Tag: Love

In The Name Of Peace, Love, & Understanding

Today, I have Zoia Horn in mind especially, but it’s a really busy day in Peace & Justice History, with lots to inspire and motivate us, and most of that is below. (I wish we could put small images side by side, or else that I could figure out WP’s preferred method for that.)

March 16, 1190
The entire Jewish community of York, England, perished while observing Shabbat ha-Gadol, the last sabbath before Passover. Gathered together inside Clifford’s Tower, the keep of York’s medieval castle, for protection from the violent mob outside, many of the Jews took their own lives; others died in the flames they had lit, and those who finally surrendered were massacred and murdered.

Clifford’s Tower
This occurred just after the beginning of the Third Crusade. “Before attempting to revenge ourselves upon the Moslem unbelievers, let us first revenge ourselves upon the ‘killers of Christ’ living in our midst!”
March 16, 1827
The first newspaper owned and edited by and for African-Americans, Freedom’s Journal, was published in New York City.
It appeared the same year slavery was abolished in New York state. 

two of the early founders of Freedom’s Journal
March 16, 1921
The War Resisters International was founded with sections set up in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. By 1939 there were 54 WRI Sections in 24 countries, including the U.S..

WRI No More War demonstration in Berlin 1922

Their symbol: a broken gun.Their slogan: “The right to refuse to kill.”
Their founding statement 
WRI today 
March 16, 1968
U.S. troops in South Vietnam killed 504 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, a pair of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of Quang Ngai Province. The victims were from 247 families, completely eliminating 24 of them, three generations with no survivors. Among the dead were 182 women, 17 of them pregnant, and 173 children, including 56 infants,
and 60 older men.

Young girls sheltering behind their mother during My Lai
Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. commanded the men of Charlie Company, First Battalion, Americal Division, and was the only one tried out of 80 involved in what is called the My Lai Massacre. The Army, including a young Major Colin Powell, at first tried to cover it up and the media resisted reporting it.
Some of Calley’s soldiers refused to participate, but only 24-year-old helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew stopped it by putting themselves between the villagers and the troops pursuing them.Chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt described how Thompson responded to what he found when he put his helicopter down: “[Thompson] put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his people wade in the ditch in gore to their knees, to their hips, took out children, took them to the hospital…flew back [to headquarters], standing in front of people, tears rolling down his cheeks, pounding on the table saying, ‘Notice,
notice, notice’…then had the courage to testify time after time after time.”

Lt. William L. Calley
Some of Calley’s soldiers refused to participate, but only 24-year-old helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew stopped it by putting themselves between the villagers and the troops pursuing them.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson
Hugh Thompson’s story (An archived NYT piece that still wants a sign-in/up)
More on My Lai 
2015 article by Seymour Hersh who broke the original story: 
March 16, 1972
Reference librarian Zoia Horn refused to testify against the Harrisburg Seven who were on trial for an alleged conspiracy to kidnap then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Five of the seven were current or former Catholic priests or nuns.
Horn had been implicated by an ex-convict informer placed in the Bucknell University library by the FBI.

Reference librarian Zoia Horn
Though given immunity from self-incrimination, Zoia objected to the idea that libraries could become places of infiltration and spying. Charged with contempt of court, she was sent to jail for 20 days until a mistrial was declared.

Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said that Horn was “the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession.” At the trial she asked to read a statement of explanation, but was led away in handcuffs before she had begun her third sentence:
“Your Honor, it is because I respect the function of this court to protect the rights of the individual, that I must refuse to testify. I cannot in my conscience lend myself to this black charade. I love and respect this country too much to see a farce made of the tenets upon which it stands. To me it stands on freedom of thought—but government spying in homes, in libraries and universities inhibits and destroys this freedom. It stands on freedom of association—yet in this case gatherings of friends, picnics and parties have been given sinister implications, and made suspect. It stands on freedom of speech—yet general discussions have been interpreted by the government as advocacies of conspiracies.”
Zoia Horn in the California Library Hall of Fame 
March 16, 1988
Iraqi forces acting under orders from President Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurdish village of Halabja with a variety of poison gasses including mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX. About 5,000 non-combatant men, but mostly women and children, died from the chemical weapons.This was part of Saddam’s al-Anfal campaign, a slow genocide of the Kurds in Iraq. About 2000 villages were emptied and leveled as well as a dozen larger towns and cities, tens of thousands were killed.

Kurdish father Omar Osman and his infant son, victims of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja, Kurdistan (Iraq)
The Human Rights Watch full report on the al-Anfal Campaign
March 16, 2003
Rachel Corrie, an American college student in Gaza to protest Israeli military and security operations, was killed when run over by a bulldozer while trying to stop Israeli troops from demolishing a Palestinian home.

The 23-year-old from Olympia, Washington, was a member of International Solidarity Movement and was the first nonviolent western protester to die in the occupied territories.
Remembering Rachel Corrie
March 16, 2003
Over 5000 coordinated candlelight vigils and demonstrations took place, in more than 125 countries, in an eleventh-hour protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


Knoxville, Tennessee Trafalgar Square, London

Remember Stormy Daniels?

Here’s an update.

A Quick & Easy Women’s History Post

It is almost 4 minutes. Watch it when you get a few minutes; not only is it history-making that she still sounds like this at 79, but the screen or screens behind her have their own little history bits. Enjoy! It’s not hard-rocking or loud or anything.

For the wonderful people worried about my health / happiness especially since I wrote about being triggered. TLDR version I am so happy

Hi everyone.  I really am so grateful for all of you and the support that you give me and others here.  After I posted about the trigger event I think an important part got missed and today with all going on my wonderful husband offered to help me finish the dishes I was doing even though I knew he wanted to get on to other things.  So I want to share this post with all of you.  

I am happier than I can remember being in a long time.  

For starters the triggering event was because Ron my husband who struggles to have the sexual desire I do was offering happily for us to … well have sex.  But he was so wonderful with the way he handled it and when he got back up and made sure I was OK, he offered again.  I said later.  

Ron got home on the evening of the 2nd of March.  Since then he has watched carefully to make sure I was not harming myself by taking on too much, instead softly forcing me to rest as he took over.  On the personal side he has made it a daily routine and returned to the old normal of touching each other during the day and giving kisses and hugs.  If he sees me struggling he intervenes right away.  

But it goes both ways.  Ron loves my cooking and with him home I have really been doing my best and in fact loving it.  It gets to hurt so bad sitting in my desk chair and when we talk about what’s for supper and I provide a suggestion he asks if I would like to do it and I really want to.   He does the chopping of vegetables and meats and I do the cooking / seasoning and set up the serving area.  

Remember how I grew up.  When I went out on my own I had no cooking skill at all.  When Ron moved into my home I had eggs and hot dogs in the refrigerator.  I simply had no clue how to make food.  Ron first made food I fell in love with and started teaching me seasonings.  I took to it like a fish to water and now he lets me take the lead on joint meal projects.   And that is what the meals are, we work together on the idea and what we would like the outcome to be.   He does any chopping because my eye sight is so bad and I have cut my self so badly at times.  But then he lets me do my thing and comes to taste or add suggestions as I ask.  He always does the cleanup as he understands how tired I am by then.  

But it is more than meals.  At night I struggle to sleep, and Tupac presses as hard to me as he can most of the time.  Ron will reach out and touch me on the shoulder, arm, or back just to let me know he is there.  If he knows or thinks I am struggling he will talk to me.  If he knows I am awake he will ask if we can cuddle some more.  I so love that but the issue there is Tupac.  During the three months Ron was gone Tupac got very attached to me.  He sleeps as close to me as he can get often laying his head on my folded arm.  Ron says as long as I am able to sleep like that Tupac will stay asleep right there.  If I shift he will move lower towards my belly and again push against me.  If he doesn’t have paws touching me or himself he will lie with his head pointed at me and looking either up or down and his tail to Ron.  

The few times I have moved him and set his stuff up so he was on the other side of us so Ron and I could cuddle he got very upset.  So now I only do it if I have responded to his middle of the night need for food and while he is gone change the places of his sleep towels and blanket.  He still doesn’t like it.  The first night we did it in the morning Ron went to pet him and Tupac swatted at him.

I am sorry this is rambling, I guess I did not do a good job ordering my thoughts.  I am just so happy which is an emotion I so rarely get to enjoy I wanted to share it all with everyone.  Things seem so good, clear, wonderful, and grand, and Ron and I are more in tune with each other than we have been in a long time.  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.  I don’t know, but the way he looks at me, the way his arms encircle me, and the way he gives me quick kisses are like it was half a decade ago and so wonderful. My body responds to him like in the old days and he enjoys it.  That is new and I love it.  

As for the bad events / the vortex.  It has not been as bad since Ron has been home.  I have had minor ones and have retreated to my “pink palace office” to cry quietly and try to deal.  But the horrid nightmares reliving the events of my past have not happened since he came home.  I have not needed to desperately cry out for help or in pain as I relive the things done to me.   I know they will, but I also know he will be there.  Listening and ready to help me face the demons and hurts that I will never totally make go away.  I have noticed he is careful to not overload me mentally, emotionally, or physically.  He will often tell me it is time for a break or that he would like to take over, or his favorite trick… I need a break do you mind if we rest for a while?  I know he is doing it for me.  But it still is grand.   OK I don’t have a real ending here other than he just came into the office as I was writing this , leaned over me and gave me a kiss.  I asked if he needed help with anything and his reply was not yet, I will let you know when.  Maybe just possibly what they say about love is true, it can heal the wounds if you let it.  Just know that now I am so very happy an emotion I have not felt in a long time.   Hugs

Good News Here!

A safe baby, and record Girl Scout cookies sales for trans Scouts! I remember seeing the story about the young man saving the baby last week on local TV news (through a national network affiliate.) No mention of anything but his heroism and his humility about doing what anyone else would have done.

Heroic Chicago trans comedian recalls saving infant from ice-cold Lake Michigan: ‘I guess I’m going in’

“The most important part of this entire story is that the baby is okay,” Lio Cundiff told The Advocate.

A Chicago comedian is speaking out about a daring rescue that left him in the freezing waters of Lake Michigan, and saving an infant from drowning.

Six days before his February 24 birthday, on a bright winter afternoon along Chicago’s Lake Michigan waterfront, Lio Cundiff had a thought that now reads like a setup to a joke. “I was on the phone with my friend, looking at the water, and I was like, ‘Man, that looks so beautiful. I just want to jump in,’” he told The Advocate in an interview on Friday. Little did he know.

Cundiff, 31, had arrived early for work on February 18 near Belmont Harbor and wandered down to the water, as he often does. He loves the lake. He loves floating in it in the summer — ideally, he says, “with a beer.” He had been taking phone calls, sitting on a bench, “vibing,” he said.

Then he heard screaming. “I just look up, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ I just saw a stroller headed straight to the lake, just blown by the wind,” he recalled.

In that instant, the punchline vanished. There was no bit to craft, no self-deprecating aside about his baby face or his anxiety about sending emails, both staples of his stand-up. There was only motion. He threw down his jacket and phone and ran.

“I was like, ‘I guess I’m going in.’ And I jumped in and just tried to keep us afloat as much as possible,” he said.

Early media reports suggested that Cundiff did not know how to swim. He bristles at that characterization. “I can swim,” he said, explaining that in the hospital he told a reporter he wasn’t the strongest swimmer and preferred “to float with a beer in my hand.” “They ran with, ‘I can’t swim,’” he said.

“I can swim. I just prefer not to,” he said through a chuckle.

The baby, eight months old, was zipped inside the stroller. Cundiff had to keep the entire frame buoyant while treading freezing cold water. At one point, both of their heads went under. He describes the memory in fragments, as though replaying a film whose ending he already knows but still cannot quite believe.

“There were a few minutes where I didn’t know if we were going to be able to keep afloat,” he said. “I grabbed her hand for a second. Her tiny little fingers. I rubbed them for two seconds, and I was like, ‘Okay.’ … ‘All right, we got to keep going.’”

A bystander named Lou dropped a jacket; later, a life buoy arrived. They were about thirty feet from a ladder. Cundiff’s muscles were tightening. When they finally reached it, and the baby began to cry, he felt something like release.

“As long as she’s crying, when she gets out, that’s all I needed,” he said. (snip-MORE on the page)

Trans Girl Scouts Sell 330,000 Boxes Of Cookies In Public Outpouring Of Support

The total boxes sold is the highest in the history of EITM’s trans girl scout cookie list.

Erin Reed Mar 05, 2026

Five years ago, as anti-trans legislation first began spreading across the United States, I kept thinking about the kids caught in the middle of it—transgender children suddenly facing a wave of hostility simply for existing. That year, I started something small in response: a trans Girl Scout cookie list. Only three scouts were on it. The internet responded immediately, helping them sell out their entire quota. Every year since, I’ve made the list again, and every year it has grown larger. Now, in 2026, the list has reached a staggering scale: 220 transgender Girl Scouts participating—and together they have already sold more than 330,000 boxes of cookies, with the number still climbing every minute.

One scout hoping to fund a troop trip to Alaska—and assemble backpacks for foster children—has sold 2,500 boxes of cookies, bringing those plane tickets within reach. Another scout, a competitive soccer player, was raising money so her troop could attend scouting camp without worrying about the cost; she has now sold 4,500 boxes, ensuring that trip is covered. One troop made up of transgender Girl Scouts set their sights on learning horseback riding and attending summer camp together—and sold 22,000 boxes to make it happen. And Pim, who simply wanted to go to Niagara Falls and to take her troop camping, has sold more cookies than the website can even track: more than 100,000 boxes.

And while we can’t know exactly how many of those sales came directly from our yearly list, we do know that these trans Girl Scouts have taken the internet by storm. Posts about them have racked up millions of impressions on Facebook and gone repeatedly viral on Bluesky. In the process, countless people looking for their next box of cookies discovered a cause worth supporting—and a group of scouts they were excited to cheer on.

The news about their staggering success comes during a broader regression around scouting organizations with respect to transgender people. In December, the United Kingdom’s Girlguiding—the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts—banned transgender girls from joining, reversing a policy that had been in place since 2018. In the United States, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced Scouting America to agree to classify members by sex assigned at birth, eliminate diversity initiatives, and effectively out and segregate transgender scouts from their peers. Girl Scouts of the USA, however, has yet to see the same regression—the organization still stands by its transgender inclusion policy.

For these kids, that transgender inclusion policy has given them hope. At a time when thousands of anti-LGBTQ+ bills are being proposed and passed across the country, the cookie list is proof that people out there care. When every force in the world is acting against them, for once, their identity is not treated as a curse by society, but a blessing. Parents have told me that their children have been overwhelmed with joy watching the numbers climb, realizing that strangers across the country support them. And that’s worth protecting. (snip-MORE on the page)

Your Josh Day Next Day!

Josh Day Next Day

I almost posted this last night for those who might have wanted a funny alternative to the SOTU, but here’s hoping you all found what you wanted to watch. Randy posted, and I wanted that to stay on top, because he’s been busy and tired and not able to get around to posting. Of course, this is Josh Johnson: no matter the subject, guard your device from whatever beverage you may be taking in as you relax and listen and laugh!

Here’s A Great One From A Fellow Blogger Who Reads Here

A Quote

Arting (Or Not!) With Jenny Lawson

Posting especially because of the final photo, with which many of us can identify … 🤭

Unfinished business

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess) Feb 16, 2026

Hello, friend!

Okay, confession time.

Last week I recorded the audiobook for How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay and then I collapsed in a limp pile of exhaustion, which is embarrassing because why is “just talking” for two days so hard? Regardless, I spent several nights that I would have normally been drawing while watching 90-Day-Fiance (don’t judge me) instead just hiding under the covers and recovering from being human in public for too long. And that’s why this week’s doodle is unfinished:

But the good news is that because it’s unfinished you can print it out and color it or draw on it and then you can share your version in the comments if you want. EVERYONE WINS.

Here’s a fun tip: I sometimes use the recolor app to upload my drawings and color them:

(PS. I’m not getting paid to plug them. It’s just a free app I stumbled on.)

So anyway…this is just to remind you that it’s okay to not hit every deadline (or any deadline) because you are so much more than your output. And so am I.

Thank goodness.

Hugs,

me

PS. As tax for not having a finished drawing, please accept this picture of a very sleepy Dorothy Barker intentionally laying on my art so that I will pet her instead of drawing.

Everyone’s a critic.

Jesse Jackson Tribute From “The Nation”

Jesse Jackson Gave Peace a Chance

The iconic civil rights leader, who has died at 84, made anti-war and pro-diplomacy politics central to his presidential bids and his lifelong activism.

John Nichols

Jesse Jackson at a rally against the Gulf War in Washington, DC, on January 18, 1991.
(Ricky Flores / Getty Images)

he Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr., the iconic champion of racial, economic, and social justice whose work as a young aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a public life that would eventually see him mount a pair of transformative presidential bids, died Tuesday morning at age 84.

Jackson’s legacy is so rich, and extends across so many generations and struggles, that it cannot be contained in one reflection. He was, as the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday, “a movement unto himself.”

Over seven decades in the public arena, Jackson emerged as one of the most multifaceted figures in American history: a legendary civil rights leader, a knowing and caring defender of the disenfranchised, a vital advocate for voting rights and voter mobilization, a savvy media critic who recognized the importance of challenging narratives that promoted discrimination and division, an essential ally of labor unions, a reformer of the Democratic Party, a friend to struggling family farmers and urban workers alike, and a counselor to presidents and prime ministers. He was, as well, a man of deep faith, who expressed that faith in his ardent advocacy for peace.

That dedication to peace was central to both his 1984 and 1988 presidential bids, a fact that is too frequently neglected in cursory reflections on those seismic Rainbow Coalition campaigns.

Political historians recognize Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy as the great anti–Vietnam War candidates of the 1968 presidential campaign. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, is often recalled as the most ardent foe of a US military intervention to be nominated by a major American political party since Democrats ran William Jennings Bryan in 1900. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean and former Ohio representative Dennis Kucinich are remembered for seeking the Democratic presidential nod in 2004 as sharp critics of the Iraq War. Barack Obama’s prescient opposition to the Bush-Cheney administration’s war of choice, which he voiced as early as 2002, did much to advance his successful bid for the presidency in 2008. And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose 2020 presidential bid Jackson supported, reframed foreign policy debates by explicitly rejecting the elite consensus about the US role in the Middle East and so many other parts of the world.

Jackson’s two 1980s campaigns deserve a key place in this proud history—both because they were uniquely dynamic and because they had a profound and lasting impact on progressive thinking about foreign policy. That’s one of the many reasons, when veterans of the Jackson campaigns got together, we often reflected on this too-frequently-neglected aspect of his political legacy. His was a powerful and transformative message that resonates to this day.

groundbreaking advocacy on behalf of economic, social, and racial justice at home, but Jackson also outlined what was then a fresh foreign policy vision, rooted in what has come to be known as progressive internationalism. He advanced a comprehensive—and morally coherent—argument for shifting American foreign policy away from military interventionism, nuclear brinksmanship, and Cold War posturing and toward diplomacy, cooperation, and dramatically reduced Pentagon spending.

Jackson understood precisely what was at stake, and he declared in a voice so resonant that it inspired a new generation of activists, “Peace is worth the risk!”

And he was taking a risk. It is important to recall how—as Ronald Reagan was ramping up the Cold War around the world and pouring US resources into heated conflicts in El Salvador and on the border of Nicaragua—Jackson boldly broke not just with the Republican president but also with many Democrats to make opposition to war a focal point of his bid.

After it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had mined three harbors in Central America, as part of an effort to destabilize the country’s left-wing government, Jackson declared in April 1984 that “the undeclared war against the people of Nicaragua…must be stopped.” In addition to criticizing the Reagan administration and the CIA, Jackson took issue with Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, the front-runners for the Democratic nomination that year, for failing to clearly deliver a message that the US must “stop our funding of terror in Nicaragua and El Salvador now and to withdraw all our troops from Central America.”

“It is not enough for Walter Mondale to call mining the harbors a clumsy and ill-conceived act,” argued Jackson. “It is not enough to imply that the main problem was not informing Congress adequately. Our foreign policy in Central America is wrong. We are standing on the wrong side of history. We are engaged in killing people, and starving people who are trying to work out their own destiny.”

Jackson’s 1984 Rainbow Coalition campaign shocked pundits by winning primaries and caucuses in key states, and by collecting roughly 20 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Jackson also made a historic trip to Central America and the Caribbean, where he met with regional leaders—including Cuban President Fidel Castro—and warned, “The signs of war are rising. We see the military buildup throughout the region. We see the United States taking sides instead of helping to reconcile the conflict. We cannot allow another Vietnam.”

The bitter legacy of the Vietnam War, which Jackson had opposed as a young aide to Dr. King, weighed heavily on his mind during the 1984 campaign. At the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, Jackson delivered a renowned, electrifying speech, in which he recalled,

Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote. Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers. Young America must be politically active in 1984. The choice is war or peace.

Jackson’s focus in 1984 and in 1988 extended beyond concerns about the “dirty wars” in Central America. He campaigned as an outspoken advocate for nuclear disarmament, embracing the “nuclear freeze” movement to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons by the United States and the Soviet Union. He called for a rethinking of US military and economic alliances in order to advance democracy and human rights, argued for an end to US aid to the violent apartheid regime in South Africa, and proposed a new approach to Middle East relations that respected the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

As a 42-year-old first-time candidate in the fall of 1983, Jackson met with Arab Americans, urged the US to use diplomacy so that the Middle East would no longer be a ”flashpoint for both hot and cold war,” and said that any path to peace had to include a ”homeland and a state for Palestine.”

”It is a tragedy to see the lack of talk and dialogue in the Middle East, but it is even worse not to see it here,” said Jackson. ”The first step for peace in the Middle East is for black Americans, Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans to start talking here.”

A young James Zogby, then the director of the Arab-American Antidiscrimination Committee, cheered Jackson’s inclusion of Palestinian rights in his campaign platform. ”He challenged us on 50 issues and not just one,” said Zogby, who would go on to place Jackson’s name in nomination at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. ”He respected us as Arab-Americans and didn’t pander to us. This is the first time ever that a presidential candidate has come before an Arab-American audience, and we don’t feel disenfranchised anymore.”

At the end of 1983, Jackson traveled to the Middle East and visited the Jaramana refugee camp in Syria, where on New Year’s Day in 1984, he told a group of Palestinian children, “Keep your dreams high. Don’t let anyone break your spirit. You’ll be free one day.” It was on that same journey that he secured the release of US Navy airman Lt. Robert Goodman, whose plane had been shot down over Lebanon and who had been captured and held by Syrian forces.

Jackson remained actively engaged with Middle East peace issues through the rest of his life. Among the memorials posted on Tuesday was one from former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote, “It was an honor to march alongside him against the Iraq War in 2003. May his legacy inspire us to strive for a world of dignity and peace for all.” More than two decades later, one of an ailing Jackson’s last great initiatives was an emergency conference—held at the headquarters of the Rainbow-Push Coalition in Chicago in early 2024—to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.

Jackson’s faith in diplomacy and negotiation was part of a broader commitment to creating the circumstances for peace to thrive. Just like his mentor King, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who linked his nonviolent civil rights activism in the US to the global anti-war movement—and who took his own huge risk for peace by standing against the Vietnam War—Jackson recognized the political courage that was required to advance that commitment.

As a presidential candidate, he showed that courage by talking about cutting as much as 25 percent from the Pentagon budget. In response to critics who claimed his ideas were too radical, Jackson told New Hampshire primary voters in February of 1984, “We are so strong militarily that we can afford to take measures such as these in the pursuit of peace.… We must fight for peace and give peace a chance.”

At the close of his 1988 campaign, in which he was endorsed by The Nation and won more than a dozen statewide primary and caucus contests, securing 6.9 million votes, Jackson pulled all the threads together in an epic address to that year’s Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. He spoke movingly of tackling poverty and inequality within the United States, but he was just as compelling in his discussion of foreign policy, which included a stirring call for disarmament that is as relevant today as it was 35 years ago.

Jackson told the cheering delegates:

The nuclear war build-up is irrational. Strong leadership cannot desire to look tough and let that stand in the way of the pursuit of peace. Leadership must reverse the arms race. At least we should pledge no first use. Why? Because first use begets first retaliation. And that’s mutual annihilation. That’s not a rational way out.

No use at all. Let’s think it out and not fight it out because it’s an unwinnable fight. Why hold a card that you can never drop? Let’s give peace a chance.

=====

Also see: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/jesse-jacksons-rainbow-coalition-was-as-political-as-it-was-poetic/