Tag: Suffrage for Women

Peace & Justice History for 3/3

March 3, 1863
In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a conscription act that created the first draft lottery of American citizens.
The act called for registration of all males between the ages of 20 and 35, and unmarried men up to 45, including aliens with the intention of becoming citizens, by April 1. Exemptions from the draft could be bought for $300 or by finding a substitute draftee. Many objected to this provision describing the war as a “rich man’s war, but poor man’s fight.” Black Americans were also not eligible for the draft because they weren’t considered citizens.

Bounties for New York military “volunteers” during the Civil War
March 3, 1913
The day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration as president, 8000 from the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), representing every state, marched in Washington, D.C. to call for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.

Organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who had been inspired by the parades, pickets and speeches of the British suffragists, the march drew hundreds of thousands of spectators. Though some of the marchers were attacked by onlookers, the march focused attention on the suffrage issue.
[see March 4, 1917 ]
More about Alice Paul 
March 3, 1961 
The village council in the Inupiat Eskimo town of Point Hope, Alaska, formally protested, in a letter to President Kennedy, the proposed chain explosion of three atomic bombs in the nearby above-ground “Project Chariot” tests.
The project entailed using atomic explosions to create a harbor near Point Hope, above the Arctic Circle in northwest Alaska. The excavation never happened due to public opposition and inspired native peoples in Alaska to assert their rights and legitimate land claims.

Edward Teller “Father of the hydrogen bomb” arrives to promote plans for Project Chariot.
Read more about Project Chariot 
March 3, 2003
In the first-ever worldwide theatrical act of dissent, there were at least 1029 stagings of Lysistrata, the 2400-year-old anti-war comedy by Greek playwright Aristophanes. Conceived and organized in just two months by Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, the performances all occurred on the same day to express opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Staged in 59 countries (including Iraq), the bawdy play tells of Athenian and Spartan women who unite to deny their lovers sex in order to stop the 22-year-long Peloponnesian War between the two city-states. Desperate for intimacy, the men finally agree to lay down their swords and see their way to achieving peace through diplomacy.
More about how it happened  

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march3

Peace & Justice History for 1/10

TGIF? ☮

January 10, 1776

Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense”. In it Paine questioned the fundamental legitimacy of the rule of kings, and advocated the doctrine of independence for Americans, and the rights of mankind.
The entire text: 
January 10, 1908 
A prominent young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, was jailed for the first time. He had refused to register as an Asian in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He was released three weeks later.

Gandhi, 1906
Gandhi and how his time in South Africa affected his life 
January 10, 1917
The National Women’s Party began regular picketing of the White House, advocating the right to vote for women.


The first suffrage picket line leaving Congressional Union headquarters to march to the White House gates.
January 10, 1920
The League of Nations formally came into being when its Covenant (part of the Treaty of Versailles), ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.
Though strongly supported by President Woodrow Wilson (who served as Chairman of the Committee that developed the Covenant), the U.S. never joined.
January 10, 1930
In December 1928, Mohandas Gandhi attended a session of the Indian National Congress Party in Calcutta where it called for complete Indian independence from Great Britain. This was to be achieved through peaceful means, specifically complete noncooperation with the governmental apparatus of colonial British rule, known as the Raj.
On this day, Gandhi drafted the declaration, which stated, in part:
“The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. . . . Therefore . . . India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj, or complete independence.”
January 10, 1940
Members of the Brethren, Mennonites and Friends religious groups sent a message to Presidend Franklin Roosevelt requesting alternative service in the event of war.

Civilian Public Service workers Clark and Kriebel in the Duke University’s hospital sterilizer room.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 proclaimed that all persons who “by reason of religious training and belief were conscientiously opposed to all forms of military service, should, if conscripted for service, be assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction.”
More on those who refused to serve in the “good war” 

January 10, 1946
The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened at Westminster Central Hall in London, England, and included 51 nations. On January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.
January 10, 1966
Vernon Dahmer, a businessman and farmer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, offered to pay the poll tax for those who couldn’t afford the fee that was then required before a citizen could vote (and which was made unconstitutional in federal elections by the 24th Amendment).
Vernon Dahmer (foreground)

former home of Vernon Dahmer
Dahmer was known for saying, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” 
The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home and store were firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns. The man responsible for the arson attack, Ku Klux Klan Wizard Sam Bowers, was not tried and convicted until 32 years later.
The poll tax and other means of disenfranchising African Americans 
January 10, 1971
The Peoples’ Peace Treaty between the citizens of the U.S. and Vietnam was endorsed by 130 organizations.
Several million North Americans later signed it.


Peoples’ Peace Treaty organizers
The treaty had been signed in December by leaders from the South Vietnam National Student Union, South Vietnam Liberation Student Union, North Vietnam Student Union, and the (U.S.) National Student Association in Saigon, Hanoi and Paris. It was adopted this day by the New University Conference and Chicago Movement meeting.
Text of the treaty 
The People Make the Peace book
Article from New York Review of Books by the National Student Association with the text of the Treaty
January 10, 1994
Guatemalan government officials and leftist guerilla movement leaders agreed to negotiate to end 36 years of violent conflict.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january10

Peace & Justice History for 11/18:

November 18, 1910
Hundreds of suffragists marched on the House of Commons in London, England, with reinforcements arriving to replace the “fallen” and arrested. Protesting government inaction on the Conciliation Bill, which would have enfranchised about a million women, they were brutally forced back by London police, leading to a public outcry.
Read more
November 18, 1964
 
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover publicly characterized Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as “the most notorious liar in the country.” King replied that Hoover “has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities, and responsibilities of his office.”

The FBI vs. Martin Luther King  Democracy Now
November 18, 1970
President Richard Nixon asked Congress for supplemental appropriations for the Cambodian government of Premier Lon Nol. Nixon requested $155 million in new funds for Cambodia — $85 million of which would be for military assistance, mainly in the form of ammunition.
November 18, 1989

More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, demanding political reform. In the biggest demonstration in the country’s post-war history, protesters held up banners and chanted:
“We want democracy now.”
Read more
November 18, 1993

South Africa’s ruling National Party, and leaders of 20 other parties representing both blacks and whites, approved a new national constitution that provided fundamental rights to blacks and other non-whites, ending the apartheid system. South Africa held its first democratic multi-racial election on April 26, 1994.From the preamble: “WHEREAS there is a need to create a new order in which all South Africans will be entitled to a common South African citizenship in a sovereign and democratic constitutional state in which there is equality between men and women and people of all races so that all citizens shall be able to enjoy and exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms….”

South African citizens in line to vote.
Constitutional history of South Africa  (2 separate pages)
November 18, 2001
In London, 100,000 marched against the U.S. and British attacks against Afghanistan.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november18