Tag: Peace
Peace & Justice History for 1/15
January 15, 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The son of a Baptist pastor, he followed in his father’s footsteps, then went on to lead the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, and to speak out against the Vietnam war. In 1955 Dr. King organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to end racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence and arrest, but King and his followers persisted. His inspiration, leadership and eloquence helped tens of millions claim the fundamental rights of citizenship, and changed the face of a nation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. biographical sketch Since 1986, the third Monday in January has been designated a federal holiday honoring the greatness and sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A chronology: April 4, 1968 Dr. King was assassinated. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced legislation to create a federal holiday to commemorate Dr. King’s life and work. January, 1973 Illinois became the first state to adopt MLK Day as a state holiday. January, 1983 Rep. Conyers’s law was passed after 15 years January, 1986 The United States first officially observed the federal King Day holiday. January, 1987 Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinded state recognition of MLK Day as his first act in office, setting off a national boycott of the state. January, 1993 Martin Luther King Day holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time. Brief biography of Dr. King The greatest MLK speeches you may have never heard |
| January 15, 1968 The Jeanette Rankin Brigade marched on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam.It was led by 87-year-old Rankin herself, the first U.S. Congresswoman (R-Montana), and the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry to both world wars. After the march’s arrival in Washington, D.C. the New York Radical Women staged a “Burial of Traditional Womanhood.”  Jeanette Rankin More on Jeanette Rankin Documents from the New York Radical Women including Funeral Oration for the Burial of Traditional Womanhood by Kathy Amatniek (who coined “Sisterhood is Powerful”) (a .pdf) |
January 15, 1969 Janet McCloud Janet McCloud, her husband Don and four others from the Tulalip Indian tribe were tried for one of their “fish-ins” on the Nisqually River in Washington state. The Nisqually empties into Puget sound on the Tulalip reservation. Despite century-old treaties granting them half the salmon catch in their ancestral waters, state game officials harassed and arrested Indian fishermen. However, all were found not guilty. In a decision not reached for five years, U.S. District Judge George Boldt ruled in favor of 14 treaty tribes, including the Tulalip, upholding the language of their treaties. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january15
Peace & Justice History for 1/14
| January 14, 1601 Roman Catholic church authorities burned sacred Hebrew books in Rome during the papacy of Clement VIII. He had forbidden Jews from reading the Talmud (a collection of centuries of interpretation of Jewish law). He had confirmed Pope Paul III’s relegation of Jews to a Roman ghetto (a walled-in portion of the city), and their banning from residence in papal-controlled states by Pope Pius V. Other papal enemies of Jewish books included Innocent IV (1243-1254), Clement IV (1256-1268), John XXII (1316-1334), Paul IV (1555-1559), and Pius V (1566-1572). |
| January 14, 1784 The Confederation Congress, meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, ratified the Treaty of Paris with England, ending the Revolutionary War .  Signing the Treaty of Paris By its terms, “His Britannic Majesty” was bound to withdraw his armies without “carrying away any Negroes or other property of American inhabitants.” The treaty was negotiated by John Adams, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin for the colonies, and David Hartley representing the King of England, George III. |
| January 14, 1918 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the selective service law, affirming all criminal charges arising from non-compliance with the draft during World War I. In Arver v. United States, the Court found that a draft does not violate the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude. |
| January 14, 1941 A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, and widely considered de facto chief spokesperson for the African-American working class, called for a march on Washington, demanding racial integration of the military and equal access to defense-industry jobs.   Detail from painting by Betsy G. Reyneau, Asa Philip Randolph “On to Washington, ten thousand black Americans!” Randolph urged. He said in the fight to “stop discrimination in National Defense . . . While conferences have merit, they won’t get desired results by themselves.” |
| January 14, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, which required aliens from World War II enemy countries – Italy, Germany and Japan – to register with the United States Department of Justice. Registered persons received a “Certificate of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality.” This proclamation facilitated the beginning of large-scale internment of Japanese Americans the following month.  |
| January 14, 1963 George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama. In his inaugural address he called for “segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!” “The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others — and uniting in effort — has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small wonder that communism is winning the world. We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station — as we will work with him — to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races — the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, of which I make full practice — for we are all the handiwork of God.” The entire speech: |
January 14, 1966 A march in Atlanta was held to protest the ouster of Julian Bond, an African American, from the Georgia House of Representatives. Members of the General Assembly considered him unfit to serve after he endorsed a statement critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam issued by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). |
| January 14, 1994 An agreement was signed for Russia and the U.S. to assist newly independent Ukraine in ridding itself of nuclear weapons.Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s leader Leonid Kravchuk found his country with the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, including multiple-warhead long-range missiles and bombers, and 3000 tactical (battlefield or short-range) nuclear weapons.  former Ukranian missile silo  Leonid Kravchuk Kravchuk and his government had decided to eliminate all nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory. Ukraine was the first country to go non-nuclear. |
| January 14, 1996 Sixteen protesters were arrested in a winter blockade of the rural Wisconsin site (in the Chequamegon National Forest) of the U.S. Navy’s ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) transmitter, which communicated (one-way) with deeply submerged U.S. submarines. Nearly 400 were arrested in 24 actions opposing ELF between 1991 and 1996. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january14
“That red bird comes all winter”
(Worriedman comments on another blog I read; I found he has a substack, and it’s beautiful. Enjoy!)
That red bird comes all winter /Firing up the landscape /As nothing else can do. by Worriedman
Mary Oliver – Red Bird Read on Substack
The whole poem –
Red Bird
Red bird came all winter
Firing up the landscape
As nothing else could.
Of course I love the sparrows,
Those dun-colored darlings,
So hungry and so many.
I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,
I know he has many children,
Not all of them bold in spirit.
Still, for whatever reason-
Perhaps because the winter is so long
And the sky so black-blue,
Or perhaps because the heart narrows
As often as it opens-
I am grateful
That red bird comes all winter
Firing up the landscape
As nothing else can do.
No way to go wrong with Mary Oliver!
I was really happy to take these photographs today! I filled the feeders yesterday. By this morning the word had spread! Places full of birds. I’m out of bird food now. It’ll be a week before I can get to Costco. I was hoping the Cardinals would show up when I put the food out yesterday! I love the one in the lower left that’s all puffed up.
Huck!
He has space issues.
Paulo! It’s hard to go wrong taking pictures of him. The trick is to put the Pale Blue Eye of Judgement right in the center of the photograph.
Can you feel him looking into your soul?
This is Fenn pretending she didn’t take a bite of my lemon bar while I went to get a fork.
She was guilty. Guilty as Hell. Her breath smelled like lemon curd.
Sam is obviously quite wise. He’s very much against Bitcoin.
I had the greenhouse to myself this weekend. It was nice! It was snowing pretty hard at sunrise on Saturday. Today was mostly clear when the sun came up. A few clouds to shed some color.
That’s all I got room for – thanks for dropping by! (snip)
Snow in Florida
(The title is the link to the poem, to find out more about it and the poet.)
Florida Snow P. Scott Cunningham
The Everglades are burning. I’m fifteen.
I open the window, knock out the screen
and crawl up the tiles to the apex of the roof.
Overhead the black clouds march on hooves
from the sunset to the ocean. It’s rare for the wind
to carry the sugar burns in my direction.
I assume the purpose of the fires is to make
the sugar sweeter, but besides covering the state
in smoke, all they do is make the harvest cheaper.
Some men spent a fortune to drain the river
but the cost was all up front. The stalks get so dry some-
times a piece of lightning starts the fire for them
and what’s left behind can’t help becoming tinder.
I think the land will tire of not being water soon.
Tonight the air is cold and smells like winter.
Ashes fall around me like pieces of the moon.
Copyright © 2025 by P. Scott Cunningham. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 7, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Peace & Justice History for 1/13
| January 13, 1874 The depression of 1873-1877 left 3 million people unemployed. The depression began when railroad owner Jay Cooke was found to have issued millions of dollars of worthless stock. Investors panicked and banks closed. The unbalanced, overextended new economy collapsed. In the winter of 1873, 900 people starved to death, and 3,000 deserted their infants on doorsteps. A public meeting was called in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park to lobby for public works projects to provide jobs; the city’s unemployment rate was approaching 25% at the time.  The Tompkins Park Massacre The night before, the City secretly voided the permit for the gathering. The next morning, mounted police charged into the crowd of 10,000, indiscriminately clubbing adults and children, leaving hundreds of casualties. Police commissioner Abram Duryee commented, “It was the most glorious sight I have ever seen . . . .” The Tompkins Square event was part of a wave of parades of the unemployed and bread riots across the nation. In Chicago, 20,000 people marched. Even under police attack, workers in New York, Omaha, and Cincinnati refused to disperse. |
| January 13, 1958 Linus Pauling presented the “Scientists’s Test Ban Petition” to the United Nations, signed by over 11,000 scientists (including 36 Nobel laureates) from 49 countries. It called for an end to nuclear weapons testing for its detrimental health, especially genetic, and ecological effects, among other reasons. In reaction to his efforts, Pauling was forced to resign as Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) after having served in that role for 22 years. The petition Background – Linus Pauling & The Bomb |
| January 13, 1962 One hundred fifty members of the Scottish Committee of 100 (an anti-nuclear group) began a sit-down protest at the U.S. consulate in Glasgow, Scotland. |
| January 13, 1993 A vigil was held opposing the arrival of a ship bringing nearly two metric tons of plutonium for a pilot fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai, Japan. The specially constructed ship, the Akatsuki Maru, had carried it 25,000 km (15,500 miles) from Cherbourg, France.  Akatsuki Maru  The Voyage Of The Akatsuki Maru by Mario Uribe Many objected to the maritime transport of the highly radioactive material due to the risk of sinking, hijacking and the resultant risk of further nuclear proliferation. The original plan called for air transport over the United States. The Hottest Import To Hit Japan |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january13
Peace & Justice History for 1/12
| January 12, 1954 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced U.S. would go beyond of President Harry Truman’s doctrine of “containing Communism” for a new policy: “. . . there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty landpower of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive [nuclear] retaliatory power.” More on Massive Retaliatory Action (We might check in on this in light of recent Republican rhetoric; some history need not be made nor repeated -A.) |
| January 12, 1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African-American clergymen who wanted to press for civil rights long denied members of their community.  Sixty black ministers from ten states went to Atlanta, Georgia, to set up the coordinating group. They elected King as its first president, with the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy as treasurer.  SCLC history |
| January 12, 1962 Federal workers were guaranteed the the right to join unions and bargain collectively after President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988.“Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without feel of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity.” Eventually, regulation of labor-management relations in the federal government was codified under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.  President Kennedy signing executive order |
| January 12, 1971 Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship anti-Vietnam War organization, was indicted along with five others on charges of conspiring to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and to bomb the tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C. They became known as the Harrisburg Seven.  At the time, Berrigan was serving a six-year sentence at a federal prison in Connecticut with his brother, Daniel, for their destruction of military draft records in Maryland during 1967-68. The Berrigans’ ethic of nonviolence towards others made the charges questionable, and eventually all six were acquitted of the conspiracy charges. Phil Berrigan and Elisabeth McAllister, later his wife, were ultimately convicted and sentenced on just one count of smuggling mail out of a federal penitentiary, the only person in history to be prosecuted on such a charge. More about Philip Berrigan The Harrisburg Seven |
January 12, 1971  “All in the Family” premiered on CBS-TV. The sitcom focused on the major social and political issues of the day such as racism, war, homosexuality and the role of women. In-depth background on the show |
| January 12, 1987 Twenty West German judges were arrested for blockading the U.S. Air Force base at Mutlangen, West Germany where Pershing II nuclear-armed cruise missiles were deployed. Judge Ulf Panzer stated: “Fifty years ago, during the time of Nazi fascism, we judges and prosecutors allegedly’did not know anything.’ By closing our eyes and ears, our hearts and minds, we became a docile instrument of suppression, and many judges committed cruel crimes under the cloak of the law. We have been guilty of complicity. Today we are on the way to becoming guilty again, to being abused again. By our passivity, but also by applying laws, we legitimize terror: nuclear terror.Today we do know…” More on “Judges and Prosecutors for Peace” |
January 12, 1991 The United States Congress voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait. House: 250-183; Senate: 52-47. The military, political and diplomatic situation at the time |
| January 12, 2002 The “Refusenik” movement began when 53 Israeli soldiers signed an ad refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Their letter concluded: • We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. • We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.  • The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them. [The term originally referred to Jews in the Soviet Union who had applied to emigrate but were delayed or refused by the Communist government, in one case for more than 22 years.] Video interview with Yonatan Shapira, refusenik and former captain in the Israeli Air Force |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january12
Peace & Justice History for 1/11
| January 11, 1952 The Peace Pledge Union organized “Operation Gandhi,” which became the first British protest against nuclear weapons. Ten members staged a “sit-down” at the War Office in London. =================================== January 11, 1998 Twenty-five thousand occupied the site of one of 30 dams to be built on the Narmada River in India.  They objected to a World Bank-funded project to build 30 large, 135 medium and 3000 small dams to harness the waters of the Narmada and its tributaries to provide electrical power and irrigation to Gujarat and Rajasthan provinces.Local residents known as Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada movement), organized as they became concerned about their livelihoods, the dams’ environmental impact and a host of other issues. The largest proposed dam, Sardar Sarovar, would submerge 61 villages and displace more than 320,000 people. A Brief Introduction to the Narmada Issue International Rivers project ===================================== January 11, 2002 The first of the detainees/enemy combatants arrived at Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. military base on the southeastern coast of Cuba.  Detainees in a plane on their way to Guantanamo Detailed report of the status of Guantánamo detainees |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january11
Only Words
Letters from An American
January 9, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson Read on Substack
Family members, friends, and political leaders gathered today at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former president Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100. All five living presidents and most of their wives attended: George W. Bush and Laura Bush were there, along with Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Melania Trump, and Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.
Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, were also there, meeting Trump for the first time since January 6, 2021, when Trump tweeted to the rioters attacking the U.S. Capitol that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” redoubling the crowd’s fury and sparking chants of “Hang Mike Pence.”
Pence shook Trump’s hand; his wife stayed seated, looking straight ahead. While Obama, sitting next to Trump, spoke to him, former president Bush refused to acknowledge Trump, instead walking past him and giving a familiar greeting to Obama.
By virtue of living to age 100, Carter survived many of his contemporaries, and some left behind eulogies for him. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, died in 2021 but recorded his memories of working with Carter in the White House from 1977 to 1981. His son Ted Mondale read the eulogy at today’s service.
Mondale recalled how he and Carter had redefined the role of the vice president of the United States, which had fallen into eclipse when President George Washington shut his own vice president, John Adams, out of his central circle of advisors and never recovered. Mondale recalled that Carter had honored his wish to change that pattern by becoming a full partner in the administration. Carter conferred with him regularly, put him in charge of certain central issues, and the two men became close friends.
Mondale also remembered that Carter was farsighted, ignoring short-term political interests to protect the next generations from harm. He tried to put the nation on a path that would find alternatives to fossil fuels, and did his best to advance women’s rights. He pushed for a law to extend the time for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to make women’s equality part of the nation’s fundamental law, and he appointed women to positions in his administration and the federal judiciary. Mondale noted that Carter “appointed five times as many women to the federal bench as all of his predecessors combined.”
Mondale recalled Carter’s “extraordinary years of principled and decent leadership, [and] his courageous commitment to civil rights and human rights.” He recalled that toward the end of their time in the White House, in the years immediately after the tumultuous years of President Richard Nixon, with his covert bombing of Cambodia and cover-up of the Watergate break-in, the two men were summing up their administration. The sentence they came up with was: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”
President Gerald Ford also left behind a eulogy for Carter, who had defeated Ford’s reelection attempt in 1976. Despite their political differences, the two men had become friends in 1981 when they traveled to and from the funeral of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who along with Israel’s Menachem Begin had signed the 1978 Camp David Accords negotiated by Carter’s administration that established a framework for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Over time, Ford and Carter became close friends and agreed to deliver eulogies for each other.
Carter fulfilled his promise in 2006, and today Ford’s son Steve fulfilled his father’s.
Ford spoke to Carter’s deep faith in God when he noted that the former president “pursued brotherhood across boundaries of nationhood, across boundaries of tradition, across boundaries of caste. In America’s urban neighborhoods and in rural villages around the world, he reminded us that Christ had been a carpenter.” “I’m looking forward to our reunion,” Ford concluded. “We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.”
Carter’s grandson Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center’s board of trustees and a former Georgia state senator, emphasized Carter’s integrity: his grandfather’s political convictions reflected his private beliefs. “As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s…he protected more land than any other president in history…. He was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions, and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources. By the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and…craft beer. Basically, all of those years ago, he was the first millennial. And he could make great playlists.”
Jason Carter called his grandfather’s life a “love story, about love for his fellow humans and about living out the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.” He highlighted his grandfather’s work to bring cases of Guinea worm disease from 3.5 million cases in humans every year to fourteen.
Carter noted that “this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated…by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the past forty years [and have] demonstrated their own power to change their world.” When Jimmy Carter “saw a tiny 600-person village that everybody else thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was.” He saw it as “a place to find partnership and power and a place to carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Essentially, he eradicated a disease with love and respect. He waged peace with love and respect. He led this nation with love and respect.”
President Joe Biden, who was the first senator to endorse Carter’s run for president in 1976, also gave a eulogy today. In what appeared to be a reflection on the incoming president in the audience, who for years has mocked Carter as the worst president in history, Biden focused on what he called Carter’s “enduring attribute: character, character, character.” And, Biden said, quoting the famous saying from ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Character…is destiny,” both in our lives and in the life of the nation.
Carter taught him, Biden said, that “strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect. That everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot. Not a guarantee, but just a shot…. [W]e have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor, and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all: the abuse of power.”
Character, Biden said, is not about being perfect, for none of us are perfect. It’s about “asking ourselves: Are we striving to do…the right things?… What are the values that animate our spirit? To operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”
Biden noted that Carter lived a faith that commanded its adherents to love their neighbors. He also noted that such a commandment is hard to follow, and that it requires action. It is, he said, the essence of the Gospel and many other faith traditions, and it is also “found in the very idea of America. Because the very journey of our nation is a walk of sheer faith. To do the work, to be the country we say we are, to be the country we say we want to be: a nation where all are created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”
“We’ve never fully lived up to that idea of America,” Biden said, but thanks to patriots like Jimmy Carter, “[w]e’ve never walked away from it either.”
Carter was “[a] white Southern Baptist who led on civil rights. A decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace. A brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation. A hard-working farmer who championed conservation and clean energy.” He “also established a model post-presidency by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America,” Biden said, showing “us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flow to others.”
“At our best,” Biden said, “we share the better parts of ourselves: joy, solidarity, love, commitment. Not for reward, but in reverence for the incredible gift of life we’ve all been granted. To make every minute of our time here on Earth count.”
“That’s the definition of a good life,” Biden said. It was the life Jimmy Carter lived for 100 years: a “good life of purpose and meaning, of character driven by destiny and filled with the power of faith, hope, and love.”
—
Notes:
https://americanoversight.org/timeline/224-p-m/
https://people.com/karen-pence-refuses-greet-donald-trump-jimmy-carter-funeral-8772193
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-vice-presidency/
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/jimmy-carter-eulogy-walter-mondale-full-text/
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/read-gerald-ford-jimmy-carter-eulogy-full-text-rcna187015
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/30/1161050106/jimmy-carter-biden-relationship
https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-president-biden-eulogy-
Scottie's Playtime 