Tag: Political

Busy Day in Peace & Justice History on 5/17, Including Outrage & Rebellion in Seattle, a Wedding in MA, & a SCOTUS Decision Desegregating Public Schools; So Much More-

May 17, 1919
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formally established in Zurich, Switzerland.
May 17, 1954
In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling “separate but equal” public education to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision, bringing an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
Read more and more
 
Above: Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954.
   
George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit (left to right), the successful legal team, celebrate the Brown decision. . .
three years later . . .
May 17, 1957
Martin Luther King, Jr. led 30,00 on a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to mark the third anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in education unconstitutional.
May 17, 1968
A group of anti-war activists who came to be known as the “Catonsville Nine,” including Philip and Daniel Berrigan, broke into the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board center and burned over 600 draft files.

The Catonsville Nine in a picture taken in the police station minutes after the action.
From left to right (standing) George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) David Darst, Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, Tom Melville.  photo Jean Walsh
Read more about the Catonsville Nine 
May 17, 1970
 
100 protesters staged a silent “die-in” at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle to protest shipment through their city of Army nerve gas being transported from Okinawa, Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot in eastern Oregon.
Outrage and Rebellion 
May 17, 1973
In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as Watergate special prosecutor.
Flashback: On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. with the intent to set up wiretaps. One of the suspects, James W. McCord, Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee.
May 17, 2004

Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts, were married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, becoming the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other such couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses.
The day was characterized by much celebration and only a few of the expected protests materialized.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may17

Peace & Justice History for 5/14

May 14, 1941
The first groups of WWII conscientious objectors (COs) were ordered to report to camp at Patapsco, Maryland.  They and others formed the Civilian Public Service (CPS) during the war. They performed various duties, among others being trained as smoke jumpers dealing with forest fires.

World War II COs
Conscientious objection in America ACLU
More on the CPS 
========================================
May 14, 1954
In the “Yankee” nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere above the South Pacific, a single detonation, expected to yield 9.5 megatons of force, actually yielded 13.5 megatons (equivalent to thirteen and a half million tons of TNT), the second largest ever by the U.S. The resultant mushroom cloud extended 25 miles up and spread 100 miles across.

“Yankee”
========================================
May 14, 1970

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs 
Two African-American students were shot to death and 30 others wounded by local police and state troopers and national guardsmen at primarily black Jackson State University in Mississippi. The two were watching demonstrators protesting the invasion of Cambodia and racial discrimination from a nearby dormitory tower.
James EarlGreen
This happened shortly after the shooting of students at Kent State University in Ohio. Two days of riots ensued in Jackson resulting in curfews and sealing off of the city.
Read more about Jackson State   

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may14

Restrained Emotions

Good Evening, Playtime Folks! I’ve been a bit over-busy these past many days and out of town on the days I wasn’t busy. Makes for a difficult time writing. But, I’d like to share some thoughts with you, if you don’t mind. See, I try to have a positive outlook, but I also try to be a realist, and sometimes I just feel like ‘what’s the damn point’. I just try to keep it to myself for a bit, go one with the day, and so I’m often slow with a response to a news item. Other times I realize, despite my unwillingness to open myself to the wrongness of the event, I have to speak on it if for no more reason than to keep myself sane – ish.

I love music. There have been times in my life where all I had was the comfort that a favorite song could bring me. I’ve never been much for making music. I can’t sing, and you truly don’t want me to prove that, but when no one can hear me I try to let out the hurt, the loneliness, to feel the sunshine and the aural hug. To hear the sorrow, the joy, the heart-bared vulnerability and intimacy that music can share and can bring out of us occasionally overwhelms me.

When dummkopf drumpf made himself chair of the Kennedy Center, when he turned an organization dedicated to performances of art and poetry, of creation and majesty, he did more than tarnish, he cheapened it. The Kennedy Honors are meant to magnify great devotion to craft, to exemplify great performances, to be about the best things of us as a species – and now it is cheapened. That has made me sadder than I know how to express.

“We Want Beer” and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/13

May 13, 1888
Brazil, which had imported more African slaves than any other country (nearly 40% of the 11 million Africans shipped to the western hemisphere), abolished slavery.
May 13, 1932
“We Want Beer” marches were held in cities all over America, with 15,000 unionized workers demonstrating in Detroit. Prohibition (the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring “the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”) was repealed the following year.
May 13, 1954
Natives of the Marshall Islands pleaded for an end to atmospheric H-Bomb testing in the south Pacific.
A ground zero forgotten  The Washington Post
May 13, 1958
During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon’s limousine was attacked with rocks and bottles by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. The crowd was angered by U.S. Cold War policies and their effect on Latin America. Five days earlier in the trip, the Vice President had been shoved, stoned, booed, and spat upon by protesters in Peru.
May 13, 1967
250 Chicano students from Los Angeles colleges & universities met to form the United Mexican American Students (UMAS).
May 13, 1968

“We are the power”
Workers joined Paris students’ protest in a one-day general strike calling for the fall of the government and protesting police brutality. The protest by French students included occupation of The Sorbonne; by the end of the month over 10,000,000 French citizens had been involved in school and workplace occupations.
View and read about the great poster art from Paris ‘68 
May 13, 1970
The Movement for a New Congress—to elect peace candidates—was founded at Princeton University.
May 1968, month of intense protest and political organizing around the country 
May 13, 1992
Ecuador’s government granted 148 native communities legal title to more than three million acres (slightly less than the size of the state of Washington) in the Amazon Basin.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may13

Here’s A Useful Tool

from the Center for American Progress (remember them?) This gives us the info by congressional district, including the congresscritter’s names so we know just who to call about our concerns. There are options for pagination or a table.

DOGE Cuts by City, State, and Congressional District

Clay Jones, & Open Windows

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport… by Ann Telnaes

Wow. I won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrative Reporting and Commentating. Read on Substack

Thank you so much for all your comments and notes of congratulations!

I feel like I am late to my own party but I’m traveling overseas to to do presentations about Press Freedom and the time zones are really messing with me. Once I head again to the airport for the next leg of my trip, I’ll post some thoughts and photos for paid subscribers. And yes, I was in my lyft heading to the airport when I got the Pulitzer news.

Meanwhile, here’s what my lovely Norwegian hosts had waiting when I checked into my room.

*** and some more great news! Due to you all, my Substack Open Windows has reached 100,000 subscribers!!

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

New Pope by Clay Jones

America needs a president, not a troll Read on Substack

The news that we had a new Pope hit just as I was wrapping up this cartoon, so I quickly finished and posted it on social media before the name was announced, even before I sent it to my clients. I don’t know what I was thinking, that the cartoon would have an extra ten minutes of shelf life? As Trump said about the Constitution, I don’t know. Is this cartoon still relevant?

Trump posted an AI-created image of him as Pope. He’s really big about fake photos right now. I think Trump was trying to troll Democrats, but what he ended up doing was insulting Catholics. Catholics can take a joke, but they also know an insult when they see one.

Instead of doing presidential things like lowering egg prices, ending either of the two wars he promised would be over by now, or negotiating tariffs and legislation, Trump was trolling. Later, he denied it.

He said he didn’t know how the AI image ended up being tweeted from his or the White House’s official Twitter accounts. What happened? Did he lose control of his presidency (sic), Twitter account, and bladder all on the same day? Of course not. He lost control of his bladder years ago.

Trump also claimed that the AI image didn’t upset Catholics, but it did, with one priest calling him a “clown.” (snip-MORE)

US Complicity In Israel’s Gaza Starvation Is Policy, Not Accident

Trigger warnings for starving and abused kids / people.   Sadly this is what the US government is supporting and keeping other world leaders from stopping.   This was because Biden was an old person who remembered being part of Israels founding and thought they were so important that it excused everything they did.  tRump doesn’t care about the human cost, he wants the value of the land or as much of the share he can get.  This is sickening.  Personal note.  I was so lacking nutrition in my childhood that my childhood doctors were concerned enough to tell my adopting mother if I did not get more food I would never see five feet in height.  I ended up in a child ICU rushed to the hospital by my grandfather and I had clinical death.  Hugs

 

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

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