Tag: Peace

Peace & Justice History for 10/11:

It’s National Coming Out Day!

October 11, 1987

More than half a million people flooded Washington, D.C., demanding civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans, now celebrated each year as National Coming Out Day.
Many of the marchers objected to the government’s response to the AIDS crisis, as well as the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick.


The AIDS quilt, first displayed in 1987 in Washington, DC
The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was first displayed there, bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on gay communities, a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels each a tribute to the life of one who had been lost in the pandemic.
Brief history of National Coming Out Day
https://www.advocate.com/exclusives/2019/10/11/coming-out-day-brief-history

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october11

Peace & Justice History for 10/10:

October 10, 1699
The Spanish issued a royal decree which stated that every African-American who came to St. Augustine, Florida, and adopted Catholicism would be free and protected from the English.
October 10, 1963
The Limited Test Ban Treaty—banning nuclear tests in the oceans, in the atmosphere, and in outer space—went into effect. The nuclear powers of the time—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—had signed the treaty earlier in the year.
In 1957, Nobel Prize-winner (Chemistry) Linus Pauling drafted the Scientists’ Bomb-Test Appeal with two colleagues, Barry Commoner and Ted Condon, eventually gaining the support of 11,000 scientists from 49 countries for an end to the testing of nuclear weapons. These included Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Albert Schweitzer.

Linus Pauling
Pauling then took the resolution to Dag Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, and sent copies to both President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev. The final treaty had many similarities to Pauling’s draft. It went into effect the same day as the announcement of Pauling’s second Nobel Prize, this time for Peace.
October 10, 1967
The Outer Space Treaty (Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) demilitarizing outer space went into force.It sought to avoid “a new form of colonial competition” as in the Antarctic Treaty, and the possible damage that self-seeking exploitation might cause. Discussions on banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit had begun among the major powers ten years earlier.
1949 painting by Frank Tinsley of the infamous “Military Space Platform” proposed by then Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the December 1948 military budget.

Read more 
October 10, 1986
Elliott Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (in closed executive session) that he did not know that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a White House employee in the Reagan administration, was directing illegal arms sales to Iran and diverting the proceeds to assist the Nicaraguan contras.
Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to withholding information on the Iran-contra affair during that congressional testimony, but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.    
 
Elliott Abrams

Presidents George W. Bush & George H.W. Bush

Oliver North 
Read more about the pardons  
October 10, 1987
Thirty thousand Germans demonstrated against construction of a large-scale nuclear reprocessing installation at Wackersdorf in mostly rural northern Bavaria.
October 10, 2002 
The House voted 296-133 to pass the “Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” giving President George W. Bush broad authority to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support.
 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october10

Peace & Justice History for 10/9:

October 9, 1919
The International Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded in Bilthoven, the Netherlands. Its members have since been active in promoting programs and activities for reconciliation, peace-building, active nonviolence, and conflict resolution. 

More about FOR history 
October 9, 1990
The U.S. began making reparations payments to survivors and families of Japanese-Americans taken from their homes put into internment (or concentration) camps during World War II.The payments were a result of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed by President Reagan. Popularly known as the Japanese American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged that “a grave injustice was done” and mandated Congress to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in reparations.

Some of the housing in the concentration camps was in former horse stalls.

The first nine redress payments were made at a Washington, D.C. ceremony. 107-year-old Reverend Mamoru Eto of Los Angeles was the first to receive his check.
A chronology of internment during WWII 
Note: In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan, all of whom were Caucasian.
October 9, 1991
Women In Black in Belgrade (Zene u Crnom) began regular weekly silent vigils in Republic Square. They stood to protest the nationalist violence that had erupted in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. They encouraged men who refused to serve in the military, and engaged in many educational efforts.
They were initially encouraged by “Women Visiting Difficult Places,” a group of Italian women who encouraged women on both “sides” in conflict-ridden countries to communicate. They in turn were inspired by Israeli Jewish women who organized in 1988 during the first intifada to protest their country’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and held vigils in as many as forty locations, later joined by Israeli Palestinians.
Women In Black • New York City
October 9, 2007
The Imagine Peace Tower, a work conceived by Yoko Ono and dedicated to John Lennon’s memory, was dedicated on the island of Videy, within sight of Reykjavik, Iceland. The LennonOno Grant for Peace will be awarded there each year.
Iceland was chosen because Iceland has no standing army and it is a world leader on the environment.
The installation bears the inscription, Imagine Peace, in 24 languages.

more photos
The Tower is lit the first week of Spring, on October 9 and December 8 (the dates of Lennon’s birth and death) and on New Year’s Eve. The electricity comes solely from the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant.

The Imagine Peace Tower   live feed

Note: A few peace buttons from peacebuttons.info were buried in a time capsule at the base of the Imagine Peace Tower. < get some for yourself and friends

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october9

Peace & Justice History for 10/8:

October 8, 1945
President Harry S. Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Great Britain and Canada.
October 8, 1982
The Polish Parliament overwhelmingly approved a law banning Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the independent trade union that had captured the imagination and allegiance of nearly 10 million Poles.
Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa, 1982
The law abolished all existing labor organizations, including Solidarity, whose 15 months of existence brought hope to people in Poland and around the world but drew the anger of the Soviet and other Eastern-bloc (Warsaw Pact) governments.
The parliament created a new set of unions with severely restricted rights.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october8

Peace & Justice History for 10/7:

An especially sad item within.

October 7, 1989
Tens of thousands (estimates ranged from 40,000 to 150,000) from all over the country marched on Washington, lobbied Congress and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp to provide affordable housing for the homeless. Some of the signs read, “Build Houses, Not Bombs.”
Kemp signed a letter committing the George H.W. Bush administration to several steps to help the homeless, including setting aside about 5000 government-owned single-family houses for them.

===============

October 7, 1998

Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. His death helped awaken the nation to the persecution of homosexuals and their victimization as objects of hate crimes.
A play about the incident, and later an HBO movie, “The Laramie Project,” has been performed all over the country.
Watch a preview 
MatthewShepard.org 
Matthew’s Place 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october7

A year of war accelerates ‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite

Brain drain could undermine the country’s hi-tech economy as liberal families conclude social contract has been broken

This summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage release and ceasefire deal.

Nir Oz was the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.

If the hostages were not brought back, the basic social contract that underpinned Israeli society would unravel, the 77-year-old professor of medicine warned – with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.

He cited an accelerating “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals as a worrying sign that some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.

Ciechanover is a long-term critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and joined protests against his government before the war. But concern about this trend is not limited to political opponents of the Israeli leader. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel, joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to warn that Israel faces an existential threat.

In a paper calling for a new political settlement, they warned that under a business-as-usual scenario “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will not be able to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the coming decades”. (snip)

The problem precedes the 7 October attacks and the war that followed, as demographic and political shifts have prompted some secular, liberal Israelis to question their future in a state increasingly dominated by religious traditionalists.

Noam is a father of three with businesses that include a PR consultancy and a cannabis pharmacy. He expected that his 40s would be a time of “less doing, more enjoying”, after decades of hard work.

Instead, he and his wife spend evenings poring over school options in European countries as they weigh up where to start a new life. The war increased the urgency of the search, but it has been a decision born out of longstanding concerns.

“The main reason we are leaving is that we are seeking a better future for our children. Even if peace can be brokered tomorrow, we still can’t see a future we want to be a part of,” Noam said. “The demographics speak for themselves.”

(snip-MORE- not tl;dr)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/06/as-war-and-religion-rages-israels-secular-elite-contemplate-a-silent-departure

Peace & Justice History for 10/6

(Peace History’s links were misdirected for a few days, but the links are back now.)

October 6, 1683
Thirteen Mennonite families from the German town of Krefeld arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Concord. Having endured religious warfare in Europe, the Mennonites were pacifists, similar to the Society of Friends (often known as Quakers) who opposed all forms of violence. The first Germans in North America, they established Germantown which still exists as part of Philadelphia.
Modern Mennonite peace activism: 
October 6, 1955
Poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem “Howl” for the first time at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later.
“Howl and Other Poems” was printed in England, but its second edition was seized by customs officials as it entered the U.S. City Lights, a San Francisco bookstore, published the book itself to avoid customs problems, and storeowner (and poet) Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried for obscenity, but defended by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Working on Howl in San Francisco,
circa June, 1956
Following testimony from nine literary experts on the merits of the book, Ferlinghetti was found not guilty.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside City Lights 
More about City Lights 
Read Howl 
Read more about Allen Ginsberg 
 
October 6, 1976
An airliner, Cubana Airlines Flight 455, exploded in midair, killing 73 mostly young passengers including the entire Cuban youth fencing team. The plot was engineered by Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban former CIA agent, who was based in Venezuela at the time.
The Posada Carriles file from the National Security Archive 
October 6, 1978
346 protestors were arrested at the site of the proposed Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant in Inola, Oklahoma.
In 1973 Public Service of Oklahoma announced plans to build the Black Fox plant about 15 miles from Tulsa.
It was also near Carrie Barefoot Dickerson’s family farm. She became concerned as a nurse and a citizen about the potential health hazards.
Carrie Barefoot Dickerson
Through her group, Citizens’ Action for Safe Energy (CASE), and the consistent opposition of informed and persistent allies, the project was canceled in 1982. There are no nuclear plants in the state of Oklahoma, and no nuclear plant has been built in the U.S. since then.
Carrie Dickerson Foundation 
October 6, 1979

Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant protest – late 1970s
Over 1400 were arrested at Seabrook, New Hampshire, the construction site of two new nuclear power plants. The occupation was organized by the Clamshell Alliance.
Clamshell history 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october6

Peace & Justice History for 10/3:

October 3, 1967
Thich Nu Tri, a Buddhist nun, immolated herself in protest of the repression of the Government of (South) Vietnam. It had denied participation in recent elections of peace and neutralist elements. Buddhist leaders thus boycotted the elections, and the Ngo Dinh Diem regime received only 35% of the vote. Within four weeks, three more nuns followed Thich Nu Tri’s example (among them Thich Nu Hue and Thich Nu Thuong), all in an effort to bring peace to the their country, split in two and caught up in a war with their countrymen in the North, and the escalating presence of U.S. troops.
October 3, 1967
Woody Guthrie, 1912-1967
Folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie died in New York City at the age of 55. He had spent the last decade of his life in the hospital, suffering from Huntington’s chorea. Woody called his songs “people’s songs,” filled with stinging honesty, humor and wit, exhibiting Woody’s fervent belief in social, political, and spiritual justice.

Extensive bio with photos and Woody’s writing
October 3, 1972
The SALT I treaties, which placed the first limits on nuclear arsenals, went into effect. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks succeeded when U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev agreed to limit anti-ballistic missile systems, and to freeze the number of intercontinental and submarine-based missile launchers (1,710 for the United States, some of which had multiple warheads, and 2,347 for the Soviet Union).
October 3, 1981
Irish republicans at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.
The first to die was Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader who initiated the protest on March 1—the fifth anniversary of the British policy of “criminalisation” of Irish political prisoners.

Prior to 1976, Irish political prisoners were incarcerated under “Special Category Status,” which granted them a number of privileges that other criminal inmates did not enjoy.
Despite Sands’s election (while an inmate) as member of Parliament from Fermanagh and South Tyrone after the first month of his hunger strike, and his death from starvation a month later, the government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not give in, and nine more Irish republicans perished before the strike was called off.
The dead included Kieran Doherty, who had been elected to Parliament in the Irish Republic during the strike. In the aftermath, the British government quietly conceded to some of the strikers’ demands, such as the rights to wear civilian clothing, to associate with each other, to receive mail and visits, and not to be penalized for refusing prison work.
October 3, 1994
The United States and South Africa signed a missile non-proliferation agreement committing South Africa to abide by the The Missile Technology Control Regime, and to end its missile program and its space-launch vehicle program.
More about MTCR 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october3

Peace & Justice History for 9/30

September 30, 1962
Hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members, white students and others, tried to keep a black student, James Meredith, 29, from attending classes at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They were supported by the governor, Ross Barnett, who had explicitly resisted the order of the Federal Circuit Court.In spite of the efforts to block his court-ordered registration, a deal to allow Meredith to register was reached between U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Governor Barnett. Meredith was secretly escorted onto campus; deputy U.S. marshals, border patrolmen and federal prison guards were stationed on and around the campus to protect him. Those standing guard were assaulted throughout the night with guns, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and bottles.


James Meredith being escorted to his classes
by U.S.marshals and the military.
Tear gas was used to try and control the crowd. Federal troops arrived, bringing the total to 12,000 (President Kennedy had activated soldiers and national guardsmen totaling 30,000), and the mob finally retreated. In the end, two were dead, 160 U.S. Marshals were injured (28 shot), 200 others injured, and 300 arrested.
Integrating Ole Miss  
JFK Library
September 30, 2003
The FBI began a criminal investigation into whether White House officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, IV. In early 2002 the CIA had sent Wilson to look into the claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire yellow-cake uranium from the African country of Niger. Ambassador Wilson found nothing to support the claim, and some of the documents cited as evidence for the claim were clearly shown to be forgeries.
President Bush, nonetheless, repeated the claim in his January, 2003, State of the Union address as part of his argument for war in Iraq.
Wilson wrote a column in the New York Times in July, 2003, entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”
 
 Columnist Robert Novak a few days later published Plame’s identity following conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Plame, who previously had worked on counter-proliferation, was in charge of operations for the CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, formed the summer before 9/11.
September 30, 2004
The U.S. Navy announce the shutdown of Project ELF.
read more

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september30

Peace & Justice History for 9/29:

September 29, 1923
Great Britain began to govern the formerly Turkish province of Palestine under a League of Nations mandate to create a Jewish national home.
The British Mandate For Palestine established at the San Remo Conference, 1920
(Note from A: I searched this link; the one Peace History had was no longer present on the site.)
September 29, 1943
Six conscientious objectors, imprisoned at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for refusing to serve in World War II, began a hunger strike against censorship of mail and reading material by federal prison authorities.
September 29, 1983
The municipal council of Woensdrecht, a southern Dutch town, voted against cooperating in the possible siting of 48 U.S. nuclear-tipped cruise missiles at the nearby air base.
The council voted Tuesday by 9 to 4 not to cooperate with the national government, and to stop any activities that might lead to the missiles being sited at the base.
September 29, 2002

A London crowd – estimated between 200,000 and 500,000 – protested British and U.S. plans for a “preemptive” (that is, without provocation) invasion of Iraq.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september29