Category: Terrorism

Peace & Justice History for 2/9

February 9, 1780
Captain Paul Cuffe, his brother John, two free negroes, and other residents of Massachusetts petitioned the state legislature for the right to vote.
A few years earlier, Cuffe and his brother had refused to pay local taxes, reasoning that there was a connection between an obligation to pay taxes to a government and the right to vote for that government.

Captain Paul Cuffe
Cuffe’s memoir available 
Cuffe’s career as ship captain, shipowner, African colonizer and generous citizen 
February 9, 1950
United States Senator Joseph P. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) accused more than 200 staff members in the State Department of being Communists, launching his anti-red crusade.
He made the allegation in a public speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, saying that state was infested with communists, and brandished a sheet of paper which he said contained the alleged traitors’ names.

“I have here in my hand,” he said, “the names of 205 men that were known to the Secretary of State [Dean Acheson] as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” The number changed repeatedly over the following months. Some years later, he confided the paper was actually just a laundry list.
Anti-Communist fear ran high in the U.S. at the time. Federal civil servant and Soviet spy Alger Hiss had been recently convicted, and a communist government had just come into power in China. Those accused by McCarthy and others often lost their jobs, regardless of the validity of the accusation of their connection to the Communist Party.
McCarthy’s career of irresponsible accusation 
Joe McCarthy’s Oversight Abuses (The Levin Center)
Released 50 years later, transcripts of closed committee hearings reveal more abuse
February 9, 1964
 
The G.I. JOE action figure made its debut as an 11.5 inch “doll” for boys with 21 moving parts, named after the movie, The Story of G.I. JOE. 

Puts you in the action!
February 9, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson ordered a U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion deployed to Da Nang, South Vietnam, to provide protection for the key U.S. air base there. American military advisers had been in country since the defeat and withdrawal of the French in 1954, but this was the first commitment of combat troops to South Vietnam.There was considerable reaction around the world to this new level of U.S. involvement. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued its military support of the South Vietnamese government.
In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain and Australia supported the U.S. action, but France called for negotiations.
A Marine HAWK missile launcher is in position at the Danang Airfield.
February 9, 2002
Ten thousand, organized by Gush Shalom (peace bloc in Hebrew), a coalition of Israeli peace groups, marched in Tel Aviv against the Ariel Sharon government’s increasingly brutal attacks on Palestinian civilians. The harsh tactics were part of Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip, territory beyond Israel’s internationally recognized 1967 borders.
February 9, 2003
Six weeks before the Iraq War began, Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC-TV’s “This Week” dismissed the need for U.N. weapons inspectors to continue searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
He said the administration saw no further need for ”inspectors to play detectives or Inspector Clouseau running all over Iraq.” Clouseau was the bumbling detective played originally by Peter Sellers (and lately Steve Martin) in the Pink Panther films.

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

U.N. weapons inspectors, left, and Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate members visit a Baghdad storage facility in this photo taken Feb. 5, 2003, just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared at the U.N. Security Council to offer evidence of alleged Iraqi attempts to hide banned weapons.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february9

Peace & Justice History for 2/8

February 8, 1962
More than 20,000 attended a demonstration in Paris against the Secret Army Organization (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète or OAS), a group of European-Algerians which used terrorist methods to keep Algeria a French colony.
They set off bombs in Metropolitan France and made multiple attempts on President Charles DeGaulle’s life.
DeGaulle had chosen a referendum among Algerians to decide their independence; Europeans were outnumbered 9:1 by the native population of Sunni Muslim Arabs and Berbers.
The demonstration was held in violation of a declared state of emergency (because of OAS actions) and, in the subsequent rioting, at least eight people were killed and 240 injured (half of them police officers).

The terrorist crimes of the OAS 
February 8, 1968

The Orangeburg Masssacre


Three black students were killed and 50 wounded in a confrontation with highway patrolmen at a South Carolina State rally supporting arrested civil rights protesters. Orangeburg’s only bowling alley, the All Star, was still segregated years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed discrimination based on race in such public accommodations.
On the previous two days, college students had entered the bowling alley, refusing to leave after they were not allowed to bowl. Fifteen of the second group were arrested.
The Orangeburg Massacre (2 links)
February 8, 1980
President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce
draft registration.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february8

Peace & Justice History for 2/3

February 3, 1816
Paul Cuffee, a shipowner and a free negro (born to slave parents in Massachusetts), arrived in Sierra Leone with 38 African Americans intent on setting up a colony for free blacks from the United States. He had earlier set up the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a trading organization, to encourage commerce between England, the U.S. and the British colony on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
February 3, 1893
Abigail Ashbrook of Willingboro, New Jersey, refused to pay taxes because she was denied the right to vote because she was a woman.
February 3, 1964
In New York City, more than 450,000 students, mostly black and Puerto Rican, comprising nearly half the citywide enrollment, boycotted the New York City schools to protest the system’s de facto segregation. The Parents’ Workshop for Equality, led by Reverend Milton Galamison, had proposed a plan to integrate the city’s schools but it was rejected by the school board. Freedom Schools were set up for the kids during the one-day direct action.
February 3, 1973
Three decades of armed conflict in Vietnam officially ended when a cease-fire agreement signed in Paris the previous month went into effect. Vietnam had endured almost uninterrupted hostility since 1945, when a war for independence from France was launched. A civil war between the northern and southern regions of the country began after the country was divided by the Geneva Convention in 1954 following France’s military defeat and troop withdrawal. American military “advisors” began arriving in 1955.
Between 1954 and 1975, 107,504 South Vietnamese government troops, approximately 1,000,000 North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front soldiers, and 58,209 American troops died in combat. The number of Vietnamese civilian deaths is unknown, estimated between one and four million killed, and millions
more wounded or affected by defoliants such as Agent Orange.
February 3, 1973
President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, intended to avoid species extinction, especially through loss of habitat.
February 3, 1988
The U.S. House of Representatives rejected President Ronald Reagan’s request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, an insurgent group trying violently to overthrow the Sandinista government.
February 3, 1994
President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam, which had been in place since the end of the Vietnam war.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february3

Literally Watching Again In Real Time, Peace & Justice History For 2/2

February 2, 1779
Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, both prominent Quakers (Society of Friends), urged refusal to pay taxes used for arming against Indians in Pennsylvania. Since William Penn established the state two generations earlier, the Friends had dealt with the Indian tribes nonviolently, and had been treated likewise by the native Americans. Benezet and the Quakers were also early and consistent opponents of slavery.

More about Anthony Benezet 
February 2, 1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in the Mexican city of the same name, ending the Mexican War. In 1845 Congress had voted to annex Texas, and President James K. Polk sent General Zachary Taylor and troops to patrol the border, newly defined by Congress as the Rio Grande, though it previously had been the Nueces River.
Following an encounter between Mexican and U.S. troops, Polk called for Congress to declare war on Mexico. General Winfield Scott and troops eventually seized Mexico City.The treaty’s provisions called for Mexico to cede 55% of its territory (present-day California, Nevada and Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona,
and portions of New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado), and to recognize the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas, in exchange for fifteen million dollars in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property. According to the treaty, U.S. citizenship was offered to any Mexicans living in the 500,000 sq miles (1.3 million sq km) of new U.S. territory.

Land ceded to the U.S. after the Mexican War.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 
February 2, 1931
The first of well over 400,000 Mexican-Americans from across the country, some of them citizens and many of them U.S. residents for as long as 40 years, were “repatriated” as Los Angeles Chicanos were forcibly deported to Mexico.
More on those deported, Los Repatriados
February 2, 1932
The Conference on the Reduction and Limitation of Arms, the world’s first disarmament meeting, opened in Geneva, Switzerland. Sponsored by the League of Nations, and attended by delegates from 60 nations, no agreement was reached. The U.S. delegation called for the abolition of all offensive weapons as the basis for negotiations but found little support.
February 2, 1966 
The first burning of Australian military conscription papers as a protest against the Vietnam War occurred in Sydney, Australia.
February 2, 1970

Bertrand Russell later in life
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, Nobel laureate in literature and philosopher of peace, died in Penryndeudreaeth, Merioneth, in Wales at age 97.

Bertrand Russell at age 10
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
— Bertrand Russell  
More of Russell’s wisdom 
February 2, 1980
Reports surfaced that the FBI had conducted a sting operation targeting members of Congress. In what became known as ”Abscam,” members suspected of taking bribes were invited to meetings with FBI agents posing as Arab businessmen, offering $50,000 and $100,000 payments for special legislation.
Audio and video recordings of the meetings were made surreptitiously. Six members of the house were convicted of accepting bribes. Another member of the House and one senator were targeted but took no money.
 
FBI agents in Abscam sting operation
Actual FBI videotape of one attempted scam 
February 2, 1989

Soviet participation in the war in Afghanistan ended as Red Army troops withdrew from the capital city of Kabul. They left behind many of their arms for use by Afghan government forces. They were driven out principally by the insurgent mujahadin, armed through covert U.S. funding.
Read more 
“Charlie Wilson’s War” movie trailer 
February 2, 1990
South African President F.W. De Klerk unbanned (lifted the legal prohibition on) opposition parties: the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress and the South African Communist party were officially considered legal. He also announced the lifting of restrictions on the UDF, COSATU and thirty-three other anti-apartheid organizations, as well as the release of all political prisoners and the suspension of the death penalty. This was the result of his negotiations with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, a leader of the ANC.
The ecstatic reaction to De Klerk’s beginning the end of apartheid on BBC video 

Some more abuse by republicans

ICE Detains Native Americans, Questions Tribal IDs

ICE is now detaining Native Americans. Several members of the Navajo nation have been detained. Fuck this country.. @kaffnews.com http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/l…

— Tyler. 🚩🏴🍞 (@covidzero.bsky.social) 2025-01-25T01:23:27.010Z

This is a pretty good indicator that it is not about going after immigrants, just Brown people in general.

Voldemort: We Don’t Have To Obey Laws On Firing Federal Workers, Trump’s Power Is Absolute [VIDEO]

“The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I’ve just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away…. The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line.”
-Tarkin

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

tRump hates the Kennedys as much if not more than he hates the Obamas, and has forever.   He hates that those families are more respected and called American royalty rather than his.  Remember he told the Queen of England that his kids were equal to hers because he was American’s version of royalty just as she was England’s.   Remember he demanded that the famous rose garden credited to Jackie Kennedy be destroyed, torn out and replaced with a horrible garden insisting it be credited with his third wife’s name he wanted to be as famous and acclaimed as the wonderful Jackie’s was.   It never was because instead of beautiful like the rose garden was the one that replaced it was a nightmare of bad taste and ugliness.  So he needs to destroy the Kennedy legacy and anything with their name on it as he has tried to do to Obama, and now Biden.   Hugs

Trump: I’ll Repaint Air Force One To “Power Blue”

As has been widely reported, the underbelly of Air Force One is painted “baby blue” because that makes the aircraft blend in with the sky, rendering it less visible to potential rocket attacks launched from the ground. Last month Trump raged that the Air Force One replacement currently under construction will not be completed until after his term. Also, contrary to his claim to reporters, Trump indeed golfed today.

AF1 livery is beautiful and iconic and the new livery in progress is exquisite. Of course he’ll destroy it.

Thumbnail
State TV Host: Tariffs Will End Rapes On NYC Subway

NBC had news today that of the 1200 people detained by ICE this Sunday, 50% had no criminal record at all.

You know how cops would rather pull over law abiding citizens for minor traffic infractions than chase dangerous criminals? What do you think ICE would rather do, arresting helpless people who volunteered their information and will not resist, or arresting known criminals who might have weapons and try to fight back?

 

The game is kind of becoming clear, isn’t it?

Trump has no plan to handle inflation, and in fact, his three main things, are all going to increase costs.

Deporting the work force, tariffs, tax cuts for the wealthy – all massively inflationary.

the plan seems to be to lie about crime coming down as the price, and of course, real patriots have no problem paying more…..

OK Public Schools Chief: I’ll Help ICE Deport Students
Budget Nominee: “The 2020 Election Was Rigged”

Vought is an avowed Christian nationalist and former Heritage Foundation executive.

Hopium PM in the AM

(Because I live in a later time zone than many readers here.)

Hopium PM – Court Blocks Trump’s Dangerous Power Grab, New Reuters Poll Shows Trump Taking A Hit, Keep Making Calls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by Simon Rosenberg

Kennedy and Gabbard Hearings Tomorrow, Patel Thursday Read on Substack

Good evening peeps. A federal judge has blocked Trump’s outrageous suspension/cancelling of Congressionally mandated funding for programs of all kinds across all 50 states. From the Washington Post:

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from imposing a sweeping pause on trillions of dollars in federal spending, capping a frenetic day of disruption to government programs that fund schools, provide housing and ensure low-income Americans have access to healthcare.

The order prevented the new restrictions from taking effect until at least Feb. 3, buying time for a coalition of public-health advocates, nonprofits and businesses — represented by the left-leaning group Democracy Forward — to proceed with a case that may test Trump’s claims of expansive power over the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

The decision arrived amid a wave of chaos and confusion in Washington, where few appeared to understand the scope and intention of a White House memo that had directed agencies to “temporarily pause” the disbursement of key federal funds. Even before it could officially take effect at 5 p.m., thousands of government services — many dedicated primarily to Americans’ health, safety and well-being — appeared to be at risk of interruption or shutdown, at least temporarily.

The NYTimes has a good backgrounder on “impoundment” – Trump’s attempt just to cancel government programs he doesn’t care for and “impound” the money (gift article). I also found this article by Russell Berman in the Atlantic helpful in understanding where we are.

Yes, in the first few weeks of Trump’s Presidency we are already facing one of the gravest Constitutional crises in America history as Trump is attempting to seize a level of control over our government no President has ever had.

If there was an upside to this dark day Democrats across the country at all levels of government loudly rose up against the latest acts of our Mad Orange Wannabe King. It appeared to have woken us from our collective slumber, as the threat Trump clearly represents became impossible to ignore. Can we compete with Trump, contest his out of control Administration, score some wins in the coming days?

First, a new Reuters poll suggests Trump has already overreached, as his approval rating has already taken a 9 point hit:

  • Jan 21 – 47% approve, 39% disapprove (+8)
  • Jan 28 – 45% approve, 46% disapprove (-1)

We will see if these results are replicated in other polls but this one sure shows that Trump is struggling out of the gate. Note below how unpopular many of his early actions/proposals are (but also note the broad public support for “downsizing the federal government”): (snip-MORE; go see it! It’s free and you don’t have to log in.)

The Rare Religion Post That Is Also Informational and Heartening Even For the Non-Christian

Rare because I rarely post such. Pastor Bolz-Weber says all this so well, and it is what I learned when I was young and growing up; what I work to apply in my own (and in no one else’s) life. I’m not proselytizing or trying to “draw anyone in.” This helps to explain why and how I feel as I do about justice and peace, and love and understanding and all that, including hope and light. Enjoy with a mind that can absorb without feeling there’s gonna be a “come forward” moment, because there’s not one. (Other than to Christians who feel as we do, but wonder about Zionism and Nationalism being as bad as they are.)

Heresy and Checkpoints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Some thoughts from breakfast this morning. Read on Substack

In Christmas Sermon, Palestinian Theologian Condemns Enablers of Gaza Genocide
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac

This morning I had a quick breakfast with another Lutheran pastor. This of course is not terribly remarkable in the scheme of things, except for the fact that the breakfast took place in the Kingdom of Jordan, a few feet away from the Dead Sea and my colleague had to cut the breakfast short so he could return home to his family, but he was anxious about all the military check point between here and there.

“How far of a drive is it” I asked.

“If I had a car and could drive straight there, about an hour. But my hope is that it will only take 8 hours.” He accepted that he may in fact not even make it home at all tonight.

Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Lutheran Pastor who lives and serves a church in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Christians have been here since the day the Spirit blew through them on the day of Pentecost, so Munther and my other Palestinian Christian friends can get slightly annoyed when well meaning Christians from the West ask “when did your family convert?”.

Um, over 2,000 years ago?

Munther and I are in Jordan right now for a conference – 60 academics and church leaders from 17 countries gathered over the last several days for a consultation on Christian Zionism (belief that Jewish people have a “divine right” to the land here – using a few verses in a 4,000 year old text to have authority over foreign policy and global political realities of today), and the impact of that on Christians in the Middle East; a few days together in a majority Muslim country, across the Dead Sea from the State of Israel to talk about Christian folks’ business: how do the theological beliefs of one group of Christians impact the lives of another group of Christians halfway across the planet?

Many of us grew up with some form of Christian Zionism, I know I did. Perhaps it stemmed from a desire to be faithful to what we have been told, or a desire to help usher in the second coming of Christ (ala The Late Great Planet Earth) so he can come back and destroy the world and take us up to heaven (described this week as science fiction theology), or a desire to assuage the guilt left over from the unspeakable atrocities and genocide of the holocaust.

It will take me time to metabolize what I heard over the last few days. Christian Zionism is widespread, and far reaching in it’s impact, and I am committed to try and maintain the humility it takes as a US citizen and a Christian to consider people like Munther and my friend Mitri Raheb as reliable narrators of the impact on the ground in Palestine.

Palestinian Christians should be listened to by us, their siblings in Christ.

Munther Isaac appeared in ‘Til Kingdom Come (2020), an Israeli documentary about American Christian support for Israel.[20] In the film he explains his view to pastor William Bingham that Christian Zionism contributes to the oppression of Palestinians. After their conversation, Bingham calls Isaac an anti-semite and says that Palestinians do not exist. – Wikipedia

This morning before Munther left to make his way home, he told me a story of a family in his church. For over 150 years they have rightfully owned and inhabited their land outside Bethlehem – a beautiful parcel dotted with olive trees, often hundreds of years old themselves.

Israeli settlers (whose actions are deemed illegal by the UN Security Council)
who for years have been attempting to take this family’s land, confronted them at their gate recently, demanding the family leave. The family showed them their ownership documents – dating back from Ottoman rule, then Jordanian rule through to Israeli rule. The settlers angrily lifted up their Bible and said “We have documents too. God gave us this land!”

As I mentioned, I am overwhelmed by all I heard this week and will try and write more later for those who are interested, but for now I wanted to report how one word stood out for me in a particular way during the conference, and that word is: heresy.

19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher defined heresy as, “that which preserves the appearance of Christianity, and yet contradicts its essence“

So perhaps that is the correct word for when, with all the trappings of Christianity behind us, we who seek to justify or maintain our dominance over another group of people use the Bible to prove that our domination`is not actually an abuse of power at the expense of others, but is, indeed, part of “God’s plan”. Because there you have the appearance of Christianity (Bible verses and God-talk) contradicting its essence (love God, and love your neighbor, blessed are the meek, etc…).

Is it not heresy when slavery is established as “God’s will”; when the subordination of women is established as “God’s will”; when discrimination against queer folks is established as “God’s will”, when the taking of one people’s land by another people is established as “God’s will” (hello, manifest destiny), when the executive VP of the National Rifle Association claims that the right to buy an assault rifle is “not bestowed by man, but granted by God”? When a self-justifying message is heretically delivered in God’s name it brings with it a poison that infects the deepest parts of us and when the poison spreads, so does the violence.

When you can say that God Almighty is co-signing on your dominance over another group of God’s children, then every means is justified, right to the end. Every inch of land stolen, every suicide bombing enacted, every act of violence committed, every weapon used, every checkpoint and illegal detention, every child who dies, every tower that falls to the ground – all of it covered under some sort of bullshit spiritual umbrella policy. There are no means that need justifying if we claim God as our patron and guide.

And I imagine God is just about sick to death of it.

As I claimed in my book about sexual shame and religion, we should never be more loyal to a doctrine or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming people we re-think those teachings. Amen?

Speaking up for Palestinians often comes at a cost. Those of you who have done it know. I also know, but am frankly too tired to care right now. So, if based on my recounting of the stories of my friends and colleagues, anyone is moved to called me anti-semitic, please open up the notes app on your phone and feel free to write it there but I will delete your unfounded accusations if you leave them here.

My apologies for the edge in my writing voice. We are all exhausted and as my friend Jodi just texted me, “this month has been two years long already.”

Thank you for reading. I am genuinely sending my love. Please pray this ceasefire holds. And for those waiting on the side of a road right now to return to the rubble of their homes. And for the hostages and prisoners who were released yesterday. I cannot imagine the trauma.

More soon…

In it with you,

Nadia

They did / are doing what? Again!

DeSantis Seeks To Effectively Ban Ballot Initiatives

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wants to make ballot initiatives impossible.FL already requires 60% support to pass—abortion rights & legal weed failed despite 56-57% support in 2024.Last decade, voters passed amendments to end gerrymandering & restore voting rights, which DeSantis also undermined

— Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) 2025-01-24T13:26:16.599Z
CIA Decides COVID Originated In Chinese Laboratory

Several other intelligence agencies continue to favor the natural-origin theory, and there is no evidence SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, was in any laboratory before the outbreak.

The conspiracy nut jobs are in power now, who needs evidence and facts for something to be true.

Air Force Axes Lessons About Tuskegee Airmen
Applicants Asked To List “MAGA Revelation” Moment
Trump: It Would Be “Very Unfriendly” For Denmark To Refuse To Hand Over Greenland, It’s For “Protection”
Trump: I Want To “Just Clean Out” Gaza Of Palestinians

So Jared can build luxury beachfront condos.

All that valuable oceanfront property. Much too nice for those dirty people. The Israeli military has already done a good job of demolition. We need to rebuild for people who will appreciate the beauty of the place and be willing to pay to maintain it. /s

 

Trump Orders 25% Tariffs And Sanctions On Colombia Over Refusal To Accept US Flights Of Deported Migrants
Graham: Trump’s Pardons Could Bring “More Violence”
DOJ Deletes Online Database Of Capitol Riot Arrests
TikTok Users Say Anti-Trump Posts Are Being Censored

Peace & Justice History for 1/27

January 27, 1847
Several hundred citizens of Marshall, Michigan, helped former slaves escape to Canada rather than be returned to their “owner” by bounty hunters.
Adam Crosswhite and his family, escaped Kentucky slaves, were tracked to the abolitionist town of Marshall by Francis Troutman and others. Both black and white residents detained the bounty hunters and threatened them with tar and feathers. While Troutman was being charged with assault and fined $100, the Crosswhites fled to Canada.

Back in Kentucky, the slaveowner stirred up intense excitement about “abolitionist mobs” in Michigan.
Since 1832, Michigan had had an active antislavery society. Quakers in Cass County, Laura Haviland in Adrian and former slave Sojourner Truth in Battle Creek were only a few of the many Michiganians who worked on the Underground Railroad—an informal network that assisted escaping slaves.
Southern concern over the Underground Railroad led Congress to pass a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. In 1854 opposition to the extension of slavery prompted Michigan citizens to meet in nearby Jackson to organize the Republican Party.

Laura Haviland with some artifacts of slavery
Sojourner Truth – this should be a link to Ohio History Connection’s entry on Sojourner Truth. That page is no longer available. I don’t see a date or a reason, just that it’s gone. So, here is a link to the National Women’s History Museum’s entry on Sojourner Truth!
-A
January 27, 1945
The Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated the German Nazis’ largest concentration camps: the Auschwitz main camp, the Birkenau death camp and the Monowitz labor camp in southwestern Poland.

Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
January 27, 1951

The first atomic test was conducted at the Nevada Proving Ground as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.
The Proving Ground was created by President Harry Truman on January 11, 1951.

The final nuclear test, Divider, was conducted on September 23, 1992.
There were 99 above ground tests and over 800 below ground tests there.
read more 
January 27, 1969
In Detroit, African-American auto workers, known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement, led a wildcat strike against racist practices and poor working conditions at the Chrysler plant.Since the 1967 Detroit riots, black workers had organized groups in several Detroit auto plants critical of both the auto companies and the United Auto Workers union leadership. These groups combined Black-Power nationalism and workplace militancy, and temporarily shut down more than a dozen inner-city plants.
The most well-known of these groups was the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, or DRUM. They criticized both the seniority system and grievance procedures as racist. Veterans of this movement went on to lead many of the same local unions.

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying A Study in Urban Revolution (pdf)
January 27, 1973
The United States and North Vietnam signed “An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” in Paris and all U.S. troops were to leave Vietnam within 90 days. The United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, and North Vietnam formally sign but because South Vietnam was unwilling to recognize the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government, all references to it were confined to the document signed by North Vietnam and the United States. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft.The Vietnam War resulted in between three and four million Vietnamese deaths with a countless number of Vietnamese casualties. It cost the United States 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. The financial cost to the United States came to something over $150 billion dollars.

Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Thos initial the agreement.
January 27, 1973
The Pentagon announced a “zero draft,” putting the Selective Service System on standby after five years of continuous operation. 1,728,344 men had been drafted in the previous eight years (principally for the war in Vietnam), 25% of all the armed forces.

January 27, 1988

CISPIS demo May, 1981 Wash DC
The Center for Constitutional Rights revealed the FBI had spied on numerous organizations critical of Reagan administration policies in Central America. The principal target was the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). 100 other groups were also investigated, including the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Sisters, the United Auto Workers, the United Steel Workers, and the National Education Association. FBI Director William Sessions said the investigations were an outgrowth of the belief that CISPES was aiding a “terrorist organization.”
CISPES today
How domestic surveillance multiplied under the label or preventing terrorist attacks 
January 27, 1996
France performed its final nuclear weapons test. France exploded the last in a series of six underground nuclear devices in the South Pacific. The tests, ordered by President Jacques Chirac, ended a moratorium imposed by the former president, François Mitterand, but Chirac said France would accept the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january27

I Know, As To All Of Us Here. From Ben Werdmuller:

In the face of this, who do you want to be?

Doomscrolling

I was out buying eggs when I saw a video of Elon Musk giving a Hitler salute at the inauguration.

In the movies, this stuff is highlighted and separated: punctuation in itself instead of an event that you see in the background of your everyday life. Hannah Arendt talked about “the banality of evil” in the context of Eichmann, one of the core organizers of the Holocaust, telling prosecutors that he was just doing his job. But banality pervades. Sometimes, you need to buy eggs. And sometimes, when you get back in the car and pick up your phone, you get a notification about the richest man in the world signaling his intentions on the world stage.

There has subsequently been much discussion about whether it really was a Nazi salute. It’s insultingly stupid. Even if he truly didn’t intend to throw three successive Sieg Heils, he certainly knows what one is, and most of us have enough self awareness not to accidentally look like a Nazi on national television. He had to know what he was doing. It was a deliberate Nazi salute. The act itself, and the subsequent denials, serve to normalize fascism; just another banal event for you to scroll past on your phone.

Still, these conversations serve a purpose. It’s worth noticing who wants to downplay the Nazism, which, after all, is not “just” manifested in the world’s richest man doing a Hitler salute on national TV. Make no mistake, Musk’s salute was a clear signal, but it’s far from the only one. It’s part of a broader pattern of normalization, visible in policies and actions designed to dismantle rights and embolden oppression.

Will they also downplay executive orders that repeal important civil rights gains from sixty years ago (as an appellate court simultaneously reinstates a Jim Crow era voter suppression law, with doubtless more to follow), or encouraging employees to inform on their colleagues?

Or decimating rights and protections for transgender people, preparing for mass deportations including by removing protections for schools and churches from raids, pardoning January 6 extremists who vow revenge on their perceived enemies, or deploying the military as internal law enforcement in border states?

Or freezing scientific research at the NIH and thereby putting universities and research organizations at risk, or attempting to end Constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship?

“Optimistic and celebrating,” Mark Zuckerberg said, on the same night that Musk Sieg Heiled the room three times. “I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways,” Sam Altman said. Microsoft put out a statement saying that “the country has a unique opportunity to pursue […] the foundational ideas set for AI policy during President Trump’s first term”.

And those are public figures in technology. My Facebook feed, and likely yours, is loaded with acquaintances and extended family members who welcome the change; one on mine welcomed “the return to logic and reason”. My LinkedIn feed is worse, with many business leaders echoing Zuckerberg’s “optimistic” language, and some calling the Nazi salute into question.

We’ve tumbled into a deep, dark hole, and, as it turns out, many of us are glad to be there.

It’s just not always clear who.

Though dated in some ways, this 1941 Harper’s Magazine article still resonates. The question then was, “Who goes Nazi?” Who is going to be a sympathizer or even a collaborator with a regime that seeks to subjugate, deport, and, as it turned out in the 1940s, kill so many people?

And to be clear, collaboration doesn’t require slapping on an armband and goose-stepping behind a demagogue. Nice people made the best Nazis, as Naomi Shulman wrote eight years ago:

My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.

The question now is not a million miles away. Who will support? Who will collaborate? Who will decide that they are “not political” and look away as millions of people are harmed? Who will make excuses for it all? Who secretly welcomes the push for theocracy, for in-groups and out-groups, for “traditional” values that prioritize rigid gender roles, segregation, and oligarchy? Who, in other words, is safe?

Are you “optimistic” about the new regime? Will you be complicit?

When someone needs help — when ICE comes after them, or worse — will you look away, or worse, cheer them on? Or will you be a point of safety for someone who needs it?

And what about when it gets worse? Because, left unchecked, it will.

In the face of rising fascism, what kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be?

I’m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society. Sign up to my newsletter to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.