Tag: Peace

A Letter To An Editor In Regard To Ottawa PRIDE

(If you click through, you can read Dr. Hogans own story on his page.)

When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder by Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA

null Read on Substack

Narrative Word Count: 289

Bio: Richard Francis Hogan is a Canadian writer, Poet and advocate on several levels based in Ottawa. His work explores hope, resilience, identity, faith, and the quiet power of public spaces.

(snip-personal contact info)

https://richardhogan1.substack.com

Cover Letter for Submission

Subject: Op-Ed Submission: When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder

Dear  Editor,

I am submitting the attached op-ed for consideration in the Ottawa Citizen. It reflects on the recent cancellation of the Ottawa Gay Pride Parade and the deeper cultural and spiritual implications of that absence. As a longtime resident and advocate for inclusive public spaces, I believe this piece speaks to a moment of reflection for our city and its commitment to visibility, dignity, and belonging. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Richard Hogan

(snip-personal contact info)

Full Narrative

When the Parade Stops, the Silence Speaks Louder

By Richard Francis Hogan

The cancellation of the Ottawa Gay Pride Parade due to protests is more than a logistical decision. It is a cultural silence, a civic absence, a spiritual pause that demands reflection.

For decades, Pride has been more than a celebration. It has been a procession of courage, a public hymn of identity, a communal act of love. It has been where the marginalized found visibility, where joy became resistance, and where the city itself remembered its promise to all its people.

To cancel such a gathering is not merely to postpone an event. It is to interrupt a ritual of belonging.

As a Christian, I believe in the sacredness of every human soul. As a Buddhist, I recognize the impermanence of all things—but also the importance of showing up, again and again, with compassion. And as someone with Irish blood, I know that humor and heartache often walk hand in hand. We laugh because we’ve cried. We march because we’ve been still for too long.

This year, there will be no rainbow flags waving down Bank Street. No music echoing through Centretown. No cheers from sidewalks lined with families, allies, and elders who remember when Pride was a protest, not a party.

But let us not confuse absence with apathy.

Let us write, speak, gather, and remember. Let us honor those who came before, and those who still wait to be seen. Let us make sure that when the parade returns, it does so not just with glitter—but with grit.

Because Pride is not a date on the calendar. It is a declaration of dignity.

And dignity, like love, does not disappear. It waits. It endures. It marches on.

Mahatma Gandhi, Baltic Hands, in Peace & Justice History for 8/23

August 23, 1933
Mahatma Gandhi, weighing only 90 pounds, was released unconditionally from Sassoon Hospital in Poona because, after 5 days of his latest “fast unto death,” the doctors feared that his body could no longer stand the strain of fasting.
He had been taken to the hospital from Yeravda jail, which he had described as his “permanent address,” when he started his fast. He was protesting official refusal to allow him to continue his work with the Untouchables (he had called them harijan, or “children of God”) while in prison.

Gandhi leaving hospital, 1933
He had deliberately courted arrest, rejecting an order permitting him to reside only within the limits of Poona, and had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
Gandhi and his fasts 
August 23, 1945
In a letter to his friend Anne Marie Petersen shortly before the end of British colonial rule in India, Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “When there is independence, why should you fear the majority? If you have God with you and the majority have not, should you still fear? And if both have God between them who should fear whom? Is there then any question of majority and minority?
Let us pray.
Love.
Bapu”
August 23, 1989
Over one million joined hands across the three Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in a 400-mile-long chain of resistance against control by the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
It was the 60th anniversary of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany who had negotiated it.
Generally called the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it secretly agreed to Soviet control of Latvia and Estonia, and German influence over Poland and Lithuania. Germany, again secretly, later ceded control over Lithuania to the Soviets for 7.5 million dollars in gold ($115 in 2008 dollars).

Baltic hands
The Baltic Way  (with pictures of the action)

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august23

Fannie Lou Hamer, Rhodesia’s Olympics Team, Karen Silkwood, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/22

Say It Loud-Say It With Me!

August 22, 1958
President Dwight Eisenhower announced a voluntary moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. A report outlining a system for monitoring and verifying compliance of a complete ban on such testing had been released just the day before. The Conference of Experts, as it was known, had been meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to work out the details on detection of violations of such a treaty. The U.S. delegation was led by Nobel physics laureate Ernest Lawrence from the University of California (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is named after him).
Eisenhower predicated his moratorium on U.S.S.R. and U.K. agreement to the same limitations. All three countries agreed to the one-year halt in testing and to begin negotiations on a complete test ban at the end of October; all three performed last-minute (atmospheric) tests before the opening of talks.
August 22, 1964

Singing at a boardwalk demonstration: Hamer (with microphone), Stokely Carmichael, (in hat), Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ella Baker.
Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), testified in front of the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention. She was challenging the all-white delegation that the segregated regular Mississippi Democrats had sent to the presidential nominating convention.

Mississippi’s Democratic Party excluded African Americans from participation. The MFDP, on the other hand, sought to create a racially inclusive new party, signing up 60,000 members.
The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state.The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state. In her testimony she spoke about black Mississippians not only being denied the right to register to vote, but being harassed, beaten, shot at, and arrested for trying. Concerned about the political reaction to her statement, President Lyndon Johnson suddenly called an impromptu press conference, thereby interrupting television broadcast of the hearing.
Hear her testimony  
Link to photo gallery 
August 22, 1971

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) arrested twenty in Camden, New Jersey, and five in Buffalo, New York, for conspiracy to steal and destroy draft records. Eventually known as the Camden 28, most were Roman Catholic activists, including four priests, and a Lutheran minister.“We are not here because of a crime committed in Camden but because of a war committed in Indochina….” Cookie Ridolfi
The Camden 28 
August 22, 1972
Rhodesia’s team was banned from competing in the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in Munich, Germany. The National Olympic Committees of Africa had threatened to pull out of the games unless Rhodesia was barred from competing. Though the Rhodesian team included both whites and blacks, the government was an illegal one, controlled by whites though they represented just 5% of the country’s population. It had broken away from the British Commonwealth over demands from Commonwealth member nations that power be yielded to the majority.
Read more 
August 22, 1986

The Kerr-McGee Corporation agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million ($2.68 in 2008), settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit. She had been active in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, specifically looking into radiation exposure of workers, and spills and leaks of plutonium.
The story of Karen Silkwood 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august22

Nat Turner, Prague Spring, Benigno Aquino, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/21

August 21, 1831

Nat Turner, a 30-year-old man legally owned by a child, and six other slaves began a violent insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia.They began by killing the child’s stepfather, Joseph Travis, and his family. Within the next 24 hours, Turner and, ultimately, about 40 followers killed the families who owned adjacent slaveholding properties, nearly 60 whites, while freeing and inciting other slaves to join them.Militia and federal troops were called out, and the uprising was suppressed with 55 African Americans including Turner executed by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia, and hundreds more killed by white mobs and vigilantes in revenge.
More about Nat Turner
Nat Turner’s confession 
August 21, 1968
The Czechoslovakian people spontaneously and nonviolently resisted invasion of their country of 14 million by hundreds of thousands of troops and 5000+ tanks from the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact countries.The troops were enforcing the overthrow and arrest of Alexander Dubcek and his government. They had been implementing significant democratic reforms known collectively as “socialism with a human face,” or the Prague Spring.
 
Cover of the magazine Kvety, with a photograph of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague. Graffiti on the statue reads “Soldiers go home” in Russian and “Dubcek – Svoboda” in Czech.

Hundreds attempted to obstruct invading tanks.
Both Czechs and Slovaks argued with the soldiers and refused all cooperation with the occupying armies while showing broad support for the deposed government and its reform program. Moscow relented and returned Dubcek to office, at least temporarily.
Prague Spring in retrospect
Czech perspective 
August 21, 1971
Two grenades killed and wounded members of the leadership of the Philippines’ Liberal Party during a rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos accused a leader of the party, Benigno Aquino, of the bombing and arrested him, labeling him a communist. Liberal Party Secretary-General Aquino, an effective young leader and Marcos opponent, was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for seven years until allowed exile to the U.S., ostensibly for medical treatment.
August 21, 1976
Approximately 20,000 people, mainly women, from both Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended a Peace People’s rally at Ormeau Park.
August 21, 1983
Exiled popular Philippine political leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated by soldiers of the Aviation Security Command as he crossed the tarmac at Manila International Airport.

Benigno Aquino
He had spent three years of asylum in the U.S. Upon his return, he intended to lead the political opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos and the martial law he had imposed.
During the plane trip across the Pacific, he had commented to reporters, “I suppose there’s a physical danger because you know assassination’s part of public service . . . My feeling is we all have to die sometime and if it’s my fate to die by an assassin’s bullet, so be it.”

Hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Marcos.


Ferdinand Marcos
The Aquino funeral drew millions and gave impetus to the broad-based People’s Power movement which eventually forced Marcos from power.
Read more about Aquino 
August 21, 1991
A coup against Soviet Union President Mikhail S. Gorbachev by hard-line Communist Party members (State Emergency Committee), collapsed in the face of popular opposition. Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, having quit the Party the previous year, had called for a general strike.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev | Boris N.Yelsin
August 21, 1998
Samuel Bowers, the 73-year-old former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, of ordering a firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer 32 years before. Bowers had also been instrumental in the killing of three other civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi for which he was never charged.
On Vernon Dahmer’s tombstone are the words, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

Samuel Bowers
32 years to justice

Dahmer’s home after the bombing

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august21

And From Lit Hub, “This Week In Literary History”

(It’s a newsletter I receive, and I don’t have a link for what I’ve copied and am pasting, but there are links within the piece. Enjoy.)

AUGUST 17 — AUGUST 23
Angela Davis debuts on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
In 1969, the legendary author and activist Angela Davis was a newly minted assistant philosophy processor at UCLA. But she was also an avowed Communist, and as a result, then-Governor Ronald Regan tried to have her fired before she’d begun any actual teaching. No luck: Davis’s dismissal didn’t hold up in court, and her first class had to be moved to a bigger classroom to accommodate the 2,000 students who had signed up for it—but she would finally be fired again nine months later, for “inflammatory rhetoric” in public speeches.  Davis was an outspoken supporter of the Black Panthers and was fervently against the Vietnam War, but arguably her most scandalous activist activities at the time were in defense of the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates imprisoned in Soledad, CA, who were accused of killing a white guard. In 1970, guns registered to Davis were used in an attack on the nearby Marin County Civic Center; the perpetrators hoped to take hostages to bargain for the inmates’ release, but instead left four casualties. Davis, despite not being at the scene, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges. She couldn’t be found, and so on August 18, 1970, by order of J. Edgar Hoover, Davis became the third woman ever to be included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Eight weeks later, Davis was finally arrested in a New York motel; the trial that followed catapulted her to international fame—and turned her into a revolutionary icon—as her supporters, who viewed her as a political prisoner, chanted “Free Angela!” across the globe.In 1972, after 16 months in prison, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. “It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Miss Davis,” noted one of her attorneys, Howard Moore Jr., but it shouldn’t have. “Justice should be the routine of the system,” he added.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism 

Angela Davis on International Solidarity and the Impacts of Black Radicalism 

Angela Davis on Protest, 1968, andHer Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuse 
THIS IS WHY THEY BAN IT:
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ”
–Angela Davis

More Josh Johnson

Here is a short, which is hilarious. Beneath it is his entire set, posted last night as he did it; it is wonderful! It depends how much time you have. I recommend the longer one, if you can only watch one. The short is contained within the longer one, but won’t spoil anything if you watch it first. Obviously, there is a lot more varied material in the full set. Enjoy!

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First Enslaved Africans Arrive in VA, & The Equal Opportunity Act Is Signed, In Peace & Justice History for 8/20

August 20, 1619
The first enslaved Africans brought to North America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship.
August 20, 1964
A nearly $1 billion (about $5 billion in current dollars) anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and other programs that became part of the “War on Poverty,” was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.


Sargent Shriver & LBJ
Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, drafted the legislation and became director of the Office of Equal Opportunity which implemented the new law.
The “Great Society” 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august20

Clara Luper, Desmond Tutu, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/19

(Click through on the Desmond Tutu link, and join me in what I’m pretty sure will be your first thought when you see the page. And enjoy your beverage while reading. -A.)

August 19, 1791

Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker, the first recognized African-American scientist, a son of former slaves, sent a copy of his just-published Almanac to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal about “the injustice of a state of slavery.”
More about Benjamin Banneker, his achievements and his letter to the president
=====================================================
August 19, 1953

Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq
Royalist troops surrounded, bombarded and burned the residence of the Mohammed Mosaddeq, the recently dismissed elected Iranian Prime Minister. After having briefly fled his country for Italy due to the rioting over his unconstitutional dismissal of Mosaddeq, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was returned to the Peacock throne with dictatorial power. All this was done with the planning, financing and assistance of the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.
Background on Mosaddeq
Stephen Kinzer on the U.S.-Iran relationship in perspective 
===============================================
August 19, 1958
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council in Oklahoma City, led by Clara Luper, a high school history teacher, began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, inspired by success in Wichita, Kansas.
[see August 11, 1958].

Clara Luper
TV interview with Clara Luper 
More about Clara 
================================================
August 19, 1970
The U.S. deployed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles near Greeley, Colorado. It was the first missile with multiple (then three-170 kiloton) nuclear warheads known as MIRVs (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles).

The MIRV: each cone is a warhead
All the details about this fearsome armament 
==================================================
August 19, 1989

Anglican Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu was among hundreds of black demonstrators, members of Mass Democratic Movement who were whipped and blasted with sand stirred up by helicopters as they attempted to picnic on a “whites-only” beach near Cape Town, South Africa.
Desmond Mpilo Tutu 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august19

Romance Books On Sale

M/M Romances and Historicals

Women Have Had The Right To Vote For 105 Out Of 249 Years & More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/18

August 18, 1914
In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar.
Chronology of the Armenian Genocide 
August 18, 1920
Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890.

This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before.
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification.  At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage.”

Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives) (It is still there; I checked.)
August 18, 1963
 
James Meredith
James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards.

James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S. marshals and the military. 
Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964
South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system.
Read more 
August 18, 1977
Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed.

Steve Biko
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971
More about Biko

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august18

Resistance Strategy

Lots of little things people can do to build community, and stay safe. Here’s an idea, but it could easily be a house, or a she-shed, or a man-cave, etc., etc.

How a Black-Owned Members-Only Club in Washington D.C. is Responding to Trump’s Police Force Takeover

As the National Guard has been deployed to the streets of D.C., one private Black-owned networking club is offering a safe space to work and connect with others.

By Angela Johnson Published August 17, 2025

Last week, President Donald Trump declared a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C., a move that, according to the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, allows the federal government to take over the city’s police department for 30 days without congressional approval. Anxiety level is high as many are worried that taking over the Chocolate City — where Black people make up nearly 43 percent of the population, according to Data USA — is just the first part of Trump’s plan to implement a police state in America.

But one local membership club just made a move to make sure the city’s residents have a safe place to go during these uncertain times. The Gathering Spot is a Black-owned private membership club with locations in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Los Angeles, created to provide a space for executives, artists and entrepreneurs to connect and build community.

Although you normally have to pay to play, the club just launched a safe house initiative, which will provide complimentary access to its D.C. location (with a few less perks than full membership would get them).

Residents can complete an online form to request access. Once they are approved, they can use the space to “work, rest and connect” with others. The Gathering Spot’s CEO, Ryan Wilson, announced the plan in an August 12 Instagram post.

“This is an opportunity for people who are not members of the club to take advantage of the club. It is more important that we are in community during moments like this than ever,” he said.

Although we don’t know how long the safe house initiative will last, many TGS members said on social media that they are happy that the place they call home is opening its doors to others when they need it most.

“This is the 💪🏽💪🏽and vision needed. Proud to be a part of the TGS community,” wrote someone on Instagram.