Tag: Peace

Peace & Justice History for 9/25:

Jazz for Peace!

September 25, 1789
The first U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and sent them on to the states for ratification.
See the actual document and learn more 
September 25, 1957
Nine African-American children, protected by 300 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets, entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.The troops were there to escort the children past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National Guard) thatArkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan.
 
After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.
The troops remained for the entire school term.

Watch a video about the Little Rock 9 
September 25, 1961
Herbert Lee, a farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H. Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner’s jury the same day as the killing. Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and was himself murdered two years later.

Herbert Lee

More about Herbert Lee 
September 25, 2002
Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz musicians in concert for an international audience.
Jazz for Peace continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit organizations.

Rick DellaRatta

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september25

Peace & Justice History for 9/24:

September 24, 1968

10,000 draft files were destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists with homemade napalm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Milwaukee 14 home 
Watch a video of the event 
September 24, 1969
The Chicago 8 trial opened in Chicago. It was the prosecution of eight anti-war activists charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two lesser-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.

The Chicago 8 minus Bobby Seale
Chicago 8 background

Bobby Seale, after repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself, was bound and gagged in the courtroom and his trial was severed from the rest on November 5th. The group then became known as the Chicago 7.
About Bobby Seale   
September 24, 1976
Ian Smith, leader of the whites-only government of Rhodesia, a former British colony, agreed to introduce black majority rule to the country within two years. He was under pressure from the United States through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and from British Prime Minister James Callaghan.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september24

Peace & Justice History for 9/23:

September 23, 1949
President Harry Truman announced that the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb, an implosive plutonium weapon, the previous month (it had happened on August 29). “We have evidence,” the White House statement said, “that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.”
September 23, 1979

200,000 attended an anti-nuclear rally in New York City’s Battery Park. It was the largest political protest of the late ’70s in the U.S., six months after the partial meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Two days earlier the ‘No Nukes’ concert, also known as the “Muse (Musicians United for Safe Energy) concert,” was held in Madison Square Garden, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne and others.
More about the concert, the record and the film 
September 23, 1982
Dr. Jane Goodall created Roots & Shoots Day of Peace in 1982 in honor of U.N. International Day of Peace; each year, Roots & Shoots Day of Peace is observed in late September. Roots & Shoots groups around the world fly Giant Peace Dove puppets to celebrate Roots & Shoots Day of Peace for its symbolic meaning. They also plan and implement peace project initiatives to help make the world a better place for animals, the environment and the human community.
Hear Jane Goodall on World Peace Day 
Dr. Goodall was appointed a Messenger of Peace in 2002 by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. People selected as Messengers of Peace are widely recognized for their achievements in music, literature, sports and the arts.To commemorate her appointment, Roots & Shoots members at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point first conceived of and created the Giant Peace Dove puppets. Since then, Roots & Shoots groups have flown doves in over 40 countries around the world.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september23

Peace & Justice History for 9/22:

September 22, 1966
Eight hundred Puerto Rican men pledged in Lares to refuse U.S. Vietnam draft. They saw compliance as “part of the colonial subjugation of our country.”
September 22, 1980
The Solidarity union under leadership of Lech Walesa was allowed to organize by the Communist-led Polish government. The previous month the group had occupied the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk and had inspired a national general strike.
September 22, 1985
The first Farm Aid concert, organized principally by Willie Nelson, was held with more than 50 musicians raising $9 million for debt-ridden U.S. farmers. 
Farm Aid home 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september22

Astronomy Picture of the Day

First, peace to all, and make it a good International Day of Peace. Next, the Autumnal/Spring Equinox is tomorrow morning at 7:44 AM USCDT/whatever time it is where you are. Here’s a beautifully peaceful photo from NASA’s Photo of the Day:

2024 September 21

Sunrise Shadows in the Sky
Image Credit & Copyright: Emili Vilamala

Explanation: The defining astronomical moment of this September’s equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through planet Earth’s sky. That marks the beginning of fall for our fair planet in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere, when day and night are nearly equal around the globe. Of course, if you celebrate the astronomical change of seasons by watching a sunrise you can also look for crepuscular rays. Outlined by shadows cast by clouds, crepuscular rays can have a dramatic appearance in the twilight sky during any sunrise (or sunset). Due to perspective, the parallel cloud shadows will seem to point back to the rising Sun and a place due east on your horizon on the equinox date. But in this spectacular sunrise skyscape captured in early June, the parallel shadows and crepuscular rays appear to converge toward an eastern horizon’s more northerly sunrise. The well-composed photo places the rising Sun just behind the bell tower of a church in the town of Vic, province of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Tomorrow’s picture: Equinox in the City

Peace & Justice History for 9/21; also Have A Wonderfully Peaceful International Day of Peace today!

September 21, 1963
The War Resisters League organized the first American anti-Vietnam War demonstration in New York City. The League, founded in 1923, was the first peace group to call for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and played a key role throughout the war, organizing rallies, the burning of draft cards, civil disobedience at induction centers, and assisting resisters.
History of WRL
 
WRL home 
========================
September 21st (since 1982)

The International Day of Peace was established by United Nations resolution in 1981 and first celebrated in 1982 (then as the 3rd tuesday of the month).
Events are planned all over the world to promote peace and make it more visible.
About Peace Day and plans around the world 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september21

Peace & Justice History for 9/20:

September 20, 1830
The National Negro Convention, a group of 38 free black Americans from eight states, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the express purpose of abolishing slavery and improving the social status of African Americans. They elected Richard Allen president and agreed to boycott slave-produced goods and encourage free-produce organizations. One of the most active would be the Colored Female Free Produce Society, which urged the boycott of all slave-produced goods.
Read more
 Richard Allen
 
National Negro Convention leaders 1879
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September 20, 1850
The District of Columbia abolished the slave trade though slavery itself was not outlawed. Washington had been home to the largest slave market in the country. This was an element of the Compromise of 1850.
The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act 
================
September 20, 1906
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in Chicago’s meat-packing plants. Reaction from readers was intense, including President Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term “muckrakers” to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and other writers who exposed corruption in government and business [what we’d now call investigative reporting].

“The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society …
if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing
but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
More on the muckrakers 
================
September 20, 1932
Rabindranath Tagore urges resistance to practice of “untouchability,” British India.
================
September 20, 1946
The first Cannes Film Festival began in that French Riviera resort town. It had originally been planned for 1939 but Hitler’s invasion of Poland that year, and later France, delayed plans until after the war.
The first Grand Prix and the International Peace Prize were awarded to “The Last Chance” by Leopold Lindtberg of Switzerland, a movie (shot on location) about how three Allied soldiers, including two escaped prisoners of war, lead a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied northern Italy across the Alps to safety in nominally neutral Switzerland. Cannes festival history 
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September 20, 1997
3,000 protesters helped to rip up the railroad tracks leading from Krummel nuclear power station to the main Hamburg-Berlin line. The previous year two doctors had sued for closure of the plant due to the increased incidence of leukemia among the population around the plant.
In January, a train carrying nuclear waste derailed near the reactor at Krummel.
At the time, Germany’s 19 nuclear reactors generated 34 per cent of the country’s electricity; in 2005 it was down to 26 percent.
================
September 20, 1999
A multinational peacekeeping force landed in East Timor in an attempt to restore law and order to the territory. Indonesian militias had killed thousands following the overwhelming vote by the East Timorese for independence from Jakarta on September 4.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september20

Jimmy Carter receives Holbrooke award from Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation

He is about to turn 100 years old.

FILE - Former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School class at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga., Aug. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Credit: AP Nation & World

By HILLEL ITALIE – Associated Press Updated 1 hour ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Less than two weeks before his 100th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter is receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, which has set aside its longstanding rule that the winner accept the honor in person.

The Ohio-based foundation announced Thursday that Carter was this year’s winner of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, named for the late diplomat. In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights advocacy and for brokering such agreements as the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.

Carter, who turns 100 on Oct. 1, is in hospice care in Plains, Georgia. His grandson, Jason Carter, will accept the prize on his behalf during a November ceremony that will honor the former president’s peace efforts and his authorship of more than 30 books — what the foundation calls “the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.”

“For the past 17 years, one of the standing requirements to receive the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award was a guaranty that the recipient would appear in person in Dayton, OH for an on-stage interview and an awards ceremony,” Nicholas A. Raines, executive director of the Dayton foundation, said in a statement. “This year we have decided to waive that requirement and present the award in absentia, to President Jimmy Carter.”

Jason Carter said in a statement that two of his grandfather’s “most enduring interests have been a devotion to literature and a near-constant pursuit of a peaceful resolution to conflict.”

“It is gratifying to have the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation choose to honor my grandfather with the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award for a lifetime of work melding two of his loves — literature and peace,” Jason Carter added.

On Thursday, the Foundation also announced that Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song” won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and Victor Luckerson’s “Built from the Fire” won for nonfiction.

Lynch and Luckerson each will receive $10,000. Fiction runner-up, “The Postcard” author Anne Berest, and nonfiction finalist, “Red Memory” author Tania Branigan, each get $5,000.

FILE - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, left, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin clasp hands on the North lawn of the White House as they completed signing of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in Washington on March, 26, 1979. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File)

Credit: AP

https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/nation-world/jimmy-carter-receives-holbrooke-award-from-dayton-literary-peace-prize-foundation/7KOA5Q63WJFU7MKBBW3KB5XEDE/

Peace & Justice History for 9/18:

September 18, 1850

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing slave owners to reclaim slaves who escaped into another state, and levying harsh penalties on those who would interfere with the apprehension of runaway slaves.

As part of the Compromise of 1850, it offered federal officers a fee for each captured slave and denied the slaves the right to a jury trial.
about the Fugitive Slave Act 
The Compromise of 1850 
September 18, 1895
African-American educator (founder of the Tuskegee Institute) and leader (born a slave) Booker T. Washington spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Although the organizers of the exposition worried that “public sentiment was not prepared for such an advanced step,” they decided that inviting a black speaker would impress Northern visitors with the evidence of racial progress in the South. Washington, in his “Atlanta Compromise” address, soothed his listeners’ concerns about “uppity” blacks by claiming that his race would content itself with living “by the productions of our hands.”
Text of the speech 
September 18, 1961
Earl Bertrand Russell and Lady Edith Russell were released from prison after serving one week of their two-month sentences.
They had been part of a Hiroshima Day vigil in Hyde Park, and were accused of inciting civil disobedience.

Bertrand and Edith Russell after being released from prison.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september18

Peace & Justice History for 9/17:

September 17, 1924
Mohandas Gandhi began a purifying 21-day fast for Hindu-Muslim tolerance and unity following communal riots in Kohat on India’s northwest border in what is now Pakistan. A Hindu, Gandhi spent his fast at the home of Mahomed Ali.
September 17, 1961
Bertrand Russell at anti nuclear weapons March, 1961
1,314 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested during a sit-down in London’s Trafalgar Square by 12,000 (authorities had denied a permit). Philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell, aged 89, and 32 others were already in jail, having been arrested the previous month during a demonstration on Hiroshima Day in Hyde Park.
Russell’s Committee of 100 had organized the sit-down and other actions to resist nuclear weapons, challenging the authorities to ‘fill the jails’, with the intention of causing prison overload and large-scale disorder. On arrest members would go limp so as to create maximum disruption without conflict.
History gallery: The Committee of 100 
September 17, 1988
Haiti’s military government was overthrown by a group of non-commissioned officers who installed Lieutenant General Prosper Avril as the new head of state. The leaders of the coup were outraged by the attack the previous Sunday on St. Jean Bosco Church during which 13 parishioners were killed and nearly 80 injured. Fr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a persistent critic of the military regime, had been celebrating mass when the attack occurred.
From the report of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued on September 7, 1988:

“ The Commission has come to the conclusion that the current military government in Haiti has perpetuated itself in power as a result of violence instigated by elements of the Haitian Armed forces resulting in the massacre of Haitian voters on November 29, 1987, the manipulation of the elections held on January 17, 1988, and the ouster of President Leslie Manigat on June 20, 1988.”

The full report 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september17