Tag: Solidarity

1st Labor Union Formed in the American Colonies, & The Persons Case Is Decided In Canada in Peace & Justice History for No Kings Day:

October 18, 1648

I. Marc Carlson  
The Shoemakers Guild of Boston became the first labor union in the American colonies. 
Labor organization in colonial times 
—————————————————–
October 18, 1929
The Persons Case, a legal milestone in Canada, was decided.
Five women from Alberta, later known as the Famous Five, asked the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on the legal status of women.
Some decisions of Magistrate Emily Murphy had been challenged on the basis that she was not a legal person, and she was a candidate for appointment to the Canadian Senate. After the Supreme Court ruled against them, they appealed to the British Privy Council.The Privy Council found for the women on this day (eight years after the case began and eleven years after women received the federal vote), declaring that women were persons under the law. October 18 has since been celebrated as Persons Day in Canada, and October as Women’s History Month.


Sculpture by Barbara Paterson of the Famous Five in Ottawa, first on Parliament Hill to honor women
The other women activists in the Famous Five: Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby.
The Persons Case 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october18

Thurgood Marshall, Lech Walensa, & Much More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/30

August 30, 1963
A “hotline” telephone link was installed between the Kremlin in Moscow and the White House in Washington, D.C. The intention was to allow direct communication in the event of a crisis between the U.S. president and the leader of the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). It had been agreed to following the Cuban Missile Crisis.
August 30, 1964
The Democratic Party National Convention refused to seat any delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The Credentials Committee chose to seat the all-white delegation from Mississippi’s regular Democratic Party despite overwhelming evidence of the state party’s efforts to disenfranchise Mississippi’s Negro citizens.
A proposed compromise of two non-voting guest delegates from MFDP was rejected by its leaders.
The dispute, the political intrigue, and the long-term effects 
August 30, 1967
The Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first Supreme Court Justice of African-American descent. Marshall had been counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He was appointed to the Court by President Lyndon Johnson after having served as Solicitor General of the U.S. for two years, and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for four.

Thurgood Marshall
Who was Thurgood Marshall? NAACP
August 30, 1971
Ten empty school busses were dynamited in Pontiac, Michigan, eight days before a school integration plan was to begin. Following Federal Judge Damon Keith’s finding that Pontiac’s school board had “intentionally” perpetuated segregation, a plan was developed by the board that included bussing of 8700 children.

The bombers were later identified as leaders and members of the Ku Klux Klan, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned.
August 30, 1980
Striking Polish workers, their numbers approaching 150,000, won a sweeping victory in a battle with the Polish Communist government for the right to independent trade unions and the right to strike. Their lead negotiator was Lech Walesa, head of the union, Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity).

Lech Walesa announces the deal to cheering crowds of shipyard workers.
August 30, 1999
Residents of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia
in a U.N.-sponsored election.
More about the East Timor election 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august30

Peace & Justice History for 1/27

January 27, 1847
Several hundred citizens of Marshall, Michigan, helped former slaves escape to Canada rather than be returned to their “owner” by bounty hunters.
Adam Crosswhite and his family, escaped Kentucky slaves, were tracked to the abolitionist town of Marshall by Francis Troutman and others. Both black and white residents detained the bounty hunters and threatened them with tar and feathers. While Troutman was being charged with assault and fined $100, the Crosswhites fled to Canada.

Back in Kentucky, the slaveowner stirred up intense excitement about “abolitionist mobs” in Michigan.
Since 1832, Michigan had had an active antislavery society. Quakers in Cass County, Laura Haviland in Adrian and former slave Sojourner Truth in Battle Creek were only a few of the many Michiganians who worked on the Underground Railroad—an informal network that assisted escaping slaves.
Southern concern over the Underground Railroad led Congress to pass a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. In 1854 opposition to the extension of slavery prompted Michigan citizens to meet in nearby Jackson to organize the Republican Party.

Laura Haviland with some artifacts of slavery
Sojourner Truth – this should be a link to Ohio History Connection’s entry on Sojourner Truth. That page is no longer available. I don’t see a date or a reason, just that it’s gone. So, here is a link to the National Women’s History Museum’s entry on Sojourner Truth!
-A
January 27, 1945
The Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated the German Nazis’ largest concentration camps: the Auschwitz main camp, the Birkenau death camp and the Monowitz labor camp in southwestern Poland.

Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.
January 27, 1951

The first atomic test was conducted at the Nevada Proving Ground as an Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.
The Proving Ground was created by President Harry Truman on January 11, 1951.

The final nuclear test, Divider, was conducted on September 23, 1992.
There were 99 above ground tests and over 800 below ground tests there.
read more 
January 27, 1969
In Detroit, African-American auto workers, known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement, led a wildcat strike against racist practices and poor working conditions at the Chrysler plant.Since the 1967 Detroit riots, black workers had organized groups in several Detroit auto plants critical of both the auto companies and the United Auto Workers union leadership. These groups combined Black-Power nationalism and workplace militancy, and temporarily shut down more than a dozen inner-city plants.
The most well-known of these groups was the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, or DRUM. They criticized both the seniority system and grievance procedures as racist. Veterans of this movement went on to lead many of the same local unions.

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying A Study in Urban Revolution (pdf)
January 27, 1973
The United States and North Vietnam signed “An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” in Paris and all U.S. troops were to leave Vietnam within 90 days. The United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, and North Vietnam formally sign but because South Vietnam was unwilling to recognize the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government, all references to it were confined to the document signed by North Vietnam and the United States. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft.The Vietnam War resulted in between three and four million Vietnamese deaths with a countless number of Vietnamese casualties. It cost the United States 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. The financial cost to the United States came to something over $150 billion dollars.

Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Thos initial the agreement.
January 27, 1973
The Pentagon announced a “zero draft,” putting the Selective Service System on standby after five years of continuous operation. 1,728,344 men had been drafted in the previous eight years (principally for the war in Vietnam), 25% of all the armed forces.

January 27, 1988

CISPIS demo May, 1981 Wash DC
The Center for Constitutional Rights revealed the FBI had spied on numerous organizations critical of Reagan administration policies in Central America. The principal target was the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). 100 other groups were also investigated, including the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Sisters, the United Auto Workers, the United Steel Workers, and the National Education Association. FBI Director William Sessions said the investigations were an outgrowth of the belief that CISPES was aiding a “terrorist organization.”
CISPES today
How domestic surveillance multiplied under the label or preventing terrorist attacks 
January 27, 1996
France performed its final nuclear weapons test. France exploded the last in a series of six underground nuclear devices in the South Pacific. The tests, ordered by President Jacques Chirac, ended a moratorium imposed by the former president, François Mitterand, but Chirac said France would accept the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january27

Reblog of a reblog; a very strong read-go see!

Thank you Yenn

Peace & Justice History for 1/2

January 2, 1905
The Conference of Industrial Unionists in Chicago formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), frequently known as The Wobblies. The IWW mission was to form “One Big Union” among industrial workers.


IWW home  
======================================= 
January 2, 1920
U.S. Attorney General Alexander Palmer, in what were called the Palmer or Red raids, ordered the arrest and detention without trial of 6,000 Americans, including suspected anarchists, communists, unionists and others considered radicals, including many members of the IWW.

Attorney General Alexander Palmer
This followed a mass arrest of thousands two months earlier based on Palmer’s belief that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government.
A suicide bomber had blown off the front door of the newly appointed Palmer the previous June, one in a series of coordinated attacks that day on judges, politicians, law enforcement officials, and others in eight cities nationwide. Palmer put a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, in charge of investigating the bombings, collecting information on potentially violent anarchists, and coordinating the mass arrests.
More on the Palmer raids
FBI perspective 
==========================================
January 2, 1975
A U.S. Court ruled that John Lennon and his lawyers be given access to Department of Immigration and Naturalization files regarding his deportation case, to determine if the government case was based on his 1968 British drug conviction, or his anti-establishment comments during the years of the Nixon administration.
On October 5, 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the order to deport Lennon, and he was granted permanent residency status.

Watch the trailer for the documentary, “The U.S. v. John Lennon” 
==================================================
January 2, 1996

Khaleda Zia
An estimated 100,000 Bangladeshi women traveled from the countryside to attend a rally in Dacca, the capital, to protest Islamist clerics’ attacks on women’s education and employment.
Khaleda Zia, the country’s first female prime minister, had introduced compulsory free primary education, free education for girls up to class ten, a stipend for the girl students, and food for the education program.
About Khaleda Zia 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january2

Peace & Justice History for 12/7

December 8, 1886

Samuel Gompers, a founder and leader of the American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio. It was an alliance of autonomous unions, each typically made up of workers within a particular craft.
Samuel Gompers, a leader in the Cigarmakers’ union, was a key person in creating the AFL, was elected its first president, and served as such virtually continuously for nearly 40 years.
On Samuel Gompers from the AFL-CIO 

=====================================
December 8, 1941
Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana), the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 1916, cast the only vote (she was among eight women in the Congress at the time) opposing declaration of war against Japan, despite their attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day . She had also voted against the U.S. entering World War I (at the time called the war to end all wars). Rankin served served just two single terms in the House. She spent her early career working for women’s suffrage, later very active in several peace and justice organizations.

Jeannette Rankin in 1940
Jeanette Rankin timeline 
Chronology and oral history transcript of interview of Jeanette Rankin 
=====================================
December 8, 1953
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the United Nations General Assembly, proposing the creation of a new U.N. atomic energy agency which would receive contributions of uranium from the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries “principally concerned,” and would put this material to peaceful use.
The speech, known later as Atoms for Peace, included: “My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.”

========================================
December 8, 1987

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the first treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty eliminated and banned all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers (300-3,400 miles). By May 1991, all intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, launchers, and related support had been physically dismantled.

=========================================
December 8, 1988
On the first anniversary of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) Treaty, twelve Dutch peace activists, calling themselves “INF Ploughshares,” cut through fences to enter the Woensdrecht Air Force base in The Netherlands.
They made their way to cruise missile bunkers where they hammered on the missiles, carrying out the first disarmament action in Holland.
Read more about this action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december8

Peace & Justice History for 12/4

(The third entry makes me giggle.)

December 4, 1833
The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Philadelphia. He and his brother Lewis had been active abolitionists throughout their lives, including providing legal defense for the Africans who mutinied on the slave ship Amistad.

Arthur Tappan
The Anti-Slavery Society produced The Slave’s Friend, a monthly pamphlet of Christian and abolitionist poems, songs, and stories for children. In its pages, young readers were encouraged to collect money for the anti-slavery cause.
December 4, 1916
Five members of a women’s suffrage group unrolled a banner from the visitor’s gallery during President Wilson’s annual message (state of the union) to Congress, asking, “Mr. President, What will you do for woman suffrage?” There was no mention of the issue in his speech.

Wilson and suffrage 
December 4, 1969

President Richard Nixon
President Richard Nixon, Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew and 40 U.S. governors embarked on a fact-finding mission to discover the causes of the generation gap. They viewed films of “simulated acid trips” and listened to hours of “anti-establishment rock music.”

Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew
December 4, 1969

Fred Hampton
Black Panther party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by Chicago Police officers with cooperation from the FBI.
Hampton had founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party at the age of 20. He led in establishing the Breakfast for Children program and a free health clinic on the west side of the City. A main purpose of the Panthers was to resist police violence. One of Hampton’s achievements was to persuade Chicago’s most powerful street gangs to agree on a non-aggression pact. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, however, considered the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” The Panther party headquarters had been raided three times with over 100 members arrested. The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Frank Church (D-Idaho), revealed in 1976 that William O’Neal, Hampton’s bodyguard, was an FBI informant who had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau with an “X” marking the bed where Hampton died. About 100 shots were fired by the police, just one from the building. The survivors, including Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s pregnant girlfriend, were arrested and charged with attempting to murder the police.
“You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution!” – Fred Hampton

Chicago police remove the body of Fred Hampton, slain by police on Chicago’s west side, Dec 4, 1969
Remembrance by someone who worked with Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton
December 4, 1970
Cesar Chavez was sentenced to 20 days in jail for refusing to call off the United Farm Workers’ consumer boycott of Bud Antle, Inc., the country’s second largest lettuce grower. Antle had signed a contract with Teamsters Local 890 though only 5% of the workers voted to ratify it. Nor had there ever been an election for the workers to choose a union to represent them. The boycott had been called to pressure Antle to negotiate with the Farm Workers.
 
Lettuce & Grape boycott poster
UFW chronology  About the boycott  About Cesar Chavez for students

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december4

Peace & Justice History for 12/1

December 1, 1891 
The International Peace Bureau was launched in Rome, Italy, “. . . to coordinate the activities of the various peace societies and promote the concept of peaceful settlement of international disputes.” The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910 for its work, and is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.
December 1, 1948 
Following a brief but bloody civil war in 1948, Costa Rican President Jose Figueres helped draft a constitution that abolished the military and guaranteed free election with universal suffrage (all adult citizens can vote).

Money not spent on a military allowed the country to adequately fund health care and education, yielding one of the highest literacy rates on the continent, ninety-six percent. This is judged to be a factor in the nation’s never having fallen prey to corruption, dictatorships, or the bloodshed that has marred the history of much of the region.
Costa Rica stands apart 
December 1, 1955 
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress active in the local NAACP, was arrested by police in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Mrs. Parks faced a fine for breaking the segregation laws which said blacks had to vacate their seats if there were white passengers left standing. The same bus driver had thrown her off his bus twelve years prior for refusing to enter through the rear door.

Rosa Parks
Mrs. Parks had not been the first to defy the Jim Crow (the system of legalized or de jure segregation) law but her arrest sparked the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. The Montgomery bus company couldn’t survive without the revenue from its black passengers who, for the next year, created car pools and other means to avoid using the city busses.

The bus restored in Henry Ford Museum
The boycott was successful and Mrs. Parks became known as the “mother of the civil rights movement.“
The story of the bus 
Rosa Parks biography 
Arrest record of Rosa Parks 
December 1, 1959 
Representatives of 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity. President Eisenhower said the treaty and its guarantees “constitute a significant advance toward the goal of a peaceful world with justice.”
December 1, 1966
 
Comedian Dick Gregory was convicted in Olympia, Washington for his participation in a Nisqually Native American fishing rights protest. 
 
Interview with Dick Gregory
December 1, 1969 
A lottery was held to determine which young men would be drafted into the armed services for the ongoing Vietnam War. A large glass container held 366 blue plastic balls each marked with a birth date. The drawing determined the order of induction for draft-eligible men between 18 and 26 years old, and was broadcast live nationally. The first draft lottery was held in 1942.

Rep. Alexander Pirnie, R-NY, draws the first capsule in the
draft lottery held on December 1, 1969. The capsule contained the date, September 14.
December 1, 1997 
A silent march of women in Khartoum, Sudan, protesting conscription, was met by a police attack and the arrest of 37 women.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december1

Some News From The Bee

Not Everything Is Clear Cut (a somehow Good News Post)

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