It’s August 1st! Peace&Justice History For Friday, 8/1

August 1, 1914
 
As World War I began, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the “seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring,” germinating the idea for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).

FOR’s Mission: FOR seeks to replace violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace, and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.
History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation
August 1, 1920

Mohandas Gandhi began the movement of “non-violent non-cooperation” with the British Raj (ruling colonial authority) in India. The strategy was to bring the British administrative machine to a halt by the total withdrawal of Indian popular support, both Hindu and Muslim. British-made goods were boycotted, as were schools, courts of law, and elective offices.
More on the Non-Cooperation Movement 
August 1, 1944
The Polish underground army began its battle to liberate Warsaw, the first European city to have fallen to the Germans in World War II.
The heroic effort to rout the Germans 
August 1, 1975
The U.S. and the U.S.S.R, represented by President Gerald Ford and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, along with 33 other nations, signed the Helsinki Accords at the close of the Finland meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The agreement recognized the inherent relationship between respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the attainment of genuine peace and security. All signatories agreed to respect freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, as well as freedom of religion and belief, and to facilitate the free movement of people, ideas, and information between nations.
August 1, 1976
200 people, organized by the Clamshell Alliance, occupied the site of a new nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They were attempting to halt construction the same day the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission had issued a construction license. Eighteen were arrested. Eventually, only one of two planned reactors was built.

Clamshell Alliance history 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august1

Peace & Justice History for 12/31

December 31, 1915
The U.S. branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was founded.
FOR’s Mission StatementThe Fellowship of Reconciliation seeks to replace violence, war, racism and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.
FOR’s website 
December 31, 1970
The U.S. Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which in 1964 authorized an increase in U.S. military involvement in Vietnam as a response to a reported attack on U.S. naval forces patrolling close to the North Vietnamese border. The reports of the attacks were later revealed to be fictitious. The resolution was used as the basis for the entire war which lasted until 1974 and took the lives of millions of Vietnamese and over 58,000 Americans.
What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december31