Tag: Peace

For What It’s Worth:

Dueling Substacks about the new Pope, one from Charlotte Clymer, one from The Alt Media (language alert); both inoffensively readable by those who frequent here. Well, the language thing maybe. Snippets, not full pieces.

An American for Pope and a Great Choice by Charlotte Clymer

I’m quite happy. Read on Substack

Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost has just been elected the 267th Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, taking the name Leo XIV.

He was only made a cardinal in 2023 and was serving as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, or overseeing the selection of new bishops. Prior to that was a long pastoral career in Peru. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German.

Goodness gracious, y’all, I could not have been more wrong in my prediction for the new pope. I never thought the cardinal electors would select an American. To say I’m stunned would be an understatement.

However, for the record, I did humor his chances in my prediction:

For example, there’s a (very unlikely) scenario in which someone like Cardinal Robert Prevost is elected: a compromise candidate who’s broadly considered safe and palatable between both ends of the ideological spectrum. But there are other cardinals that fit this and Prevost could be in 20+ years.

Okay, so, here are my initial thoughts:

This is a great choice, and I’m quite happy.

Folks need to understand that any choice for the new pope was going to be nominally anti-LGBTQ in a number of ways. What’s important is compassion and openness toward LGBTQ folks, and I’m optimistic that Pope Leo XIV will continue that direction pursued by Pope Francis. (snip-MORE)

The Resistance Pope by Adam Parkhomenko

Thank God the new pope hates JD Vance too Read on Substack

Does everyone hate JD Vance?

Well does the pope shit in the woods?

We might have that second question wrong. But thanks to twitter, we know the answer to the first one. And while we doubt the new pope really hates Vance, it’s nice to know he at least disagrees with the ass-kissing couch-fuck.

Before he became Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, Robert Prevost was on twitter. And it was there that he wrote “JD Vance is wrong,” posting a story that was a rebuke of Vance’s hateful beliefs. It was on twitter that he suggested he wants to battle climate change and believes that Black lives matter and subtweeted about Trump laughing at Kilmar Garcia. Thanks to twitter, we know the new pope is nothing like the new president. https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:5xeqzwhqcwnczcb62wv3da7o/app.bsky.feed.post/3loohb33sps2i?id=5706215191635626

The new pope is an American. And there’s nothing more American than thinking JD Vance is a douchebag. (snip-MORE, and you can see the bluesky bit on the page)

The American Peace Society, Nguyen Thi Co, and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/8

May 8, 1882
The American Peace Society was established when the peace societies of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania merged to become a national organization. Currently based in Boston, the merged organization was a result of the leadership of William Ladd, an advocate of a “Congress and High Court of Nations” for solving international disputes.

William Ladd, one of the founders of the American Peace Society
American Peace Society 
May 8, 1933
Mohandas Gandhi began a 21-day fast to support political rights for the Dalit (or untouchables) whom he called Harijans, the children of God. He had been jailed by the British to interfere with his movement to end colonial control of India. He was released the day after he began his personal purification because the colonial authorities were afraid he might die in prison.
Gandhi And His Fasts 
May 8, 1962
An estimated 9,000,000 people in Belgium participated in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons.
May 8, 1971
Nguyen Thi Co immolated herself in protest of the Vietnam War, as did Thich Nu Tinh Nhuan later that month.
May 8, 1984
Presbyterian minister Reverend Benjamin Weir was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon, while out walking with his wife, Carol.
Members of Islamic Jihad (later known as Hezbollah), a terrorist group in Lebanon, held Weir for sixteen months—twelve of them in solitary confinement—along with six other Americans who were released later, including journalist Terry Anderson. Before the kidnapping, Weir had spent nearly three decades in Lebanon as a Christian missionary and teacher at the Near East School of Theology. In his various positions in the Presbyterian church since his release, Weir was a voice for reconciliation and tolerance.

Reverend Benjamin Weir

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may8

Peace & Justice History for 5/7

May 7, 1954
The battle at Vietnam’s Dien Bien Phu ended after 55 days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French colonial forces, and forcing their surrender. An agreement for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva, Switzerland.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946.

French prisoners being marched by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954
May 7, 1955
The Reverend George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in his hometown of Belzoni.

Rev George Lee
The county sheriff had initially refused to accept Reverend Lee’s poll tax (a tax collected before someone was allowed to vote, which became unconstitutional in 1964), but he was later allowed to vote after contacting federal authorities. That, and the subsequent registration of 92 other negro citizens he helped register, angered some white residents of the county.
His assailants were never caught, and Reverend Lee is considered the first martyr of the civil rights movement. 
More on Reverend Lee 
May 7, 1984

American veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court settlement with seven chemical companies in a class-action suit relating to use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate jungle cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S. military presence.
Book review about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange 
May 7, 1996
15,000 protesters demonstrated against the import of French nuclear waste to Gorleben, Germany. Water cannons were used to disperse the crowd.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may7

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

Please Share Liberally-

A Mother’s Plea About America’s Accommodation to School Shootings

Inheriting The Wind, and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/5

May 5, 1818
Political philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany. His ideas, laid out in the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and in many other publications, considered the state, class divisions, the nature of industrial capitalism, and culture and religion as oppressive forces.

A young Karl Marx
May 5, 1925
Biology teacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Dayton, Tennessee, high school in violation of state law. Working in a public school, he was prohibited by statute “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

State of Tennessee v. Scopes  ACLU
May 5, 1981
Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison (aka Long Kesh); it was his 66th day without food.He had just been elected by a narrow margin to a seat in the British Parliament for the district of Fermanagh and South Tyrone while still serving the last of a 14-year sentence for possession of firearms.
The government introduced and Parliament quickly enacted the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevented prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in UK elections.

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” – Bobby Sands
May 5, 1983
Over one million Sicilians, a fifth of the Italian island’s population, signed a petition against the deployment of more than 100 U.S. cruise missiles at the Comiso Air Base.
May 5, 1991
The last U.S. cruise missile left Greenham Common Air Base in England, the site of a decade of women’s anti-nuclear protests. The encampment persisted for nearly another decade until it was returned to public access.
Protesters leave Greenham Common for the last time
Peace link 
May 5, 2000
Reformers allied with President Mohammed Khatami swept run-off elections, winning control of the 290-seat Majlis of Iran (parliament) from hard-liners for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Results were subject to certification by the Guardian Council which reversed the results in eleven of the original February contests.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may5

Family

Marlon Wayans Says He Went From “Denial to Complete Acceptance” of His Trans Son Kai

In a revealing podcast interview, the comedian said the process “took me a week.”

By Abby Monteil

Marlon Wayans is opening up about his 24-year-old trans son Kai, and the importance of parenting with “complete acceptance.”

The comedian appeared alongside his brother Damon Wayans on the April 30 episode of the IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson podcast. While discussing parenting advice, Marlon said that Kai’s transition “taught me what real, unconditional love was.”

“When they went through the transition, I actually went through the transition,” he said. “I went from denial to complete acceptance, and it took me a week to get there.”

Wayans joked that although he believes “only God can judge… If that’s a mistake and we get to heaven and God don’t let my child in, I’m going to shave a beard and sneak them in through the back.”

“I’m going to love my baby… I’m a father, and I’m always going to defend them,” he continued. “I’m always going to protect them. I’m always going to respect them. And there’s nothing anybody could ever tell me.”

The White Chicks star added that when it comes to the public’s reaction to him supporting Kai, he could care less about losing fans in the process.

“I lost people that are small-minded, small-hearted, and self-loathing,” he said. “So, goodbye… For every one I lose, I gain 150 more.”

This isn’t the first time that Wayans has used his platform to support Kai and other trans youth. Back in February, the actor defended his son after Soulja Boy called him a transphobic slur while publicly feuding with Wayans.

“You know you can get cancelled for transphobic slander like this,” he tweeted at the time. “Fortunately for you that you don’t have a career. Apparently, You BEEN cancelled for the last 17 years. Crank that was 2007. We waiting.”

Wayans previously opened up about supporting Kai during a September 2024 appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, explaining that after his son came out, “I went through the five stages of grief to get to the beautiful, magical place called acceptance.”

“I learned that my family, my brothers, my sisters, have prepared me to be a rock in our family,” he said. “[Kai is] the same child they was before, they’ve just got a beard now. Okay. Same baby.”

4 Dead in OH; When The Sense Of The Congress Was Nuclear Freeze; and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/4

May 4, 1961
A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, DC for New Orleans in a first challenge to racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals; it was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). 
The Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery before traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Read more about the freedom riders  
50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 
May 4, 1970
Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-war protesters
at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others,
one permanently disabled.

The previous day, President Nixon had announced a widening of the Vietnam War with bombing in neighboring Cambodia.

There were major campus protests around the country with students occupying university buildings to organize and to discuss the war and other issues.
Read more about that day at Kent State with pictures 
May 4, 1983
A “sense of the Congress” resolution, intended to urge a halt to all testing of nuclear weapons, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives (287-149). The support for a nuclear freeze, ending all American and Soviet nuclear weapons testing, was widespread. In ballot resolutions in 25 states, the freeze had passed in all but one, losing in Arizona by just two points.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may4

Clay Jones on POTUS 5/2

MAGA Grouch by Clay Jones

Trump stinks Read on Substack

After seeing this cartoon, my friend John Kovalic wrote, “Sesame Street is brought to you today by the letter ‘F’ and the number 47.”

Late last night (Thursday), Donald Trump issued another illegal executive order, with this one ordering the board of directors for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS” because Trump claims they’re woke and liberally biased.

The problem with liberal bias is that facts have a liberal bias. If everything you say is a lie and everything you do is corrupt, illegal, sick, depraved, inhumane, racist, and fucked up, then factual reporting is not your friend.

Trump can’t do anything official against the free press, but he can put his weight on them, which seems to be working on The Washington Post and CBS News, but he can meddle with government programs…to an extent.

The order says, “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens. The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

The good news is, the government will continue to fund Trump’s golf games.

PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger called it a “blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night.” The middle of the night is when authoritarian governments tend to do their best work, like sending stormtroopers to break down your door, drag every member of your family out, and then put them in a train cattle car.

CPB issued a statement saying, “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”

I bet Trump’s thinking that’s the kind of biased reporting that is costing PBS and NPR their funding. He’s probably also thinking, “Respect my authority!”

The CPB noted that the statute Congress passed to create it “expressly forbade any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.”

Congress said that such funds “may be used at the discretion of the recipient” for producing or acquiring programs to put on the air.

Trump has already asked Congress to rescind funds already approved for public broadcasting. Fascists always murder a free press.

CPB is already suing the regime over Trump’s executive order seeking to fire three of its five board members.

Trump recently attacked PBS and NPR on his platform ShitSocial, saying, “REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT ‘MONSTERS’ THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!”

Does Big Bird look like a radical left monster?

Conservatives have been howling for years that NPR and PBS are liberally biased while the progressive group Fair (Fairness in Accuracy in Reporting) once issued a report blasting PBS and NPR for being too conservative.

That’s the thing with the media. It’s never conservative enough for conservatives or liberal enough for liberals.

We got that complaint all the time when I was at The Free Lance-Star. Our page at that time was conservative, but we ran liberal columns and my pinko and unpatriotic cartoons. My editors sought balance, but there was still more conservative content than liberal, yet the conservatives still howled.

Each week, Politico publishes what they call the “Cartoon Carousel,” which is a collection of cartoons from the past week (USA Today and The Washington Post both used to do this, but they stopped). It too seeks balance and publishes an equal number of conservative and liberal cartoons, which means half the cartoons suck. I support diversity in news content, but I hate when it’s chosen over quality.

Now, one of those who complain irrationally about balance is in the White House, and he’ll abuse his power to do things the Constitution doesn’t give him the power to do.

Trump’s first 100 days have been a total disaster. Defunding public broadcasting is the kind of messed up crap we can expect for the next 100 days and every day after that until we get this orange ogre out of the White House.

Creative note: My brain was slow-moving today, and I have about ten subjects written down to choose from. Sometimes it’s harder to choose your subject than it is to write the cartoon. When you have a long list of subjects, it’s nice when you can combine two of them, which I did today. Oscar came to me around noon. I need to move on to those other subjects, but while writing this blog, I got a great idea featuring Bert and Ernie.

Music note: Have you ever noticed that the Sesame Street theme is the same song as Sunshine Day by The Brady Bunch?

Drawn in 30 seconds: From TikTok, and with music. (snip-MORE)

© 2025 Clay Jones

1st Broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Fire Hoses in Birmingham, and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/3

May 3, 1808
Civilians were executed by Napoleonic forces putting down a rebellion by the citizens of Madrid, Spain on Principe Pio Hill. The event was memorialized in the painting by Francisco de Goya, “The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid.” Aspects of the painting inspired the design of the peace symbol by Gerald Holtom in 1958.
May 3, 1886

At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a rally was being held because of a strike at the McCormick Harvester plant, just two days after an enormous May Day turnout. Though the mass meeting was peaceful, a force of 176 police officers arrived, demanding that the meeting disperse. Someone, unknown to this day, then threw a bomb at the police.
In their confusion, the police began firing their weapons in the dark, killing at least three in the crowd and wounding many more. Seven police died (only one by the bomb), the rest probably by police fire.
Read more 
May 3, 1963
In Birmingham, Alabama, Public Safety Commissioner and recently failed mayoral candidate Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor used fire hoses and police dogs on children near the 16th Street Baptist Church to keep them from marching out of the “Negro section” of town.

With no room left to jail them (after arresting nearly 1000 the day before), Connor brought firefighters out and ordered them to turn hoses on the children. Most ran away, but one group refused to budge.
The firefighters turned more hoses on them, powerful enough to break bones. The force of the water rolled the protesters down the street. In addition, Connor had mobilized K-9 (police dog) forces who attacked protesters trying to re-enter the church.
Pictures of the confrontation between the children and the police were televised across the nation.
Read more about the Birmingham Campaign
May 3, 1968
More than 100 black students took over a building at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. They were demanding attention to their advocacy for inclusion of African-American history, literature and art in the curriculum. Their efforts led to the establishment of an African-American studies department which now offers a doctoral program.
How it happened 
May 3, 1971
The Nixon administration ordered the arrest of nearly 13,000 anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe who had begun four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C. on the first. They aimed to shut down the nation’s capital by disrupting morning rush-hour traffic and other forms of nonviolent direct action, skirmishing with metropolitan police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the capital.
The slogan of the Mayday tribe: “If the government won’t stop the [Vietnam] war, we’ll stop the government.“
Read more 
May 3, 1971
The first broadcast of National Public Radio’s evening news and public affairs program, “All Things Considered,” was aired on about 90 public radio affiliates around the country. The main story was the disruptive anti-Vietnam protests in Washington.It is now the fourth most listened-to radio program
in the U.S.

More about that first program 
May 3, 1980
Sixty thousand marched on the Pentagon to urge the end of U.S. military involvement in El Salvador.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may3