Peace & Justice History for 11/9

November 9-10, 1938
Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria.

Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to “the Night of Broken Glass,” so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops, 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000).
Read more 
November 9, 1965
At the first draft-card burning [see November 6, 1965], a heckler shouted that they should burn themselves, not their draft cards. Three days later Roger LaPorte, a student of religion and a Catholic Worker volunteer, poured gasoline on himself and struck a match to it in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. Police managed to douse the flames.

Roger LaPorte
On his way to the hospital he said, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” He died 33 hours later. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and a speaker on the 15th, wrote that she believed that LaPorte knew it was wrong to take his own life. But she explained his desire to end the Vietnam War; in the previous few days, six massive air strikes had made it the deadliest week since the war began.
Read more 
November 9, 1984
U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.
November 9, 1989
For the first time since World War II, free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, was opened in response to nonviolent popular action.
   
November 9, 2002
Somewhere between 450,000 and a million Europeans in Florence, Italy, peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Florence, Italy 11.9.2002
The inaugural meeting of the European Social Forum had just concluded there.It was a regional part of the framework established at the World Social Forum which had met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, first in 2001.

Read more about this protest 
The Forum is a citizens’ movement exploring alternatives to globalization and the inhumane consequences of the changing world order. They focus on sustainable development, social and economic justice. Those who were part of the Forum come from a broad range of civil society, including: pacifists; environmentalists; those in nonprofit, volunteer and non-governmental organizations; representatives of religious and lay groups; those in the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements; and, for the first time in Florence (Firenze), significant involvement of the labor movement, notably the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), and trade unions or national confederations from nine European countries, including Russia.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november9

(Oops. I’m sorry about the title. Fixed it, though.)

Fears grow that woman arrested for undressing in Iran could be tortured in psychiatric unit

Protesters and political prisoners are being drugged, tortured and beaten in state-run institutions, say rights groups

Human rights organisations say they are gravely concerned that a young Iranian woman arrested for stripping down to her underwear could be subjected to torture after she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital by the authorities.

Amnesty International said it had found evidence that the Iranian regime used electric shocks, torture, beatings and chemical substances on protesters and political prisoners taken to state-run psychiatric institutions after being called mentally unstable. It said the situation facing the young woman was “alarming”.

Video of the young woman, who has not been formally identified, walking around a university campus in Tehran in her underwear was widely circulated on social media last week before she was seen being arrested by police officers. She is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran for failing to comply with the strict dress code imposed on all Iranian women.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called the student’s transfer to an undisclosed psychiatric facility a “kidnapping”, saying the use of forced transfer of anti-regime protesters to mental health facilities was being increasingly used to silence dissent.

A woman in her underwear sits on a wall while others, including veiled women, walk past
The woman is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards. Photograph: X/Amnesty

“Iranian authorities systematically use involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation as a tool to suppress dissent, branding protesters as mentally unstable to undermine their credibility,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI.

“Transferring individuals who participate in peaceful protests to psychiatric hospitals represents not only an act of arbitrary detention but also constitutes a form of kidnapping. This practice is a blatantly unlawful move to discredit activists by labelling them mentally unstable.”

There have been a number of other high-profile cases of protesters arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations who were also committed to psychiatric hospitals after their arrest.

Saman Yasin, a well-known Kurdish rapper, was taken by the authorities to Tehran’s Aminabad psychiatric hospital after his arrest at a protest in 2022, where he was allegedly tortured and coerced into a confession. He spent two years in prison before being released on medical furlough last month.

A source close to Yasin told the Guardian: “Saman was tied to the bed in the psychiatric centre in a cruciform position for a long time. They administered high-dose sedatives and despite his unconscious state, the restraints on his hands and feet were not removed.”

In October 2023, Roya Zakeri, a young Iranian woman who was filmed chanting anti-regime slogans, was called mentally unwell by state media and taken to the women’s ward of Razi psychiatric hospital. The Guardian has been told by people close to her family that she was injected with sleeping agents, physically assaulted and had her arms and feet chained.

A woman with her head uncovered stands on a bin or postbox with passersby at her feet, holdinga hijab inthe air.
Rights activist Azam Jangravi protesting in Tehran in 2018. Photograph: supplied

Azam Jangravi, a human rights activist, said she was pressed by Iranian authorities to sign a statement saying she had mental health issues after photographs of her waving her hijab over her head on a Tehran street were widely circulated in 2018.

“When they interrogated me, they accused me of being a spy,” she said. “They wanted me to write a confession stating that I regretted my protest and that I did it because I was mentally unwell. I didn’t sign it … They keep taunting us during interrogations by citing the examples of former political prisoners who were sent to these psychiatric hospitals, [telling us] ‘If you don’t regret your act of protest, you’ll face the same fate.’ I fear the university student is under horrific conditions right now and we must demand her release,” she said.

The Guardian spoke to young women in Iran who said they been inspired by the video of the university student, who was rapidly hailed as a new icon of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement after the video was posted online.

“Nobody I know who protested and has called for freedom from the Islamic Republic does not support her act of protest,” said Farah*, a university student in Tehran. “This is what we are fighting for, to have the freedom to choose. We are in awe of her bravery. If it were up to the regime, all of us who protested would be branded as mentally unwell.”

Images of the young woman have also been posted by pro-regime social media accounts, which have circulated messages about her mental health and personal life.

*Name has been changed

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/08/woman-arrested-iran-undressing-protesters-psychiatric-institutions-rights-groups

One Of The Issues I Work On

is abolishing the death penalty at all levels. It’s really a thing I’ve been certain of since I was a child and learned that the death penalty everywhere had been ruled to be unconstitutional by the SCOTUS. Even as a child, I remember being relieved and thankful that had happened. It was back in a matter of years, and I was old enough then to know more about the general system, and also about activism, which at the time, my church supported, even. Below is part of an article about asking the current president to commute all federal capital cases to life in prison, or another appropriate sentence in prison. We started nagging the president about this around a year ago, because he’d said he was going to try to get rid of the death penalty. Now, as he told us today, there are 74 days in which bad things aren’t going to happen. This could be a thing to do to help feel better about things, as it’s as likely to actually happen as it wouldn’t be. Again, as with anytime I bring activism here, I will neither know nor is it my business whether/what a person does. I’m just putting it out here as a thing that can be done. Thanks for your time, and your consideration!

=======

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-urged-prevent-trump-death-row-execution-spree-1981920

(Snippet) Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, told Newsweek that although many death penalty opponents have been critical of Biden on the issue, “the truth is that he did the most pragmatic thing immediately upon taking office.”

He said: “The President appointed an Attorney General who understood the Administration’s position and knew not to set any death warrants. Anything more would have hurt his relationships with Congress, but that’s all over now.”

Biden now has the chance “to take away one of the things Donald Trump loves, which is the power to execute people,” he added.

“If Biden commutes all of those death sentences, Donald Trump will never get to oversee another judicial execution. It would be a great legacy for Biden to live up to his own morals and save dozens of lives while leaving a stinging parting gift for Trump.”

Republicans being republicans.

Republicans love third party candidates and ghost candidates when it helps them.  They get Jill Stein to run in every swing state every presidential election.  And only during the presidential election.    But like all republicans they end up whining when things don’t go their way.  Democrats stood up and admitted their loss and conceded with grace.  I know people will suffer, but I hope the republicans so over play their hand that even their base turn against them … but it could be like the 1930s Germany all over again.   I have a doctor’s appointment today so will not be on the computer until later in the morning.   Hugs

Republicans would never use a fraudulent candidate for the purpose of siphoning votes.

Thumbnail

Is this the country the maga cult wants?  Yes?  but what about all the rest who wouldn’t vote for a black woman?  Those who claimed that they wouldn’t vote for Harris because she did not say the right words on Gaza?  Well Israel now has no restraints, good choice you made for them, right?  The brownshirts, the people who want to act like kids in gangs, want to have rule by thugs, that believe might makes right are going to find out it take far more than pretend bravado to keep a country this size running.   The movie Idiocracy was not a how to do it show, but a warning.  Right now we have moved a lot closer to the movie.  Hugs

They always claim to be joking but their intention is to “move the Overton Window” so that when executions do happen, the public is well used to the prospect.

The six degrees of the Overton Window:

-Unthinkable
-Radical
-Acceptable
-Sensible
-Popular
-Policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

 Wallnau cures Rush Limbaugh’s terminal cancer in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims there are “high levels of angelic activity” at Trump’s DC hotel. Wallnau claims the MAGAbomber was possessed by Satan to make Trump look bad. Wallnau claims the Charlottesville Nazis were “paid actors” because right wing white supremacists do not exist. Wallnau declares that God killed Antonin Scalia to “wake up America” on how much they needed Trump. Wallnau “takes authority” over Hurricane Maria in the name of Jesus, orders it not to hit Puerto Rico. Wallnau claims Hurricane Irma bypassed Mar-A-Lago because Trump is under God’s protection. Wallnau releases the “Jezebel spirit” on Robert Mueller. Wallnau prays to protect Trump from “witches, jinxes, and demons that jump into dogs.” Wallnau prays for God to “unleash his holy sword” and smite Trump’s enemies. Wallnau claims angels literally dusted his face with gold flakes as a reward for loving Trump. Wallnau prays away obstruction of justice charges against Trump in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims a gay bar owner was “cured of homosexuality” after eating a slice of anointed cake.

 

DeSantis is the first Florida governor to threaten TV broadcasters with criminal charges unless they stopped running ads he didn’t like. He’s the first governor to send his election police to knock on the doors of Amendment 4 supporters and the first to employ a last-ditch “investigation” of signatures gathered to get that amendment on the ballot. And credit, too, DeSantis for hiring just the right kind of election police.

Read the full editorial. As the paper points out, both measures passed with majority support and DeSantis “only had to shave off a few points” from the required 60% margin.

Gay man hospitalized after mob attacks him in McDonald’s while no one helped

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/11/gay-man-hospitalized-after-homophobic-mob-attacks-him-at-mcdonalds/

This is the growing anti-LGBTQ+ that the right has been working on creating since the first tRump term.  The person who helped craft the don’t say gay bill in Florida was a fundamentalist Christian who said he did it because it horrified him that fellow students, other kids welcomed the LGBTQ+ kids that came out.  He felt they should be attacked, beaten, ostracized, made friendless, scared, and stay in hiding.  That is what these people want.  We must find a messaging to fight back.  Blue states have it but it must find a way to reach into red states.   My husband is terrified to even let me fly a progressive pride flag in one of our front facing windows.  That is what these people want, they want us afraid.  I don’t want to live that life, I stopped living like that when I was 23.  I took the hits for it.  I am almost 62.  I don’t want to live the rest of my life in a closet I never fitted in.   Hugs

——————————————————————————————————–

 
Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro before and after the attack
Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro before and after the attack

A group of 10 to 15 individuals allegedly attacked Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro, a 22-year-old Colombian model, inside a Washington, D.C., McDonald’s fast food restaurant after a member of the group uttered homophobic slurs. The attack left Lascarro hospitalized, and he criticized both emergency personnel and local police for their responses to the violence.

The attack allegedly occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 27, after Lascarro and his husband left two nearby LGBTQ+ nightclubs: Crush Bar and Bunker. While Lascarro was in line to use a McDonald’s self-service kiosk to place his order, Lascarro’s spouse, Stuart West, said a woman then screamed at his husband to “watch where the f**k he was going,” he told WTTG.

Lascarro reportedly tried to leave in order to avoid a conflict, when a group of 10 to 15 individuals — who were reportedly the woman’s friends — blocked Lascarro from leaving and allegedly called him homophobic slurs like “fa**ot” and demanded he apologize to the woman. Lascarro refused, and the assault allegedly began.

“Five to 10 individuals started just punching him all over his face, all over his body,” West said. “No one in the restaurant intervened; no one screamed ‘stop.’”

The attack reportedly left Lascarro injured and bleeding on the sidewalk outside the restaurant while the mob threw food, trash, and drinks at him. Two passers-by eventually contacted emergency medical services to assist Lascarro.

At Howard University Hospital, Lascarro was treated for a busted lip, scrapes, and bruises. He was placed in a neck brace and photos show him with bruises and blood on his face. Lascarro is reportedly recovering from his injuries.

 

“I fear for his mental health,” West said. “We’ve had conversations about whether D.C. is safe for us and whether the United States was the right choice.” Lascarro is originally from Colombia, moved to Washington, D.C., last year, and became a permanent resident of the U.S. this year, NBC News reported.

West and Lascarro said that they felt dismissed by both the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) who arrived at the scene and police who took a report of their incident later on. Lascarro said the EMTs failed to “acknowledge the severity of the assault and his experience as a gay man,” and West said police initially refused to acknowledge the attack as a possible hate crime until he contacted the police department’s LGBTQ+ liaison.

West launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to help pay for Lascarro’s medical bills, as the attack has made it difficult for him to keep modeling. The campaign had raised $7,037 of its $20,000 goal by Monday morning.

 

“Thomas is a loving, compassionate person who did not deserve this, and no one in our community should face this kind of hatred,” West wrote for the campaign website. “Any help to ensure he gets the care he needs to regain his health and peace of mind will be a blessing.”

This isn’t the first time a homophobic attack has occurred in a D.C. fast food restaurant. In August, a gay man was allegedly beaten by Shake Shack employees after kissing his boyfriend.

And the threats start already

Yet the felon won the state … so is the election wrong and need redoing

“There has to be as many traitors executed as he has days in office,” urged another Gab post. “Build the gallows, restore the REPUBLIC.”  “Many many many executions are warranted,” someone wrote on Truth Social.  One viral meme that was shared widely across platforms on Wednesday had the caption “RELEASE THE PROJECT 2025 HANDMAIDS TALE RAPE SQUADS.”

Read the full article. Other posts and memes call for executing Nancy Pelosi, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Kamala Harris. A Proud Boys account depicts Harris as “Whore Of The Year.” Hit the link for more.

In a follow-up post, Davis said the following: “Here’s my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”

Read the full article.

In August 2024, Davis appeared here when he threatened to sue any publication or social media user who referred to Trump as a “convicted felon.”

In April 2024, he appeared here when he vowed to imprison Trump’s critics and prosecute Barack Obama for murder.

In February 2024, we heard from him when he declared, “What’s so bad about Christian nationalism?”

His first appearance here came last year when he threatened to “arrest and deport” journalist Mehdi Hasan and throw gay reporter Tim Miller in a women’s prison.

And he could be the nation’s next Attorney General.

Anti-LGBTQ+ attacks nationwide have increased 112% over the last two years

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/11/anti-lgbtq-attacks-nationwide-have-increased-112-over-the-last-two-years/

Peace & Justice History for 11/4:

November 4, 1811
A group of men in Bulwell, near Nottingham, England, armed with hammers, axes and pistols in the dark of night, broke into the workshop of a master weaver named Hollingsworth and smashed six weaving machines the men thought threatened their jobs. They and their supporters opposed the industrialization that had turned home-based sustainable textile work into factory work with significant loss of jobs through mechanization (and those at much lower wages), as well as the attendant air and water pollution.
Luddites smashing loom.
They called themselves followers of the probably fictional General Ludd and continued their attacks for months, with over a thousand knitting machines destroyed. In response, thousands of troops were sent to stop the rebellion, and Parliament passed a law making destruction of weaving machines a hanging offense.
Luddites has since become a term used for those who oppose technology.
November 4, 1956
Two hundred thousand Russian troops with 1000 tanks stopped an
anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Soviet government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
Hungarian Army and National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought alongside the Warsaw Pact troops. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came.
20,000 Hungarians ultimately died as a result (as well as 4000 troops), and ten times that many left the country permanently.

Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops.

Soviet tanks in Budapest.
Pictorial history of the Hungarian Uprising 
November 4, 1984
The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%), defeating six other parties, in the country’s first elections since the revolution the Sandanistas had led five years previous. The high-turnout election (83%) was monitored by 400 independent election observers who said the election had been fair.

Read more 
November 4, 1995
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel.

The rally in Kings of Israel Square
  Yitzhak Rabin
Read more 
November 4, 2008
The first African American ever nominated by a major political party as candidate for president went before the electorate. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, faced Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; independent candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; Green Party candidates former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente; and former Repepresentatives Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november4

Peace & Justice History for 11/3:

November 3, 1883
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were ultimately subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but . . . as wards subject to a guardian . . . as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.”
However, the Court acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal authority in the particular case at hand. The Congress, however, essentially overturned the Court’s decision two years later.

Chief Crow Dog, 1898
More on Ex Parte Crow Dog 
November 3, 1917
Bolsheviks, the followers of Vladimir Lenin, took control of the capital, Moscow, and the Kremlin, the fortress-like grouping of government buildings and churches at the center of the capital city, as the Russian revolution succeeded.
November 3, 1969

President Nixon announced the “Vietnamization” program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.”
The last U.S. troops didn’t return home until 1975.
November 3, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

Read more about the occupation: 
Read the Indian Manifesto: 
November 3, 1979
Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a “Death to the Klan” rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The political organization had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present.
Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.
November 3, 1985
The Rainbow Warrior bombed
Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november3

Return the SCOTUS to law and order-

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