I wasn’t an adult in 1972, but it was a relief to me, that there was no more death penalty! Four years later, it was back, and I cannot explain how that happened. My town had a death penalty trial almost immediately. A teacher had access to an execution film; the state was required to keep that on record for a while, whenever anyone sat on Ol’ Sparky; we viewed it before the trial (no one present was on the jury, of course.) It was medieval. And, here we still are in 2025, killing people in the names of everybody who lives here. There are ways to work against it; let me know if there is interest in comments.
July 29, 1970 Signing the contract After a five-year strike, the United Farm Workers (UFW) signed a contract with the table grape growers in California, ending the first grape boycott. Exploring the United Farm Workers’ History
July 29, 1972 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote. The Court called the wide discretion in application of capital punishment, including the appearance of racial bias against black defendants, “arbitrary and capricious” and thus in violation of due process guarantees in the 14th Amendment [see July 28, 1868]. Influence of race on imposition of the death penalty
July 28, 1917 Anti-Lynching Parade in New York City, 1917 W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Read about W.E.B. DuBois Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, and the film
July 28, 1932 Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression. More on the Bonus Army (It’s WaPo; you can read it for free, but you have to sign in) Film of the confrontation in Washington (Watch on YouTube for free without sign in)
July 28, 1965 Pfc. John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens. [Khe Sanh, February 1968.]” Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar. 1968. cover President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled. Lyndon Johnson told the nation Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please Though it isn’t really war We’re sending fifty thousand more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese — part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” Full lyrics of the song President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.””
July 28, 1982 San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.
July 27, 1919 A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams. The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23 colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future . . . .” The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station. Gangs and the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.
July 27, 1953 After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March. Korean War Memorial photo: Heather Stanfield The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces. There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died. There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict.
July 27, 1954 The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ’90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war. “They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country’s only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.” Jacobo Arbenz More about Arbenz The real coup story through official U.S. documents
July 27, 1996 Trident sub being loaded Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles). Details of the action
July 26, 1953 In his first move to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, 26-year-old Fidel Castro led 134 other young revolutionaries to unsuccessfully attack the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Castro had concluded that armed struggle was the only way to unseat Batista, who had taken power in a military coup in 1952. The Cuban Revolution is known as the July 26 Movement, and is celebrated annually there. The Moncada Barracks, still showing a few bullet holes and pockmarks from that fateful early morning assault in 1953, is now both a historic site and an elementary school.
July 26, 1967 H. Rap Brown, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was ordered arrested by then-Governor Spiro Agnew, who accused him of inciting a riot through his speech two days earlier at a civil rights rally in Cambridge, Maryland. At the event, Brown declared, “Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down . . . If Cambridge doesn’t come around, Cambridge got to be burned down.” Shortly after the speech, Brown was hit in the head by buckshot from a policeman’s shotgun. That night the segregated elementary school on the black side of town and 20 businesses burned down (there was no looting), some along Race Street, the racial divide which neither black nor white were expected to cross. H. Rap Brown following the disturbances in Cambridge, Maryland. What happened in Cambridge
July 26, 1990 The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It prohibited discrimination based on disability in employment, in public accommodation (e.g., hotels, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, health care facilities, convention centers), in transportation services, and in all activities of state and local governments. The law did not go into effect until January 26, 1992.
Mesopithecus pentelicus thrived in the rainforests of the late Miocene, 7 million years ago. Credit: Mauricio Antón
Small, slender and short-lived, with broad noses, big, dark-adapted eyes, living underground, and in the shadows of a shattered, steamy, chaotic world. Richard Musgrove asks: will this be us in 10,000 years?
Climate change is the greatest challenge in human history – current trends could have us eventually approaching extremes not seen on our planet for 15 million years. Will a destabilised global climate wreak economic havoc, leading to societal collapse, mass mortalities, even extinction? Or will we pull ourselves out of this spectacular self-imposed nose-dive?
Which raises the question – what if we don’t? How will humanity change on a much hotter Earth?
Numbers matter
Uncharted territory approaches as we nudge the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, on track for a potentially catastrophic 2.7°C by 2100. What about 2200, or 3200?
Globally, days above 50°C have doubled since the 1980s – in Australia, Pakistan, India and the Persian Gulf – with the ‘feels-like’ temperature often higher. Even immediately reduced carbon emissions will still mean lingering planet-wide heating and associated effects for many thousands of years.
Our adaptability has led us this far, but what does evolution have in store for our species if we don’t rise to face our greatest challenge? The answer is unlikely to be in the mirror.
Nothing sweats like us (snip-MORE)
===========
Medicaid ‘gamers’ are the new ‘welfare queens’ by Aaron Rupar
Republicans are taking strawman arguments to absurd extremes. Read on Substack
Earlier this month, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed a grotesque budget bill that (partially) funds massive tax breaks for the wealthy and a ramped-up ICE goon squad by cutting cutting $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and an additional $185 billion from federal food assistance programs, all while adding $2.8 trillion to the deficit.
Not surprisingly, the bill is massively unpopular. As a result, Republicans are gaslighting Americans about its impact, particularly regarding the cuts to Medicaid, which are expected to cost 10 million Americans their health coverage.
The Medicaid cuts could result in more than 16,000 extra deaths per year, researchers say. Republicans have tried to distract from that reality with a combination of blatant lies and misdirecting rhetoric. To hear them tell it, they’re only cutting supposed waste, fraud, and abuse. So when you lose benefits, they’re here to explain why it’s probably your own damn fault.
The lazy gamer myth
Republican messaging surrounding Medicaid cuts borrows heavily from Ronald Reagan’s playbook. (snip- MORE)
Of course, there are innumerable instances when the Bible has historically been used to enforce the idea that gender is a divinely ordained binary, with male and female genders that are distinct, complementary, and assigned at birth.
Indeed, the Bible’s general attitude toward gender is expansive, with verses exploring God’s focus on the interior over the exterior, the distinction between sex and gender, the role of eunuchs in scripture, and more.
Here are 10 Bible verses that show a biblical approach to gender that is as varied as the colors in a rainbow.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Day and night. Water and dry land. Male and female. The creation poem might sound like it’s dealing in binaries, but we know that all of these things have transitional elements. Day and night contain transitions at dawn and dusk; the spectrum of water and dry land includes tidal plains and coral reefs; and people who are intersex, genderqueer, nonbinary, and more can be found between “male and female”.
Genesis 25:27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.
Jacob is described as “smooth” (Genesis 27:11) and stays in the tent where he cooks – traditional female attributes in the ancient world. Yet he is chosen over his “hairy” brother Esau, a skilled hunter, to lead God’s people, showing that God does not place value on traditional gender norms.
Isaiah 56:4-5 For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
Eunuchs were men who had been castrated, especially those employed to guard the women’s living areas. They represent clear historical examples outside of the gender binary in the Bible and are welcomed into the temple and to the community of worship.
Matthew 19:11-12 But [Jesus] said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
The disciples ask Jesus to clarify the explanation of gender in Genesis 1 as it relates to divorce. In answering them, Jesus offers this non-judgmental example of eunuchs that invokes a range of genders. This indicates the law should be flexible enough to allow for this range, instead of being too narrow to recognize its existence.
Galatians 3:27-28 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
The apostle Paul explains that unity in Christ is what’s important, superseding the concept of gender and other identity markers.
Mark 11:17 [Jesus] was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
In this verse, Jesus is referencing Isaiah 56, when eunuchs are welcomed into the community at temple. He prioritizes welcoming all people, regardless of gender.
Acts 8:38-39 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.
1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
When the prophet Samuel was charged by God to look for a new king, David didn’t seem as king-like as the other options presented to Samuel — but he was still the right choice. Once again, we see that God does not share the human preoccupation with external biological features. Our physical bodies do not determine deeper matters of our identity.
Romans 2:29 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.
As with the example of God choosing David because of what was in his heart, here the Bible says that physical alteration (like being circumcised) isn’t what matters to God — it’s what’s in the heart.
Genesis 16:13 So [Hagar] named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi,” for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Hagar changes the name she uses for God, reflecting a change in how she recognizes who God is — not a change in God’s own identity, but an uncovering that leads to a fuller understanding and affirmation of God’s identity. Similarly, someone may choose to change the gender (and the name that goes with it) that they identify with as a reflection of a greater understanding and affirmation of who they are, out of a desire that the world may better know and understand them, too.
Heather BradyHeather Brady is the audience engagement manager at Sojourners.
This is the latest installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Even as an atheist, I’m a big fan of Jesus. I really am. What’s not to like? A tall, gorgeous man with great abs and flowing hair getting his feet washed by prostitutes. And encouraging people to love their neighbors while slaying in a loose kaftan. And Jesus was an immigrant, by the way. Let’s not forget . . .
Jesus would have loved trans people. He changed water into wine; is that not itself an act of transition? And you know how I know Jesus would love trans people? Because he loved people. He loved all people. So, of course, he would love trans people and all queer people. I mean, Jesus was followed around at all times by 12 single hot guys, all of them also sporting kaftans. You do the math. Jesus loved the gays, America. Deal with it.
The only thing our current president has in common with Jesus is that they both owe their career to their dads.
Seriously, just think to imagine what it must feel like to be trans person in America today. Our government has legislated that trans people do not exist. It is trying to erase them completely. Imagine having to stockpile your essential lifesaving medicine because your president might cut off access to it for no other reason than it makes him look strong to his base. If the government is going to declare a whole group of people shouldn’t exist, why can’t it be truly a dangerous group of people like those who take off their socks and shoes on airplanes and then go into the bathroom? Why can’t it be people who use leaf blowers at unearthly hours in the morning? Why can’t it be unkind people? Which brings us back to Jesus. Yes, of course. Jesus just wants all of us to be kind. So, for once, America, I beg you, let’s all really try to give kindness a go. Like my little mom says, “It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.” And I guarantee you any situation you find yourself in will go better with a little kindness.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. (snip)
Trailblazing Illinois Democrat reflects on political career and says party is ‘in a daze’ about how to combat Trump
Carol Moseley Braun speaks after Rahm Emanuel wins Chicago’s mayoral race in February 2011. Photograph: Nam Y Huh/AP
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton … ”
Carol Moseley Braun was riding a lift in the US Capitol building when she heard Dixie, the unofficial anthem of the slave-owning Confederacy during the civil war. “The sound was not very loud, yet it pierced my ears with the intensity of a dog whistle,” Moseley Braun writes in her new memoir, Trailblazer. “Indeed, that is what it was in a sense.”
The first African American woman in the Senate soon realised that “Dixie” was being sung by Jesse Helms, a Republican senator from North Carolina. He looked over his spectacles at Moseley Braun and grinned. Then he told a fellow senator in the lift: “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.”
But clearly, Moseley Braun notes, the senator had never tangled with a Black woman raised on the south side of Chicago. She told him calmly: “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry even if you sang Rock of Ages.”
Moseley Braun was the sole African American in the Senate during her tenure between 1993 and 1999, taking on legislative initiatives that included advocating for farmers, civil rights and domestic violence survivors, and went on to run for president and serve as US ambassador to New Zealand.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian from her home in Chicago, she recalls her history-making spell in office, argues that sexism is tougher to crack than racism and warns that the Democratic party is “walking around in a daze” as it struggles to combat Donald Trump.
As for that incident with Helms, she looks back now and says: “I had been accustomed to what we now call microaggressions, so I just thought he was being a jerk.”
Moseley Braun was born in the late 1940s in the post-war baby boom. Her birth certificate listed her as “white” due to her mother’s light complexion and the hospital’s racial segregation, a detail she later officially corrected. She survived domestic abuse from her father, who could be “a loving advocate one minute, and an absolute monster the next”, and has been guided by her religious faith.
In 1966, at the age of 19, she joined a civil rights protest led by Martin Luther King. She recalls by phone: “He was a powerful personality. You felt drawn into him because of who he was. I had no idea he was being made into a modern saint but I was happy to be there and be supportive.
“When it got violent, they put the women and children close to Dr King in concentric circles and so I was close enough to touch him. I had no idea at the time it was going to be an extraordinary point in my life but it really was.”
Moseley Braun was the first in her family to graduate from college and one of few women and Black students in her law school class, where she met her future husband. In the 1970s she won a longshot election to the Illinois general assembly and became the first African American woman to serve as its assistant majority leader.
But when she planned a historic run for the Senate, Moseley Braun met widespread scepticism. “Have you lost all your mind? Why are you doing this? But it made sense to me at the time and I followed my guiding light. You do things that seem like the right thing to do and, if it make sense to you, you go for it.”
Moseley Braun’s campaign team included a young political consultant called David Axelrod, who would go on to be a chief strategist and senior adviser to Obama. She came from behind to win the Democratic primary, rattling the party establishment, then beat Republican Richard Williamson in the general election.
She was the first Black woman elected to the Senate and only the fourth Black senator in history. When Moseley Braun arrived for her first day at work in January 1993, there was a brutal reminder of how far the US still had to travel: a uniformed guard outside the US Capitol told her, “Ma’am, you can’t go any further,” and gestured towards a side-entrance for visitors.
At the time she did not feel that her trailblazing status conferred a special responsibility, however. “I wish I had. I didn’t. I was going to work. I was going to do what I do and then show up to vote on things and be part of the legislative process. I had been a legislator for a decade before in the state legislature so I didn’t at the time see it as being all that different from what I’d been doing before. I was looking forward to it and it turned out to be all that I expected and more.”
Carol Moseley-Braun watches the delayed launch of the space shuttle Discovery in Chicago in October 1998. Photograph: Michael S Green/AP
But it was not to last. Moseley Braun served only one term before being defeated by Peter Fitzgerald, a young Republican who was heir to a family banking fortune and an arch conservative on issues such as abortion rights. But that did not deter her from running in the Democratic primary election for president in 2004.
“It was terrible,” she recalls. “I couldn’t raise the money to begin with and so I was staying on people’s couches and in airports. It was a hard campaign and the fact it was so physically demanding was a function of the fact that I didn’t have the campaign organisation or the money to do a proper campaign for president.
“I was being derided by any commentator who was like, ‘Look, this girl has lost her mind,’ and so they kind of rolled me off and that made it hard to raise money, hard to get the acceptance in the political class. But I got past that. My ego was not so fragile that that it hurt my feelings to make me stop. I kept plugging away.”
Eventually Moseley Braun dropped out and endorsed Howard Dean four days before the opening contest, the Iowa caucuses. Again, she had been the only Black woman in the field, challenging long-held assumptions of what a commander-in-chief might look like.
“That had been part and parcel of my entire political career. People saying: ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here? Don’t run, you can’t possibly win because you’re not part of the show and the ways won’t open for you because you’re Black and because you’re a woman.’ I ran into that every step of the way in my political career.”
Since then, four Black women have followed in her footsteps to the Senate: Kamala Harris and Laphonza Butler of California, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware.
Moseley Braun says: “I was happy of that because I was determined not to be the last of the Black women in the Senate. The first but not the last. That was a good thing, and so far the progress has been moving forward. But then we got Donald Trump and that trumped everything.”
Harris left the Senate to become the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, then stepped in as Democrats’ presidential nominee after Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election.
Moseley Braun comments: “I thought she did as good a job as she could have. I supported her as much as I knew how to do and I’m sorry she got treated so badly and she lost like she did. You had a lot of sub rosa discussions of race and gender that she should have been prepared for but she wasn’t.”
Trump exploited the “manosphere” of podcasters and influencers and won 55% of men in 2024, up from 50% of men in 2020, according to Pew Research. Moseley Braun believes that, while the country has made strides on race, including the election of Obama as its first Black president in 2008, it still lags on gender.
“I got into trouble for saying this but it’s true: sexism is a harder thing to change than racism. I had travelled fairly extensively and most of the world is accustomed to brown people being in positions of power. But not here in the United States. We haven’t gotten there yet and so that’s something we’ve got to keep working on.”
Does she expect to see a female president in her lifetime? “I certainly hope so. I told my little grandniece that she could be president if she wanted to. She looked at me like I lost my mind. ‘But Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.’”
Still, Trump has not been slow to weaponise race over the past decade, launching his foray into politics with a mix of false conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace and promises to build a border wall and drive out criminal illegal immigrants.
Moseley Braun recalls: “It was racial, cultural, ethnic, et cetera, backlash. He made a big deal out of the immigration issue, which was racism itself and people are still being mistreated on that score.
“They’ve been arresting people for no good reason, just because they look Hispanic. The sad thing about it is that they get to pick and choose who they want to mess with and then they do. It’s too destructive of people’s lives in very negative ways.”
Yet her fellow Democrats have still not found an effective way to counter Trump, she argues. “The Democratic party doesn’t know what to do. It’s walking around in a daze. The sad thing about it is that we do need a more focused and more specific response to lawlessness.”
Five years after the police murder of George Floyd and death of Congressman John Lewis, there are fears that many of the gains of the civil rights movement are being reversed.
Over the past six months Trump has issued executive orders that aim to restrict or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He baselessly blamed DEI for undermining air safety after an army helicopter pilot was involved in a deadly midair collision with a commercial airliner. Meanwhile, Washington DC dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress.
None of it surprises Moseley Braun. “It should have been expected. He basically ran on a platform of: ‘I’m going to be take it back to the 1800s. Enough of this pandering and coddling of Black people.’”
But she has seen enough to take the long view of history. “This is normal. The pendulum swings both ways. We have to put up with that fact and recognise that this is the normal reaction to the progress we’ve made. There’s bound to be some backsliding.
More than 30 years have passed since Moseley Braun, wearing a peach business suit and clutching her Bible, was sworn into the Senate by the vice-president, Dan Quayle. Despite what can seem like baby steps forward and giant leaps back, she has faith that Americans will resist authoritarianism.
“I’m very optimistic, because people value democracy,” he says. “If they get back to the values undergirding our democracy, we’ll be fine. I hope that people don’t lose heart and don’t get so discouraged with what this guy’s doing.
“If they haven’t gotten there already, the people in the heartland will soon recognise this is a blatant power grab that’s all about him and making a fortune for himself and his family and has nothing to do with the common good. That’s what public life is supposed to be about. It’s public service.”
July 22, 1756 The “The Friendly Association for gaining and preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures.” was founded in Philadelphia. It was comprised primarily of Quakers (members of the Society of Friends who wished to pursue peaceful coexistence between the native peoples and the European immigrants to the Pennsylvania region. Quakers and Indians
July 22, 1877 A general strike, part of the railroad strike that had paralyzed the country, was called in St. Louis, where workers briefly seized control of the city. Within a week after it began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the railroad strike reached East St. Louis, Illinois, where 500 members of the St. Louis Workingmen’s Party joined 1,000 railroad workers and residents. Strikers in St. Louis continued operation of non-freight trains themselves, collecting the fares, making it impossible for the railroads to blame the workers for loss of passenger rail service. More about the 1877 general strike
July 22, 1966 Federal Judge Claude Clayton issued an injunction ordering the police of Grenada, Mississippi, to stop interfering with lawful protest, ordering them instead to protect demonstrations, and requiring certain rules to be set down for the conduct of marches. This ruling followed weeks of arrests and beating of demonstrators who had been attempting to integrate all the businesses and other institutions in their town.
July 22, 1987 President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (named for a member of Congress from Connecticut) which provided emergency relief provisions for shelter, food, mobile health care, and transitional housing for homeless Americans. More about the act
July 21, 1878 Publication of “Eight Hours,” written by Reverend Jesse H. Jones (music) and I.G. Blanchard (lyrics), the most popular labor song until “Solidarity Forever” was published by the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in 1915. “Eight hours for work, Eight hours for rest; Eight hours for what we will.” All the lyrics (The eight-hour was an established concept before the song.)
July 21, 1925 The so-called “Monkey Trial” ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with high school teacher John T. Scopes convicted of violating a state law against teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was considered illegal to contradict the Bible’s description of God’s seven-day creation of the world in Genesis. The trial pitted two of America’s leading advocates as the opposing lawyers: William Jennings Bryan, thrice the Democratic presidential candidate (1896, 1900, 1908) and the state’s prosecutor; Clarence Darrow, a lawyer famous for representing the underdog, at the defense table. Referred to as “the trial of the century” even before it began, it was the first trial ever broadcast (on radio). Bryan became ill and died shortly after the trial’s end; the conviction was later overturned by Tennessee’s Supreme Court. The Defendant John T. Scopes The Attorneys: Darrow & Bryan/ The Verdict: Thou Shall Not Think Interest in the trial by the populace and the media (and the heat in the courtroom) prompted Judge John T. Raulston to move the trial outdoors to the courthouse lawn. Bryan himself was called as a witness on the literal interpretation of scripture. Attorney General Thomas Stewart, in response to Darrow’s questioning, asked, “What is the meaning of this harangue?” “To show up fundamentalism,” shouted Mr. Darrow, “to prevent bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the educational system of the United States.” Mr. Bryan sprang to his feet, his face purple, and shook his fist in Darrow’s face: “To protect the word of God from the greatest atheist and agnostic in the United States.” ACLU History: The Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ More about the Monkey Trial
July 21, 1954 Major world powers, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, reached agreement on the terms of a ceasefire for Indochina, ending nearly eight years of war. The war began in 1946 between nationalist forces of the Communist Viet Minh, under leader Ho Chi Minh, and France, the occupying colonial power after the Japanese lost control during World War II. The Geneva conference included France, the United Kingdom, the U.S., the U.S.S.R., People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, Laos, and both Vietnamese governments (North and South). The peace treaty called for independence for Vietnam and a 1956 election to unify the country. However, only France and Ho Chi Minh’s DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North)) signed the document. The United States did not approve of the agreement. Instead, they backed Emperor Boa Dai and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem’s government in South Vietnam and refused to allow the elections, knowing, in President Eisenhower’s words, that “Ho Chi Minh will win.” The result was the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the Vietnam War. The treaty is signed
July 21, 1976 Plaza de Mayo mother A military junta under General Jorge Rafael Videla took power in Argentina on March 24, disbanding parliament and taking over all labor unions. The military kidnapped hundreds of people from two villages of Jujuy province in northern Argentina, thirty of whom never returned from a clandestine detention center. Most of those disappeared worked for the Ledesma sugar refinery. Since 1983, on the Thursday closest to July 21, Madres de Plaza de Mayo (an organization of mothers and wives of the missing) are joined by others, and walk the 7 km (4.3 miles) from Calilegua to San Martin, demanding answers about their loved ones. Madres de Plaza de Mayo is supported by Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Read more
July 19, 1848 The first Women’s Rights Convention in the U.S. was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Its “Declaration of Sentiments” launched the movement of women to be included in the constitution.The Declaration used as a model the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanding that the rights of women as individuals be acknowledged and respected by society. It was signed by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. The impetus came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both of whom had been excluded, along with all the other female American delegates, from the World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) because of their sex. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage. When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot. The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement The Declaration of Sentiments
July 19, 1958 Several black teenagers, members of the local NAACP chapter (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), entered downtown Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store (then the largest drugstore chain in Kansas) and sat down at the lunch counter. Wichita sit-in sculpture The store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy. This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at those sitting in for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the store’s state offices, and was told by the chain’s vice president that “he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc. (statewide), to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color.”
July 19, 1974 Martha Tranquill of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to nine months’ prison time for refusing to pay her federal taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War.
July 19, 1993 President Bill Clinton announced regulations to implement his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying that the armed services should put an end to “witch hunts.” The policy was developed by General Colin Powell, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually summarized as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.”
July 19, 2000 A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter, Dani. The decision stemmed from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group, ALPA HQ.
Scottie's Playtime 