Tag: Anti-War

Peace & Justice History for 4/4

A goodly number of events have happened on April 4.

April 4, 1958

Aldermaston March, 1st Day, 1958.
Four thousand began the first of eleven consecutive annual Easter protest marches. It took three days on foot from London to Aldermaston AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establisment) base in England.
Watch one of the marches
Interviews with participants 
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April 4, 1967
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in a speech to Clergy and Laity Concerned at the Riverside Church in New York City, called for common cause between the civil rights and peace movements. The Nobel Peace Prize winner proposed the United States stop all bombing of North and South Vietnam;

MLK delivering the important speech
…declare a unilateral truce in the hope that it would lead to peace talks; set a date for withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam; and give the National Liberation Front a role in negotiations.” . . . this war is a blasphemy against all that America stands for . . . .”
Read the speech 
Or listen 
Impact of the speech 
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April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to help with a strike by sanitation workers.
Reverends Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel shortly before he was shot.
Riots in reaction to the assassination broke out in over a hundred cities across the U.S., lasting up to a week; cities included Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toledo, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The federal government deployed 75,000 National Guard troops. 39 people died and 2,500 were injured.
In Indianapolis, Indiana, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-New York) was campaigning for president. Learning about the assassination just before speaking to a large rally, he said, “we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.”
Indianapolis experienced no rioting that night.

Senator Robert Kennedy speaking to a large, mostly African-American rally
about the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Video and text of Kennedy’s speech 
The building now houses the National Civil Rights Museum; visit the museum 
James Earl Ray confessed to the slaying, was sentenced to 99 years in prison, but later recanted. Numerous people originally involved in investigating him have raised serious doubts about his involvement; after Ray’s death, a 1999 civil jury trial in Memphis concluded that Ray did not act alone.
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April 4, 1969
CBS cancelled “The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour,” a television show which featured edgy political satire and such rock bands as the Beatles, the Who, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors.

Smothers brothers
The brothers had refused to censor a comment made by Joan Baez. She wanted to dedicate a song to her husband, David, who was about to go to jail for objecting to the draft during the Vietnam War.

David Harris and Joan Baez
More about the show
Joan Baez and the Smothers Brothers sing Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”
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April 4, 1984

The women of the main peace camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, were evicted by British authorities. They had been encamped for over two years to oppose the presence of U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missiles at the military base there. They said their eviction would not end their protest.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april4

Peace & Justice History for 3/26

March 26, 1839
The Cherokee Indians came to the end of the “Trail of Tears,” a forced march from their ancestral home in the Smoky Mountains to the Oklahoma Territory. General Winfield Scott, under orders from President Andrew Jackson, arrested then drove the tribe’s members through the winter, leaving 4000 dead along the route. According to John Burnett, an interpreter with the U.S. Army, “. . . covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer . . . .” The train of 645 wagons stretched for five km (three miles), leaving behind as many as twenty graves in one day, principally victims of exposure.
Listen to This American Life’s Sarah Vowell as she follows the Trail of Tears 

John Burnett’s Story of the Trail of Tears, a letter to his children written late in life,
recalling his experiences as a young private involved in the Cherokee removal
 (document I)
March 26, 1966
Over 50,000 marched peacefully in the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City.
They were part of the second International Days of Protest with marches in several cities in North America.

Fifth Avenue anti-Vietnam War demonstration photo: Robert Parent
Early efforts opposing the war in Vietnam 
March 26, 1979
In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a peace agreement they had worked out with the assistance of President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, the U.S. president’s rural retreat.
The agreement ended three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel, establishing diplomatic and commercial ties. The two countries have remained at peace for 40 years.
Less than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Sadat had traveled to Jerusalem to seek a permanent peace settlement with Egypt’s Jewish neighbor.
Coverage by the BBC 
March 26, 1986
The Oklahoma Supreme Court (Post v. State of Oklahoma) upheld a ruling that an Oklahoma anti-sodomy law could not be constitutionally applied to private, consensual activity.
March 26, 2003
Over one million students in Spain went on strike in opposition to their government’s support of the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq.

The demonstration in Barcelona

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march26

Peace & Justice History 12/11

December 11, 1946

The General Assembly of the United Nations voted to establish the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to provide health and rehabilitation to children living in countries devastated by World War II.
What does UNICEF do today? 
December 11, 1946
The United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed Resolution 95 affirming the principles of international law recognized by the charter and judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. These Principles of International Law were formulated and published by the International Law Commission on July 29, 1950:
These Principles of International Law were formulated and published by the
International Law Commission on July 29, 1950:
Read the UN Resolution 95  (pdf)
December 11, 1961
Two U.S. Army air cavalry helicopter companies arrived in Vietnam, including 33 Shawnee H-21C helicopters and 425 ground and flight crewmen. They were to be used to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat, the first direct military combat involvement of U.S. military personnel.President Kennedy had sent them to bolster the U.S. advisors, in the country since the 1950s, in light of the inability of the Government of Vietnam’s armed forces to resist the Viet Cong insurgency movement and the Army of the Republic of [North] Vietnam.

Shawnee helicopter
December 11, 1961
A U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawed the use of disorderly conduct statutes as grounds for arresting African Americans sitting-in at segregated public facilities to obtain equal service.
The case began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a group of negro Southern University students bought some items then sat at the lunch counter of Kress Department Store. Their polite requests to order food were ignored because the lunch counter was only for the use of whites, and police arrived to arrest them. Convicted of “disturbing the peace,” they were expelled from Southern University and barred from all public colleges and universities in the state of Louisiana.
The Court overturned their convictions because there was no evidence indicating a breach of the peace.
The decision in Garner v. Louisiana 
December 11, 1972
New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk (Labour Party) announced withdrawal of his country’s troops from Vietnam and a phase-out of his country’s draft just three days after taking office.

Prime Minister Norman Kirk


Anti-War demo Parliament Buildings in Wellington, 1969
3,890 New Zealand military personnel had served there, suffering 37 dead and 187 wounded. This had given rise to a large and vocal anti-war movement.
History of the anti-war movement in New Zealand 
December 11, 1980
President Carter signed a law creating a $1.6 billion environmental Superfund to pay for cleanup of chemical spills and toxic waste dumps.
Do You Live Near Toxic Waste?   See 1,317 of the Most Polluted Spots in the U.S.
December 11, 1984
More than 20,000 women turned out for an anti-nuclear demonstration at Greenham Common Air Base in England, where U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missiles were deployed. Some tried to rip down the fence surrounding the base. 

Poster of Broken Missile taped to the fence of Greenham Common by a protester, 1982
A Greenham Peace Camp scrapbook
December 11, 1992
The three major U.S. television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) agreed on joint standards to limit entertainment violence by the start of the following season. 
Violence in the Media – Psychologists Help Protect Children from Harmful Effects 
December 11, 1994
In the largest Russian military offensive since its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks crossed the border into the Muslim republic of Chechnya. Just two weeks prior, a Russian covert operation to undermine the government in Grozny, the capital, had been foiled and Dzhokhar Dudaev, Chechnya’s first elected president, had threatened to have the perpetrators executed.The Chechens had declared their independence from the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprising Russia and most of the countries previously part of the Soviet Union. Chechnya had been a Russian colony since 1859, and in 1943 Josef Stalin deported the population en masse, their return to their homeland not allowed until 1957.


Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who ordered the invasion, would not deal with Dudaev, and had raised him to the rank of chief enemy, ignoring Chechen-Russian history. The main attack was halted by the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, Colonel-General Eduard Vorobyov, who resigned in protest, stating that he would not attack fellow Russians. Yeltsin’s advisor on nationality affairs, Emil Pain, and Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Colonel-General Boris Gromov (esteemed hero of the Soviet-Afghan War), also resigned in protest of the invasion, as did Major-General Borys Poliakov. More than 800 professional soldiers and officers refused to take part in the operation. Of these, 83 were convicted by military courts, and the rest were discharged.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december11

Peace & Justice History 12/7

December 7, 1964

A leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, was arrested. One-third of the 27,000 students at the University of California campus, along with faculty, were on strike to protect their first amendment right to distribute political literature and to organize on campus. A faculty resolution passed 824-115, supporting the rapidly growing Free Speech Movement.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop.” – Mario Savio
Mario Savio as remembered by journalist Robert Scheer 
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December 7, 1993

The arrested: Phil Berrigan, John Dear, Lynn Fredriksson,
and Bruce Friedrich
Four Plowshares activists were arrested for disarming an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.
Pax Christi-Spirit of Life Plowshares newspaper article 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december7

Peace & Justice History for 11/27

November 27, 1095
Pope Urban II called on all Christians to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land: “Deus vult (God wills it)!” What is currently called the Middle East was then in control of the Turks who frequently barred Christian pilgrims entrance to the city.
At the Council of Clermont in France, the pope promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ. The mobilization of 60,000 to 100,000 Christians throughout Europe in this effort became known as the First Crusade. 
November 27, 1914
The No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) was founded by two English pacifists, Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway. They opposed the Military Service Act which introduced conscription, and then mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment and imprisonment of conscientious objectors.
They were consistently opposed to the war in Europe.

Early Fellowship members 

Fellowship members at a recent protest

Read more about Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway and No-Conscription Fellowship 
More on the No-Conscription Fellowship from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection 
November 27, 1957
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, made an impassioned speech appealing to the United States and the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) to end testing and begin nuclear disarmament. The two superpowers were the only nations with atomic weapons at the time.
Nehru had fought to free his country from British colonial authority through acts of nonviolent passive resistance with Ghandi, and they achieved independence. He stressed the urgency for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to “save humanity from the ultimate disaster.”Nehru’s Congress Party government nevertheless pursued an aggressive nuclear program, starting in 1948, publicly committed to peaceful purposes exclusively. Nehru acknowledged that the possession of fissionable materials and growing expertise could readily be directed toward production of such weapons. In the absence of universal nuclear disarmament, he feared acquisition of such weapons by potential adversaries. In particular for India, this meant Pakistan or China.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru
Nuclear India – a short history 
November 27, 1965
In Washington D.C., 35,000 anti-war protesters circled the White House then marched on to the Washington Monument for a rally against the war in Vietnam.
November 27, 1967
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. announced the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, a movement to broadly address economic inequalities with nonviolent direct action. “It must not be just black people,” argued King, “it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites.”

Why a Poor People’s Campaign? 
November 27, 1969
Over one hundred members of the U.S. 71st Evacuation Hospital and the 44th Medical Detachment at Pleiku, Vietnam, organized a Thanksgiving protest fast called the “John Turkey movement.” In Home before Morning, nurse Lynda Van Devanter recalled her change in attitude.

Nurse Lynda Van Devanter
“Earlier in my tour, when I had heard about the war protesters, I had felt angry at them for not supporting us.  Now I wished I could march with them . . . Most others in Pleiku felt the same way . . . We even held our own Thanksgiving Day fast—the John Turkey movement — as a show of support for those who were trying to end the war through protests and moratoriums. We heard that the fast had spread to units all over Vietnam.” The fast received considerable media coverage when Denise Murray, a nurse at Pleiku and daughter of a distinguished admiral, made antiwar statements to the press.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november27