international law and treaties outlawing nuclear weapons. They also placed stakes to mark tree seedlings under the transmission lines that they said were “doomed to the cutting bar.” They cut a section of one of the downed poles, carrying it to the nearby transmitter site where they turned themselves in to security personnel. They were then taken into custody by county sheriffs. An ABC-TV news affiliate, along with reporters from two public radio stations, were on hand to observe what happened. During the three-day jury trial on charges of sabotage and property destruction in Ashland County District Court, the defense was allowed to present several expert witnesses, including a retired Navy captain, Trident missile designer Bob Aldridge, and international law expert Francis Boyle. Both Howard-Hastings defendants were acquitted of the sabotage charge, which carried ten years and a $10,000 fine, but were convicted of destruction of property. At sentencing, they claimed the court had no jurisdiction over them, seeing that a jury had determined that their action was reasonable, and that they did not damage the national defense. They also made a passionate appeal to the judge to heed international law and the World Court decision to outlaw nuclear weapons. Donna was sentenced to 114 days she had already served, with a three-year period of probation and restitution. Tom was sentenced to one year in prison, with credit for time served and three years of intensive probation, including electronic home monitoring, and restitution. The name Laurentian Shield refers the granite geological formation at the ELF site. More Plowshares actions
April 21, 1856 Stonemasons and other construction workers on building sites around Melbourne, Australia, stopped work and marched from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House. They advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest. Their direct action protest was a success, becoming the first organized workers in the world to achieve an eight-hour workday, inspiring the celebration of Labor Day and May Day.
April 21, 1989 Six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 students from more than 40 universities gathered at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu prior to his funeral.They voiced their discontent with China’s authoritarian communist government, and called for greater democracy. Ignoring government warnings of violent suppression of any mass demonstration, the students were joined by workers, academics, and civil servants. Pro-democracy student protesters face-to-face with policemen outside the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square the day of Hu Yaobang’s funeral.
April 20, 1853 Harriet Tubman began her Underground Railroad, a network of people and places that aided in the escape of slaves to the north. Story of a liberator of her people from bondage Harriet Tubman
April 20, 1914 Troops from the Colorado state militia attacked strikers, killing 25 (half women and children), at Ludlow. Having struck the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company the previous September for improved conditions, better wages, and union recognition, the workers established a tent camp which was fired upon and ultimately torched during a 14-hour siege. The Ludlow Massacre
April 20, 1964 In his closing statement at the Rivonia Trial, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela addressed the court: “We want a just share in the whole of South Africa . . . We want security and a stake in society. Above all, my lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent.” He was in Pretoria Supreme Court in South Africa where he and eight co-defendants were charged with 221 acts of sabotage designed to “ferment violent revolution,” and were facing the death penalty. At the time, black South Africans had no civil or political rights whatsoever, though they composed over 80% of the population. He concluded: “During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. “ I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realised. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela in 1958 The trial that changed South Africa
April 20, 1969 On the site of a parking lot owned by the University of California, Berkeley, a diverse group of people came together, each freely contributing their skills and resources to create People’s Park. People’s Park history
April 20, 1982 Seven women were arrested in an anti-nuclear protest outside Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento, California, in what had become a weekly vigil. Speaking after her arrest, Barbara Weidner, 72, said, “As a mother and grandmother, I could no longer remain silent as our world rushes on its collision course with disaster which threatens the lives and futures of all children, everywhere, and the future of this beautiful planet itself.” She later said, “I hope people will not think we are encouraging people to break the law,” she said. “But our actions should teach people, and children, to scrutinize laws against human life, and they should be broken to prove a point.”
April 20, 2002 More than 75,000 marched in Washington, D.C. to protest U.S. policies in the Middle East, specifically regarding Palestine and the threatened war in Iraq. The demonstration was organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) and included members of the Arab-American, Muslim and South Asian communities.
At 1 a.m. today, the Supreme Court paused the deportation of immigrants who are subject Donald Trump’s abuse of the Alien Enemies Act (a measure that’s only supposed to be used during an invasion or times of war), just as the Trump regime was on the verge of flying a group of Venezuelans from Texas to El Salvador to rot in that nation’s hellhole of a prison.
Breaking news at 1 a.m. is usually about an explosion, an invasion, a tsunami, a tweet from Trump containing an incomprehensible new word, but rarely a Supreme Court ruling.
SCOTUS had previously told the regime that it’d be OK if they used the illegal Alien Enemies Act, just so long as each immigrant (and maybe US citizen) received due process first. The regime apparently ignored that last part about due process and was about to go all-skippy with deporting more Venezuelans.
The court ordered the Trump administration to respond to the emergency appeal once a federal appeals court in Louisiana takes action in the case. The court said, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.” That means the regime will probably go ahead and do it.
SCOTUS did not explain the ruling, maybe because it was 1 a.m. and a rumor started that Denny’s was about to close, and Sotomayor is a real grouch if she doesn’t get her Moons Over My Hammy.
But we probably don’t need an explanation for why the only two dissenters were (be ready to be surprised) Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (OK, that wasn’t surprising).
Why would those two oppose delaying the deportation of immigrants without due process and support the regime violating the last order from SCOTUS? There are several possible reasons, and I’m sure none of them are good.
The first reason could, they’re fascist goons.
The second one could be that they just don’t give a shit about the Constitution and know this is the side they’re supposed to be on.
The third reason could be that they don’t care what the issue is and all they need is to be pointed in the direction Trump’s going, and they will follow.
The fourth reason could be that it’s booty night, Clarence doesn’t want to upset Ginny Thomas, and Samuel is hoping Mrs. Alito will help raise his flag.
The fifth reason could be that they’re both corrupt and were bought off to vote this way.
Even Trump’s justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, voted for this delay.
These guys would deport Jesus, especially since he’s not a blue-eyed blonde like White Christians make him out to be.
This part of the blog is short because I want to clean my apartment before I fly to Chicago on Monday. I like coming home to a clean apartment.
I have a beef, and it’s not the Italian beef sandwich I’m planning to try in Chicago: I may be starting a fight I don’t want to fight, but dammit. Somebody has to.
A caption contest is where a cartoonist draws a cartoon, but doesn’t finish writing it. He creates an image and leaves a blank speech bubble/balloon. He then invites the readers to fill in the bubble and makes a contest out of it. It’s fun for the readers, gets them to engage with the cartoonist and the publication, and brings more hits and views to the publication’s website. I always felt it was a cheap way to make readers come back to look at other same page, and I openly admitted that when I did a caption contest for The Free Lance-Star. I hated the caption contest, but knew my readers loved it and my editors liked the views. I don’t see anything wrong ethically with the caption contest because I don’t see it as political cartooning. I saw it as a newspaper feature similar to the crossword puzzle, the jumble, or today’s Wordle. I’ll occasionally bump into a reader who’ll bring up the caption contest…that I hated.
My friend Walt Handelsman is doing a caption contest, and he does it well.
I saw something similar last night that’s kinda similar to the caption contest, but it’s entirely unethical, diminishes political cartooning, lazy, and is screwing readers over.
This is what I saw, and it’s by Daryl Cagle, who operates the largest syndication company for political cartoons.
If this were just a game for his website, I’d think nothing of it, but it’s not a game.
Daryl is shopping for his reader to write his ideas, and then he plans to sell them. If he does manage to sell them, they won’t be next to a crossword puzzle, but on the opinion page. It’s not like editors will care if they suck, and they will. And if he sells them, he’s not sharing the money with the person who wrote the idea. They’ll just get an “attribution.”
Remember my blog about why I don’t use cartoon ideas I didn’t write? The reason boils down to ethics, which Daryl doesn’t have. Even though I might be the goofiest guy in this industry, I take this industry seriously. I care about my work. Obviously, Daryl doesn’t care about his. He once drew two versions of a cartoon, one version from the Right and the other from the Left. It was a total hack job. He doesn’t care.
I commented on Daryl’s Facebook page, telling him to write his own cartoons. He replied, “According to the Pulitzer people, we’re all just illustrators now, Clay.” That’s pretty much true as the Pulitzers have taken away the contest category for political cartoons and combined it with “illustrated reporting” or some shit like that, but I wasn’t going to let Daryl use it as an excuse.
I replied to Dayl’s reply, saying, “Then why are you helping the Pulitzers diminish us? You already used the anonymous cartoonist to tell editors and publishers that we’re not journalists. Most political cartoonists have too much integrity to take ideas submitted by readers, and here you are shopping for them. Do you not care about your work? If you don’t want to be a political cartoonist, then get out of the political cartoon business. And then on top of all that, you’re not going to pay the person who writes the cartoon you’re going to sell.”
Daryl previously syndicated an anonymous cartoonist who signed his work as Rivers. Rivers is a lying racist idiot MAGAt in Canada (that was a secret too). By syndicating Rivers, Daryl was telling editors and publishers that political cartoons didn’t have to abide by their ethics policies, thus cartoonists aren’t journalists anymore. That’s a weird position for a cartoonist to take. Even letters to the editor must be signed. When asked to justify this a couple of years ago, Daryl replied to me, “I don’t see a problem with this,” which wasn’t answering the question.
I first met Daryl in 1997 when I was in Hawaii. He flew out and bought me a burrito. I liked him. He’s a nice guy personally, and I thought at the time with his website, that he was a huge advocate for our entire industry, but over the years, he started doing shit like this, shit I can’t remain silent about. Other cartoonists have told me to shut up and not make noise, but you know I’m not good at that. I’m a noisy motherfucker. I rock a Gibson. And then others send me private messages encouraging me on, but won’t add their voices to my one-man protest. Those cartoonists are smarter than I am.
I would rather support other cartoonists than criticize them. I try to make any criticism about the message in it, like if it’s lying or racist, never just because I think it sucks. I don’t want to go after Daryl, but here I am.
Daryl could come after all my clients and try to chase me out of the business, but there’s no sign he’s ever tried that, though I have lost newspapers to his syndicate, which sells dozens of cartoons in one package for a flat fee. It’s hard to compete against that. Once, every cartoonist could submit to USA Today, but then Daryl made a deal with Gannett that shut out every cartoonist from their entire chain except for his cartoonists. Now, Gannett doesn’t publish political cartoons at all.
But he can’t come after my Substack. To all you paid subscribers, this is one of the things you’re helping me fight, and you’re giving me more freedom to speak out. So I thank you again.
I’m going to open the comments today to be fair, to give Daryl a chance to respond to this. I don’t think he will, but I’m trying to be fair.
I’m not going to fight a war or carry a torch for this. I’m going to move on and focus on my work, but somebody had to say something. I’ll end this with one more message to Daryl: Write your own fucking cartoons.
Creative note: I already did one Easter cartoon, which has a higher chance of being published than this one. I wanted to do something like this cartoon just to rouse up the conservatives on Easter Sunday. It’s so much better than the he-has-risen bullshit from the fake Christians like Gary Varvel.
I want to thank brucedesertrat who sent me the link to this substack article. I enjoy learning about history but sadly this hits home too deeply. It is so close it is scary. Hugs.
Today President Trump is threatening to pull funds if Harvard does not comply with his demands for the school to shape it’s curricula to favor Trumpism. Harvard has refused to caved to Trump’s fascist demands which clearly violate free speech.
“The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber
The seizure of power by the MAGA Republicans in 2025, led by Donald Trump, brought far-reaching changes to American Universities. Some caved, some obeyed in advance.
The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, led by Adolph Hitler, brought far-reaching changes to German Universities. All caved. All obeyed in advance.
There is a parallel in German history for this American moment when books are banned, educational institutions are battered and a brutal and barbaric anti-intellectual ethos is on the rise.
A timeline of the Nazification of Munich University
1933
Hitler demands The University of Munich restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Nazism.
Trump demands Harvard University restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Trumpism. Abandon DEI. Police your students and faculty for viewpoint “diversity”.
Those faculty members who are not Nazi sympathizers are dismissed.
Trump’s letter calls for political undesirables to be gone.
The numbers of Jews admitted to university are restricted.
Munich University is the site of book burnings led by pro-Nazi students.
With the passage of these laws, the Nazis attempted to root out any opposition to their ideology that remain in German higher education.
Trump wants all of America’s Universities to root out anti-Trumpist thought, to be citadels of Trumpism, to employ MAGA professors who will teach American students how Trumpism will make America and her institutions of higher learning great again.
1941
Munich University appoints of Walther Wüst, an Aryan ideologue, Führer-Rektor of the University. By this time the Nazification of Munich University is complete. The once prestigious Munich University employs an all Nazi faculty.
1943
Sophie Scholl, a student attending Munich University, is guillotined for distributing anti-Nazi broadsides on campus.
Under President Trump students are deported or “disappeared”. I can safely assume an American student will be martyred for resisting fascism here in our nation in t he months ahead.
Hitler visiting the University of Munich
Here is a harrowing account of the Nazification of Frankfurt University witnessed by young Austrian economist named Peter Drucker:
Frankfurt was the first university the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with a faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience, and democracy. The Nazis knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia. And so did everyone at the university.
Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials. When the appointment of a Nazi commissar was announced . . . and every teacher and graduate assistant at the university was summoned to a faculty meeting to hear this new master, everybody knew that a trial of strength was at hand. I had never before attended a faculty meeting, but I did attend this one.
The new Nazi commissar wasted no time on the amenities. He immediately announced that Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15; this was something that no one had thought possible despite the Nazis’ loud antisemitism. Then he launched into a tirade of abuse, filth, and four-letter words such as had been heard rarely even in the barracks and never before in academia. . . . [He] pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.” There was silence when he finished; everybody waited for the distinguished biochemist-physiologist. The great liberal got up, cleared his throat, and said, “Very interesting, Mr. Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”
The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for “racially pure science.” A few of the professors had the courage to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends. I went out sick unto death—and I knew that I was going to leave Germany within forty-eight hours.
The Nazis attacked academic dissent with lethal cruelty
Some went to nearby Dachau. Some, such as our heroic young student Sophie, were beheaded.
Sophie Scholl, photographed by the Gestapo
Here is the text of the pamphlet that cost Munich University student Sophie Scholl her life. Her haunting critique of Hitler resonates eerily with the familiar critiques of our current leader:
Fellow Students!
Shaken, our people faces the downfall of our men of Stalingrad. Three hundred thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly rushed into death and ruin by the brilliant strategy of the man who served as a private in the Great War. Führer, we thank you!
It is festering in the German people: Do we want to continue entrusting the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of our young Germans to the base, power-seeking instincts of a Party clique? Nevermore.
The day of reckoning has come, our German youth’s reckoning with the most abhorrent tyranny that our people has ever endured. In the name of all young Germans, we demand that Adolf Hitler’s State return to us our personal freedom, the German’s most valuable possession, which he has cheated us out of in the most disgraceful way.
We have grown up in a State where every free expression of opinion has been ruthlessly gagged. The HJ, SA, and SS have tried to make us uniform, to revolutionize us, to narcotize us in the most fruitful educational years of our lives. “Ideological training” was the name given to the despicable method of stifling our budding independent thought and self-esteem in a haze of empty phrases. A “Führerauslese”1 of a kind as fiendish and at the same time as narrow-minded as one can possibly imagine, grooming its future Party bosses at Ordensburgen [special educational centers for Party cadres] to become godless, shameless, and unscrupulous exploiters and cutthroats, to become blind, mindless followers of the Führer. We “brain-workers” were exactly right for becoming the cudgel of this new ruling class. Front-line soldiers are disciplined like schoolboys by student leaders and would-be Gauleiter; Gauleiter, with prurient jests, assault the honor of female students. German female students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the insult to their honor, and German male students have intervened and stood their ground on behalf of their female classmates. That is a first step toward gaining our right to free self-determination, without which intellectual values cannot be created. We are grateful to our brave fellow students, female and male, who have led the way by setting this shining example!
For us, there is only one watchword: Fight against the Party! Get out of the Party formations, in which the goal is to keep us politically muzzled! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS Unter- or Oberführer and the Party bootlickers! True scholarly activities and genuine intellectual freedom are at stake! No threat of any kind can frighten us, not even the closing of our universities. Each of us must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a body politic that is aware of its moral responsibility.
Freedom and honor! For ten long years, Hitler and his comrades have squeezed these two magnificent German words and made them loathsome, have banged on them and twisted them as only dilettantes can, dilettantes who cast the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated what freedom and honor mean to them during ten years of the destruction of all physical and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance in the German people. Even the dumbest German’s eyes have been opened by the dreadful blood bath which they have brought about everywhere in Europe and continue to bring about each day. The German name will remain forever disgraced unless German youth stand up at last, engage simultaneously in revenge and expiation, smash their tormentors, and bring about a new intellectual and spiritual Europe.
Students! The German people is watching us! It expects us, as in 1813 with the breaking of Napoleon’s domination, now also in 1943 to break the domination of National Socialist terror through the power of the mind.
Berezina and Stalingrad blaze in the East; the dead of Stalingrad implore us!
“Fresh on, my people, the flame signals are smoking!”2
Our people is rising up against the enslavement of Europe by National Socialism, in a new, trustful breakthrough of freedom and honor!
As you read her courageous words consider how and why a regime would loathe and fear such a voice for liberty.
Now is the time to stand with all who see Trump for the terrifying tyrant he is.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and students who courageously stand against this tyranny.
Now is the time to join Thomas Jefferson in swearing “upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Now is the time to stand with Harvard University.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and educational institutions threatened by MAGA fascism.
David Fitzsimmons: Arizona’s Progressive Voice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
April 19, 1911 More than 6,000 Grand Rapids, Michigan, furniture workers—Germans, Dutch, Lithuanians, and Poles—put down their tools and struck 59 factories in what became known as the Great Furniture Strike. For four months they campaigned and picketed for higher pay, shorter hours, and an end to the piecework pay system that was common in the plants of America’s “Furniture City.” Although the strike ended after four months without a resolution, Gordon Olson, Grand Rapids city historian emeritus, said once employees returned to work, most owners did increase pay and reduce hours.
April 19, 1943 On the eve of Passover, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began when Nazi forces attempted to clear out the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, to send them to concentration camps. The Germans were met by unexpected gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters. The destruction of the ghetto had been ordered in February by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler: “An overall plan for the razing of the ghetto is to be submitted to me. In any case we must achieve the disappearance from sight of the living-space for 500,000 sub-humans (Untermenschen) that has existed up to now, but could never be suitable for Germans, and reduce the size of this city of millions—Warsaw—which has always been a center of corruption and revolt.”
These two women, soon to be executed, were members of the Jewish resistance. ” …Jews and Jewesses shot from two pistols at the same time… The Jewesses carried loaded pistols in their clothing with the safety catches off… At the last moment, they would pull hand grenades out…and throw them at the soldiers….” Captured Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Learn more about The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (it’s the search page for the national Holocaust Museum.)
April 19, 1971 As a prelude to a massive anti-war protest, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. The generally peaceful protest was called Dewey Canyon III in honor of the operation of the same name conducted in Laos. They lobbied their congressmen, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery, and staged mock “search-and-destroy” missions. Read more about this action
April 19, 1997 Two Swedish Plowshares peace activists, Cecelia Redner, a priest in the Church of Sweden, and Marija Fischer, a student, entered the Bufors Arms factory in Karlskoga, Sweden, planted an apple tree and attempted to disarm a naval cannon being exported to Indonesia. Cecelia was charged with attempt to commit malicious damage and Marija with assisting in what was called the Choose Life Disarmament Action. Both were also charged with violating a law which protects facilities “important to society.” Both women were convicted, arguing over repeated interruptions by the judge, that, in Redner’s words, “When my country is arming a dictator I am not allowed to be passive and obedient, since it would make me guilty to the crime of genocide in East Timor. I know what is going on and I cannot only blame the Indonesian dictatorship or my own government.” Fischer added, “We tried to prevent a crime, and that is an obligation according to our law.” Redner was sentenced to fines and three years of correctional education. Fischer was sentenced to fines and two years’ suspended sentence. Both the prosecutor and defendants appealed the case. No jail sentences were imposed.
