Tag: Disarmament

The Port Huron Statement & More in Peace & Justice History for 6/11

June 11, 1962

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held its founding convention in Michigan and issued The Port Huron Statement, laying out its principles and program.
“In social change or interchange, we find violence to be abhorrent because it requires generally the transformation of the target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative that the means of violence be abolished and the institutions—local, national, international—that encourage non-violence as a condition of conflict be developed.”
Complete text of the Port Huron Statement  (it’s a .pdf, in case you’re on a phone)
Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History: Paul Buhle, Editor 
June 11, 1963
Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death (self-immolation) in front of the U.S. embassy in downtown Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) to protest the the South Vietnamese regime the U.S. supported, and the war the Americans were waging.

A painting of the scene on the street as Thich Quang Duc self-immolates in protest of the government and war in Vietnam
June 11, 1963

Vivian Malone (later Jones) preparing to enroll at Alabama with Deputy Attorney Gen, Nicholas Katzenbach (L) at her side.
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in order to prevent the admission of two negro students in a failed attempt to maintain segregation in educational opportunities.
He was forced to step aside later in the day when Vivian Malone and James Hood were registered as students.
June 11, 1968
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny the Red, arrived in Britain, stirring up fears of campus unrest. The 23-year-old Paris law student had been given permission to remain in the U.K. just 24 hours, but immediately threatened to defy the authorities and out-stay his official welcome [his visit was later legally extended to 14 days]. Cohn-Bendit, a German citizen, had been expelled from France in May for being an organizer of the French student and worker demonstrations which almost brought that country to a standstill the previous month.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit and a Paris policeman in 1968.
“I don’t know how long I will stay. I think it’s a free country” -Daniel Cohn-Bendit
He currently sits as a Green Party deputy in the European Parliament.
The news at the time 
Daniel Cohn-Bendit today 
June 11, 1970
Representative Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan) filed a discharge petition signed by a majority of all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, a seldom used parliamentary move, to bring the Equal Rights amendment to the House floor for consideration.
She saw this as the only way to get the constitutional amendment out of the Judiciary Committee where it had been held by its chairman, Emmanuel Cellar (D-New York), who had refused to even hold hearings on the matter. Representative Griffiths had introduced the amendment every year since 1948.

Representative Martha Griffiths from Detroit’s west side
June 11, 1988
100,000 marched from United Nations headquarters in New York City to Central Park during the 3rd U.N. Special Session on Disarmament. Though there had been progress in recent years on disarmament, the U.N. meeting yielded nothing but stalemate.
Read more 
June 11, 2010
Scientists studying the scale of the then-ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico doubled the previous estimate of the scale of the flow of oil into the Gulf. Initially, BP and the government had said that no more than 1000 barrels (42 U.S. gallons per barrel) per day were leaking, later raised to 5000.
The fine for oil spills was $4300 per barrel.

The new estimate was between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels per day.
If the spill had been stopped that day (the well was not capped until early August), it would have exceeded the Exxon Valdez spill by a factor of eight.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june11

Peace & Justice History for 6/3

June 3, 1900

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), a consolidation of seven smaller east coast needle trades unions, was founded.
Read more
 
Herman Grossman, ILGWU president
June 3, 1946
In Irene Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in interstate travel was unconstitutional as “an undue burden on commerce.”

The southern states refused to enforce it, however, and Jim Crow (the term for laws, local and state, that enforced segregation) continued as the way of life in the South.
Eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a young woman named Irene Morgan rejected that same demand on an interstate bus headed to Maryland from Gloucester, Virginia.
Read more about Irene Morgan 
Recovering from surgery and already sitting far in the back, she defied the driver’s order to surrender her seat to a white couple. Like Parks, Morgan was arrested and jailed. But her action caught the attention of lawyers from the NAACP, led by (future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall, and two years later her case reached the Court.

Headlines when Irene Morgan won out over Jim Crow (JC) segregation law
June 3, 1957
Thousands of scientists, led by Barry Commoner and Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, issued a call for banning nuclear weapons testing: “As scientists we have knowledge of the dangers involved and therefore a special responsibility to make those dangers known.”
“…Then on May 15, 1957, with the help of some of the scientists in Washington University, St. Louis, I wrote the Scientists’ Bomb Test Appeal, which within two weeks was signed by over two thousand American scientists and within a few months by 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries….” –Linus Pauling
 
Linus Pauling at a disarmament demonstration photo: Robert Carl Cohen

Read “An Appeal by American Scientists to the Governments and People of the World.”

Pauling is the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, for Chemistry in 1954; for Peace in 1962. Read his acceptance speech, “Science and Peace”
June 3, 1964
Conscientious objection, the refusal to bear arms in time of war on the grounds of moral or religious principles, became legally recognized in Belgium.
A history of European conscientious objection 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june3

Peace & Justice History for 12/13

December 13, 1917
Denmark, which was not involved in World War I, recognized the right of conscientious objection (CO) to military service. Norway had done so in 1900, Sweden in 1920. The Netherlands went so far as to write it into their constitution in 1922, and Finland enacted it in 1931.

European Bureau for Conscientious Objection    
Their history 
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December 13, 1942
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels recorded in his journal his contempt for the Italians’ treatment of Jews in Italian-occupied territories. “The Italians are extremely lax in their treatment of Jews. They protect Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and won’t permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David.”
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December 13, 1981
Poland’s new military leaders issued a decree of martial law, drastically restricting civil rights and suspending the operations of the Solidarinosc (Solidarity) trade union. The union’s activists reacted with an appeal for an immediate general strike to protest.
In-depth history of U.S. and the Solidarity movement 
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December 13, 1982
At the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament, the two resolutions for a nuclear freeze (a verifiable end to all testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union and the United States) passed 119-17 and 122-16. The socialist and developing countries voted solidly for a freeze, while the U.S. and member countries of the NATO alliance voted against it.
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December 13, 2001

In Belgium, 80,000 labor and anti-globalization activists began several days of protests at a European Union summit conference in Brussels.
Despite a massive police presence, unlike other similar meetings, events remained peaceful.
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December 13, 2001
President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia (then the Soviet Union). “I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.”
The anti-ballistic missile system, known during the Reagan administration as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or, commonly, Star Wars, are referred to as National Missile Defense (NMD). To date, research, testing and limited deployment have cost approximately 500 billion dollars.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december13

Peace & Justice History for 9/6:

August 6, 1890
At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison.William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes.


As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM
Anniversary of Hiroshima

The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan.

Hiroshima ruins
An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops.
The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings
  Hiroshima survivor 
Found watch stopped at the time of explosion

Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb
On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
August 6, 1957
Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
August 6, 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states.
The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times.
Introduction to the Voting Rights Act 
August 6, 1990
George Galloway
The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions “ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .” When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes 
August 6, 1998
Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon.
The headlines when it happened 
August 6, 1998
Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.

Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken
Read about the Minuteman III Plowshares action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august6