Tag: Peace

Peace & Justice History for 6/15

June 15, 1917
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were arrested and charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft for America’s recent declaration of war with Germany in World War I. They held a number of rallies to discourage young men vulnerable to the new draft from cooperating. They laid out their position in the nearly 100,000 fliers they distributed with their No­Conscription League Manifesto.
“. . . this democratic country makes no such provision for those who will not commit murder at the behest of the war profiteers. Thus the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’ is ready to coerce free men into the military yoke.”
The Emma Goldman Papers 
The No-Conscription League Manifesto 
Alexander Berkman biography 
June 15, 1942
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in Chicago by a group of students including James Farmer and Bayard Rustin. They found inspiration in Mahatma Gandhi—and his nonviolent victory over British colonial rule of India—for their struggle to achieve full legal rights for African Americans.

CORE history 
Read more about CORE 
June 15, 1966
The James Meredith March Against Fear [see June 6, 1966] arrived in Granada, Mississippi, and was met by hundreds of members of the local Negro (African-American) community. A rally was then held in the town square to encourage voter registration. During the rally, a representative of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) placed a small American flag on a Confederate War Memorial (it was later removed, considered a desecration by the local white population).

Grenada County had recently hired four Negro voter registrars and, following the rally, and again following a speech that night by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., ßhundreds lined up at the courthouse to register to vote, 160 just on this day, a total of 1300 over the next two.
Shortly thereafter, however, the Negro registrars were fired, and 700 registrations were invalidated for alleged technical violations of the local ordinance.
June 15, 1970
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Sisson that conscientious objectors, those who refuse military service or to bear arms for moral or religious reasons, need not base their beliefs on the tenets of an organized religion.
Visit the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors
June 15, 2011
Three months after the meltdown at the local nuclear power plant, the Fukushima, Japan, city government announced it would give dosimeters (devices that measure the intensity of radiation) to 34,000 preschool, elementary and junior high school students.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june15

Screaming, Indeed!

Somebody Is Shooting — Strike That — *Killing* Minnesota’s Democratic Lawmakers, Dressed As A Cop by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Well, here is some fucking news. Read on Substack

Melissa Hortman has died. John Hoffman and his wife have survived surgery.

Here is a fast post before I take a breath, make my signs, and go outside to scream my head off.

Someone or someones dressed as law enforcement — or law enforcement! with ICE covering their faces, there’s really no way to know anymore who is who! — has gone and shot Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota. The Minnesota House is split 67-67, and the Minnesota Senate has a plus-one majority for Democratic-Farm-Labor. These are targeted assassinations.

Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) and Minnesota House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park are reportedly in grave condition. Reportedly, both of their spouses were shot too. Update 10:50 eastern: KSTP is reporting that Hortman and her husband Mark have died.

Update 11:00 eastern: Per an officer at the press conference above, officers responding to the shooting at Hoffman’s house asked Brooklyn Park officers to go check Hortman’s house — out of a vague foreboding. Those officers found the fake cop coming out of her house, when he immediately shot at them and went back inside.

Update 11:30 eastern: NOWHERE in this CNN story on the “politically motivated assassination” does it tell its readers that the victims were Democrats. Why do you suppose that is?

Everything is escalating. Nothing is all right.

The last time someone tried to kill Democrats, it was a lunatic who bashed Nancy Pelosi’s octogenarian husband in the head with a hammer. This was considered very hilarious by our president, Donald Trump.

Here is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz a day ago.

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:kkowgxq2se4x5lo4zyipch6a/app.bsky.feed.post/3lriop3puf22w?id=18887764160362552

Jesus Fucking Christ.

“Small Southern Specialty”

Black-crested Titmouse

Peace

Abhijit reads his poem on video (on the page.) It’s good to hear!

Be The Change, Not The Caption (Sonnet) – Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets

Thurgood Marshall Nominated for SCOTUS, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/13

June 13, 1967

Thurgood Marshall was nominated for justice of the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson. Marshall was then Solicitor General of the United States, and had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal segregation in the schools. He would be the first African American on the Court.
Synopsis of Juan Williams’s biography of Justice Thurgood Marshall 
June 13, 1971

The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a series of excerpts from the Defense Department’s classified history of the Vietnam War, giving details of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II to 1968. Publication was interrupted after the Nixon administration went to court to block it, asserting its power to exercise prior restraint over public release of what it considered classified material. The Washington Post then began publishing the papers. On June 30 the Supreme Court, 6-3, allowed publication to resume.
What started that day and how Nixon’s people dealt with it 
June 13, 1991
Jeffrey Collins was awarded a $5.3 million settlement from Shell Oil which had fired him for being gay. Collins had offered to settle out of court for $50,000, but Shell refused.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june13

KS Troopers On Standby While A Democracy Demonstrates Democracy

(what? Also KS’s gubernatorial race already sucks. On ice.)

This is what democracy looks like in Kansas: The courage to protest

Kansas troopers on standby for protests, ahead of nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations

  • Kansas Reflector
  • Jun 11, 2025 Updated Jun 11, 2025

TOPEKA — State troopers are on standby in Kansas as demonstrations against federal immigration raids crop up around the country following an increased military presence in response to protests in Los Angeles.

The Kansas Highway Patrol is aware of Kansas City-area protests this week, said April McCollum, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Also read: ‘No Kings Day’ protests sweep U.S. as Wichita joins national pushback against Trump administration 

Protests in LA began Friday, mostly in downtown and central parts of the city, in opposition to targeted, sweeping raids from federal immigration officials that result in the arrest and detention of immigrants lacking permanent legal status. The demonstrations escalated once President Donald Trump ordered thousands of members of the California National Guard to the city’s streets, against the wishes of state leaders. Protesters in dozens of other cities joined their LA counterparts Tuesday.

Col. Erik Smith, superintendent of the state highway patrol, told legislators Tuesday that a protest similar to those in LA was planned in the Johnson County area, but the agency did not disclose specifics when asked. The only report of a protest in the area Tuesday occurred in Kansas City, Missouri’s downtown and Westside, drawing hundreds of attendees, according to reporting from The Kansas City Star.

A slate of more than 1,800 protests are scheduled across the nation for Saturday. More than a dozen of them are set to occur in Kansas cities, from Garden City to Hiawatha to Arkansas City to the Kansas City area.

“We encourage those involved to maintain civility while exercising their First Amendment rights,” McCollum said. (snip-MORE that diverts into interesting conversation about immigration sweeps and our gubernatorial race later on.)

A Reblog From Nan Mykel

It’s a good, engaging read, with motivating info.

UF Students Meet MLK

Freedom To Marry, and More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/12

June 12, 1963

In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by white supremacist Byron De la Beckwith, who was not convicted until 1994 after an extensive investigation by Jackson, Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger newspaper. He was tried and acquitted twice by with all-white juries, members of which had been influenced by the Ku Klux Klan. Following one of the trials, then-Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett stood by Beckwith’s side and shook his hand.
The whole sad story
The role of the Clarion-Ledger 
June 12, 1964
Nelson Mandela, a 46-year-old lawyer and a leader of the opposition to South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid system, was convicted of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nelson Mandela, 1963
From Mandela’s statement to the court prior to sentencing:
“ I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
The trial of Mandela and seven other African National Congress compatriots 
June 12, 1967
The U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia struck down state miscegenation laws, those that prohibited interracial marriage, as violations of a person’s right to equal protection under the law, as guaranteed under the 14th amendment.

Mildred and Richard Loving
In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a white man and an African-American woman, had married in Washington, D.C. Upon return to their home state of Virginia, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in prison. The appeal of their conviction led to the decision.
Contemporary thoughts on the case 
“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the
vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
From Chief Justice Earl Warren’s majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia
Watch trailer for the movie “Loving” (recommended)
June 12, 1982

In the world’s largest-ever peace demonstration (until the U.S. invasion of Iraq), one million rallied in New York City’s Central Park to support the newly formed Nuclear Freeze Campaign which called for a halt to all nuclear weapons testing worldwide.

The biggest demonstration on earth (until the global anti-Iraq war march of Feb 15 2003)
took place in New York on June 12, 1982, when one million people gathered in support of the second UN Special Session on Disarmament and to protest nuclear weapons.
The origins of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign 
The demonstration 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june12

From The Smart Ones:

No Kings, Yas Queens

Snippet:

“There is a free printable PDF or PNG at their KoFi, along with a pre-order for stickers and tshirts, which will ship later in June.

More than 1800 NO KINGS rallies are planned for this Saturday, June 14, as counter programming to the most embarrassing example of fascist onanism ever.

And, since June is Pride month, there are a lot of Pride activities going on that date, too. Perhaps yours also overlap, and this sign will work for you, too!

Thanks to Chris for permission to share – this design is so great, I had to share it.

Stay safe out there, and wherever you are, please know that you are loved exactly as you are. Whether you can live your life openly or keep parts of yourself hidden, you’re seen and welcomed and loved.”

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