Tag: Mohandas Gandhi

The ERA and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/6

May 6, 1916

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman started the No Conscription League in the U.S. to discourage young men from registering for the draft which had passed Congress the previous month.
This was prior to American troops’ being sent to Europe in what is known as World War I.
Read the No-Conscription League Manifesto 
May 6, 1944
Mohandas Gandhi, due to declining health, was released from
his last imprisonment in India, having spent 2,338 days in jail
during his lifetime.
May 6, 1954
Two American pilots and most of their crew died flying ammunition supply missions to French colonial troops under siege by Vietnamese insurgent troops under General Vo Nguyen Giap. James “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern and Wallace Buford became the first U.S. aviators to die in Vietnam. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had not wanted to commit the U.S. military to Vietnam so shortly after the end of the war in Korea, so McGovern and Buford were working for an organization contracted by the CIA.
May 6, 1970
U.S. Senate hearings began on ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Similar amendments had been introduced in every Congress since 1923.
Writer and editor Gloria Steinem testified: “During twelve years of working for a living, I’ve experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals, all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.”

Gloria Steinem in 1970
Steinem’s full testimony  
more 
ERA history 
May 6, 1973
14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their country’s nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean.
May 6, 1979
125,000 rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may6

Peace & Justice History for 1/10

TGIF? ☮

January 10, 1776

Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense”. In it Paine questioned the fundamental legitimacy of the rule of kings, and advocated the doctrine of independence for Americans, and the rights of mankind.
The entire text: 
January 10, 1908 
A prominent young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, was jailed for the first time. He had refused to register as an Asian in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He was released three weeks later.

Gandhi, 1906
Gandhi and how his time in South Africa affected his life 
January 10, 1917
The National Women’s Party began regular picketing of the White House, advocating the right to vote for women.


The first suffrage picket line leaving Congressional Union headquarters to march to the White House gates.
January 10, 1920
The League of Nations formally came into being when its Covenant (part of the Treaty of Versailles), ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.
Though strongly supported by President Woodrow Wilson (who served as Chairman of the Committee that developed the Covenant), the U.S. never joined.
January 10, 1930
In December 1928, Mohandas Gandhi attended a session of the Indian National Congress Party in Calcutta where it called for complete Indian independence from Great Britain. This was to be achieved through peaceful means, specifically complete noncooperation with the governmental apparatus of colonial British rule, known as the Raj.
On this day, Gandhi drafted the declaration, which stated, in part:
“The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. . . . Therefore . . . India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj, or complete independence.”
January 10, 1940
Members of the Brethren, Mennonites and Friends religious groups sent a message to Presidend Franklin Roosevelt requesting alternative service in the event of war.

Civilian Public Service workers Clark and Kriebel in the Duke University’s hospital sterilizer room.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 proclaimed that all persons who “by reason of religious training and belief were conscientiously opposed to all forms of military service, should, if conscripted for service, be assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction.”
More on those who refused to serve in the “good war” 

January 10, 1946
The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened at Westminster Central Hall in London, England, and included 51 nations. On January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.
January 10, 1966
Vernon Dahmer, a businessman and farmer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, offered to pay the poll tax for those who couldn’t afford the fee that was then required before a citizen could vote (and which was made unconstitutional in federal elections by the 24th Amendment).
Vernon Dahmer (foreground)

former home of Vernon Dahmer
Dahmer was known for saying, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” 
The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home and store were firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns. The man responsible for the arson attack, Ku Klux Klan Wizard Sam Bowers, was not tried and convicted until 32 years later.
The poll tax and other means of disenfranchising African Americans 
January 10, 1971
The Peoples’ Peace Treaty between the citizens of the U.S. and Vietnam was endorsed by 130 organizations.
Several million North Americans later signed it.


Peoples’ Peace Treaty organizers
The treaty had been signed in December by leaders from the South Vietnam National Student Union, South Vietnam Liberation Student Union, North Vietnam Student Union, and the (U.S.) National Student Association in Saigon, Hanoi and Paris. It was adopted this day by the New University Conference and Chicago Movement meeting.
Text of the treaty 
The People Make the Peace book
Article from New York Review of Books by the National Student Association with the text of the Treaty
January 10, 1994
Guatemalan government officials and leftist guerilla movement leaders agreed to negotiate to end 36 years of violent conflict.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january10