Tag: Peace

This could be a resource, or you could be or know of a resource

Either way, I thought I’d paste it in here, and whoever needs it, wants it, or knows something about it can do their thing. The title leans in one particular direction, but there is more info within, and I pasted it all here.

Seeking trans-friendly employers who sponsor visas

Nobody should have to move to another country to be themselves.

However, I’ve spoken to multiple people who feel they need to move away from the US in order to avoid harms caused by the new administration’s executive orders that target trans people. Exactly how to do this is sometimes opaque and feels difficult.

If you are actively hiring for positions in a company that is friendly to transgender people, in a country that is safe for transgender people, and you are willing to sponsor visas for people seeking to emigrate for these positions, I would like to hear from you.

If this is you, please enter your details here, and I’ll make them available on a public, open source website soon.

If you’re unsure which countries are considered to be safe for transgender people, and if your country is one, Rainbow Relocation has a reasonable list, and others are available.

To be clear: I want trans people to feel safe here in the United States, and I want them to be here. But I also understand peoples’ need to feel safe in the current moment. I am not urging people to move, but I would like to make life easier for people who want to. I’m making this request in the spirit of assistance, because I’ve already been asked.

I am also probably not the right person to put this together! But I didn’t see anyone else doing it. If you are from a reputable organization that supports transgender safety in a professional way, and you would like to take ownership of this list or collaborate, or if you are already doing something like this and I missed it, please email me at ben@benwerd.com.

I’m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society. Sign up to my newsletter to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.

Peace & Justice History for 1/21

January 21, 1661

King Charles II
The Quaker (Society of Friends) Peace Testimony was presented to King Charles II of England. The testimony begins: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world….”
Why are Quakers pacifists 
January 21, 1954
The first atomic-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, built by Electric Boat Company, was launched at Groton, Connecticut. All previous submarines were powered by batteries which had to be periodically recharged by diesel-powered generators which could only run if the sub surfaced.The nuclear power plant, developed under the leadership of Captain Hyman Rickover, and its ability to produce its own fresh water, allowed Nautilus and its successors to remain underwater and undetectable for weeks rather than hours. It carried only conventional torpedoes.
It has been completely restored and can be seen at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton.

nautilus submarine launch
January 21, 1977
The day after his inauguration President Jimmy Carter declared an unconditional amnesty for draft resisters, both the accused and those who might have faced possible prosecution.
Carter’s pardon 
January 21, 1984
A Women’s Peace Camp was set up near Volkel Airbase in The Netherlands to protest siting of U.S. nuclear weapons there.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january21

Good Advice From Jenny Lawson

Not giving up by Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

Read on Substack

It’s a hard time to be an empath out here, y’all.

I suspect many of you are also feeling too much of the darkness of the world, which can be especially dangerous for those who already stand too close to the edge of the abyss. It can be easy to burn with anger at hypocrisy and hate and chaos, but here is what I have learned…and what I keep telling myself:

You can use that heat as fuel to create change, to promote kindness, to protect yourself and those who are most vulnerable…to keep you warm when the world seems too cold. But, that burning anger can also be dangerous. It can exhaust you. It can pull the oxygen from the room. It can cause you to lash out in fear at those who want to help. The smoke obscures how much good and joy is out there. And those who thrive on turmoil and hate are so happy to see you lost in it…to see your precious energy drained putting out the fires they scatter about just to keep you too busy to live.

Don’t let the world burn you to ashes.

Protecting your fragile heart can be an act of rebellion. Don’t be afraid to love and laugh and find joy and silliness even in the hard times.

Especially in the hard times.

Don’t underestimate the beautiful works of love and kindness and help that you put out into the world. You may do them loudly or you may do them quietly, but they are invaluable in ways you may never see.

Today’s doodle is inspired by one of my favorite Czech artists, Alphonse Mucha, who came from the same land that my father’s family immigrated from.

“NOT. GIVING. UP.”

Most people know Mucha from his flowy art-nouveau posters and cigarette ads but my favorites of his came at the end of his life, when he used his art to explore both the pain and the beauty of life. This one, Woman With a Burning Candle, stays with me:

It was painted during the rise of Nazism…a slavic woman tending to a candle…keeping the light in the dark going, but watching as it slowly burns down…unsure as to what would come next but still focused on the glowing illumination. He painted about enlightenment, love and knowledge in a time when all that seemed to be threatened and was an act of revolution. The day after Prague was stormed by Nazi’s, Mucha was arrested and while in custody he contracted the pneumonia that would kill him. He never lived to see the victory over the darkness, but even in that darkness and uncertainty he created light that we can still see today. He still found beauty and joy. He found a way to celebrate life and enlightenment and humanity in his own way.

He didn’t give up.

I’m not going to either.

I super-crazy love you.

~ Jenny

PS. If you ever want to feel bad about your doodles you should follow one up with a painting by an actual master because…wow. Lesson learned. (snip)

Peace & Justice History for 1/20

ACLU will be needed like few times before now.

January 20, 1920

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded by Roger Baldwin, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, labor leaders Rose Schneiderman and Duncan McDonald, Rabbi Judah Magnes, and others.The ACLU was organized to protect the rights guaranteed in the the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Prior to this the first ten amendments had not been enforced.
The ACLU has paid particular attention to
• First Amendment rights: freedom of speech, association and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion as well as a bar against establishment of a state religion.
• One’s right to equal protection under the law – equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.
• One’s right to due process – fair treatment for citizens by the government whenever the loss of liberty or property is at stake.
• One’s right to privacy – freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into one’s personal and private affairs.
ACLU history   
The ACLU today 
January 20, 1942
Nazi Party and German government officials arrived at what they called the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.”
They developed plans for the coordinated and systematic extermination of all Europe’s Jews during a meeting at a villa near Lake Wannsee in Berlin.
Notes of the meeting recorded by Adolf Eichmann used vague terms such as “transportation to the east” or “evacuation to the east” (nach dem Osten abgeshoben). But at his trial for genocide Eichmann testified of the meeting that “the discussion covered killing, elimination, and annihilation.”

The villa on Lake Wannsee, now a holocaust museum.
More on the Wannsee conference 
January 20, 2001
Tens of thousands lining Pennsylvania Avenue to protest the legitimacy of the inauguration of President George W. Bush were systematically excluded from almost all media coverage of the event. They called attention to the election irregularities in Florida, the dispute over a recount, and the ultimate effective choice of the president by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january20

Peace & Justice History for 1/19

January 19, 1966
The Georgia State House of Representatives refused to seat black state representative Julian Bond despite his election the previous November.
Their stated objection was his endorsement of a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam.
In December 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Bond’s exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was finally sworn in the following month.
Julian Bond
Read more  
January 19, 1991
25,000 marched in Washington, D.C. to protest massive U.S. bombing of Iraq in the first Gulf war, Operation Desert Storm.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january19

“A Brilliant Ray of Light”

Shining Sunbeam

Peace & Justice History for 1/18

An example of actual “cancel culture” within, plus more.

January 18, 1919
The peace conference to negotiate the end of the Great War (now know as World War I) opened in Paris, France. President Woodrow Wilson spent several months in Europe personally negotiating details of what became the Treaty of Versailles with heads of the allied powers or their foreign ministers.
January 18, 1962
The U.S. began spraying herbicides on foliage in Vietnam to eliminate jungle canopy cover for Viet Cong guerrillas (a policy known as “territory denial”).The U.S. ultimately dropped more than 20 million gallons of such defoliants, sparking charges the United States was violating international treaties against using chemical weapons. Many of the herbicides, particularly Agent Orange, manufactured by Dow Chemical, Monsanto and others, were later found to cause birth defects and rare forms of cancer in humans.

Agent Orange: An Ongoing Atrocity 
January 18, 1968
Invited to a Women Doers luncheon at the Johnson White House, Eartha Kitt, singer and actor, spoke out about the effect of the Vietnam War on America’s youth. Lady Bird Johnson had convened 50 whites and Negroes to discuss President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-crime proposals.
Ms. Kitt first asked the President, “what do you do about delinquent parents, those who have to work and are too busy to look after their children?” He said that there was Social Security money for day care, and the group should discuss such issues.
Later, she told the women that young Americans were “angry because their parents are angry . . . because there is a war going on that they don’t understand . . . You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot . . . and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.”

Eartha Kitt and Lady Bird Johnson
Eartha Kitt’s career took a severe downturn after this; for years afterward, Kitt performed almost exclusively overseas, while being investigated by several federal agencies.
“The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth – in a country that says you’re entitled to tell the truth – you get your face slapped and you get put out of work,” Kitt told Essence magazine two decades later.
January 18, 1971
In a televised speech, Senator George S. McGovern (D-South Dakota) began his anti-war campaign for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. He vowed to bring home all U.S. soldiers from Vietnam if elected. McGovern had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, earning the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

George McGovern
“. . . we must have the courage to admit that however sincere our motives, we made a dreadful mistake in trying to settle the affairs of the Vietnamese people with American troops and bombers . . . .
“ But while our problems are great, certain steps can be taken to recover the confidence of the nation.  The greatness of our nation is not confined to the past, but beckons us to the future. 
January 18, 1985
Though a member of the World Court since 1946, the United States walked out during a case. The Court had charged the U.S. was in violation of international law through its support of paramilitary (Contra) activities against the Nicaraguan government. Efforts to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had been a keystone of Pres. Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy from its inception.
Congressman Michael Barnes (D-Maryland) said he was “shocked and saddened that the Reagan Administration had so little confidence in its own policies that it chose not even to defend them [in the World Court].”
The Court still heard Nicaragua’s case and decided against the United States, and ordered it to pay reparations to Nicaragua in June 1986.
January 18, 1996
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the Mexican government reached an agreement in San Andres to recognize and guarantee the constitutional, political, social, cultural, and economic rights of indigenous peoples in Mexico. Treated as second-class citizens since the first colonial entry into their country, the document guaranteed the autonomy and right to self-determination of native communities within the pluricultural Mexican nation.
The Zapatistas took their name from Emilano Zapata who played a major role in the Mexican Revolution early in the 20th century.When they began their revolt in Chiapas state on New Year’s Day of 1994, They wrote:
“We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children.
But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all our brethren to join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!”
The Mexican government, despite their signature on the agreement, refused later to implement it.

More background on the Zapatistas 
January 18, 2003
 
In frigid temperatures, 500,000 converged on Washington, D.C.
There were also joined by many more elsewhere around the world to oppose the threatened U.S. war on Iraq.

Anti-war protesters march past the U.S. Capitol during the start of an anti-war protest that will culminate by a march to the Washington Naval Yard.Egyptian riot police and anti-war demonstrators face off in Cairo, Egypt. Banners at top read, ” Iraq . . . Another war for oil and American supremacy.
“This was the largest U.S. peace demonstration since the Vietnam era. 
 
< Pakistani peace activists hold a rally in Karachi. > Crowds estimated at 80,000 fill the civic center of San Francisco, California

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january18

Friday Links

Last night, it got to be bedtime and I didn’t even realize I’d set nothing up for today, until I got up this morning. Scottie’s posted some important news here already, and I don’t want to knock it off the top, so instead of the posts I thought I’d make, I’m just gonna link ’em, and readers can just read whatever they like and still not miss those posts of Scottie’s.

Peace & Justice History for 1/17

The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism

Explore the Newly-Launched Public Domain Image Archive with 10,000+ Free Historical Images

SCOTUS Takes Up Case Challenging the ACA’s No-Cost Coverage of PrEP

Peace & Justice History for 1/16

January 16, 1966

Joan Baez
Folksinger Joan Baez was sentenced to 10 days in jail for participating in a protest which blocked the entrance to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California. She was part of an action to impede the drafting of young men for the U.S. war in Vietnam.
Joan Baez Press Conference On Vietnam War (1966) 
Read more about Joan Baez 
January 16, 1979
Faced with strikes, violent demonstrations, an army mutiny and clerical opposition to his repressive rule, the Shah of Iran, its hereditary monarch since 1941, was forced to flee the country. He had been installed in a CIA- and British-engineered 1953 coup which overthrew elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. Mossadeq’s government had voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, displacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.The U.S. gave substantial and continuous military and intelligence support to the Shah throughout his regime. Despite having imposed martial law the previous October, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi fled the Peacock Throne for Egypt and, later, the U.S. for medical care. Following the subsequent revolutionary overthrow, an Islamist state under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was established.

The Shah and family
Chronology of Iran in the 20th century:  
More on the Shah 
January 16, 1987
Eight members of the Nanoose Conversion Campaign were acquitted of trespassing on Canadian Department of National Defence property.
The group had picnicked on Winchelsea Island, part of the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Ranges, where both Canadian and U.S. weapons are tested, in the Georgia Strait along the British Columbia coast.
January 16, 1992
The government of El Salvador and rebel leaders signed a pact in Mexico City ending 12 years of civil war that had killed at least 75,000 people.
January 16, 2001
Eight Greenpeace activists were arrested by Gibraltar police as they boarded a damaged British nuclear submarine. The HMS Tireless was considered a radioactivity hazard because of a cracked pipe in its reactor’s cooling system. Those living near Gibraltar Harbour and in Spain were concerned for their safety as the ship had been docked for more than six months awaiting repair.
The problem was serious enough that Great Britain removed twelve comparable subs from service until they could be checked for similar problems. Greenpeace unfurled a banner just before the arrests reading Mares Libres del Peligro Nuclear, or “For a Nuclear-Free Sea.”

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january16

“A Well-Developed Character…”

Reality is Frequency (EM Sonnet) | Abhijit Naskar | Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood