Tag: VVAW

Many Items in Peace & Justice History for 6/1

Also, I want to mention that I’ve been publishing here at Scottie’s Playtime since 7/10 or 11, and normally, have posted one of these each day. There hasn’t been much change or updating for a while; the newsletter and history website is Carl Bunin’s labor of love, depending upon the sales of buttons, pencils, and other merch. I’ve been reading these since 2001, and have noted it feels as if we here may have seen some of these before, and definitely will have by next month. So: should I continue after July 10th, or has everyone seen these, and enough is enough for a while? I don’t mind either way, but I don’t want to use up space and give people repeats. Just let me know in comments over the next few days, OK? And thanks for visiting Scottie’s Playtime!

June 1, 1845

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree, but went by the name she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life) set out from New York City on a journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women’s rights. She had been a slave with several owners but was legally free when slavery was abolished in New York state.
Read more about Sojourner Truth (There’s a very cool yet somewhat incendiary comment there on this page; go see it.)
June 1, 1921
America’s worst race massacre, begun the day before over the threat of a lynching, culminated in the complete destruction of the African-American neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa leaving nearly 10,000 homeless.
The ruins of Tulsa Oklahoma’s Greenwood District following the assault by the white community.
Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921  
read more 
Meet The Last Surviving Witness To The Tulsa Race Riot Of 1921 
June 1, 1932
Gay rights organizer Henry Gerber published an article in Modern Thinker magazine attacking the view that homosexuality is a neurosis.
In 1924, Henry Gerber, a postal worker in Chicago, started the Society for Human Rights, America’s first known gay rights organization.

“The Society for Human Rights is formed to promote and protect the interests of people who are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the public prejudices against them.”

After having created and distributed a newsletter called “Friendship and Freedom,” Gerber was arrested and held for 3 days without a warrant or being charged with any infractions. Upon release he lost his job for “conduct unbecoming a postal worker.”
Following the last of his three trials, in which the charges were ultimately dismissed, Gerber moved to new York City and re-enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving another 17 years. He lived until 1972, passing away at the the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C., living long enough to see the Stonewall Rebellion [see June 28, 1969], the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. 
More on Henry Gerber 
June 1, 1942

On the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
The following month 13,000 French Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.
June 1, 1950
Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), then the only woman in the Senate, and just the second in U.S. history, denounced Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and his “red-baiting” tactics on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in a speech called “A Declaration of Conscience.”

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—the right to criticize;
the right to hold unpopular beliefs;
the right to protest;
the right of independent thought.”
Text of the Senator Smith’s Declaration 
June 1, 1963
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and readings from the Bible in public schools violated the establishment clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution in School Dist. Of Abington Township v. Schempp. The Court reasoned that the daily practice was unconstitutional because a public institution was conducting a religious exercise and “that public funds, though small in amount, are being used to promote” a particular religion. “It is not the amount of public funds expended; as this case illustrates, it is the use to which public funds are put . . . .”
The decision 
June 1, 1967
The Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) was founded in New York City after six Vietnam vets marched together in a peace demonstration. The group was organized to give voice to the growing opposition to the escalating war in Indochina among returning servicemen and women.


VVAW, through open discussion of soldiers’ first-hand experiences, revealed the truth about the nature of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
VVAW demonstrating against Iraq war 2004
The VVAW today 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june1

Peace & Justice History for 4/19

April 19, 1911
More than 6,000 Grand Rapids, Michigan, furniture workers—Germans, Dutch, Lithuanians, and Poles—put down their tools and struck 59 factories in what became known as the Great Furniture Strike.
For four months they campaigned and picketed for higher pay, shorter hours, and an end to the piecework pay system that was common in the plants of America’s “Furniture City.” Although the strike ended after four months without a resolution, Gordon Olson, Grand Rapids city historian emeritus, said once employees returned to work, most owners did increase pay and reduce hours.


The Spirit of Solidarity — a $1.3 million granite sculpture, plaza and fountain — sits on the land of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum on the banks of the Grand River near the Indian mound.
The Strike’s history from the APWU 
On the 100th anniversary of the strike
April 19, 1943
On the eve of Passover, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began when Nazi forces attempted to clear out the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, to send them to concentration camps. The Germans were met by unexpected gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters. The destruction of the ghetto had been ordered in February by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler:
“An overall plan for the razing of the ghetto is to be submitted to me. In any case we must achieve the disappearance from sight of the living-space for 500,000 sub-humans (Untermenschen) that has existed up to now, but could never be suitable for Germans, and reduce the size of this city of millions—Warsaw—which has always been a center of corruption and revolt.”

 
These two women, soon to be executed, were members of the Jewish resistance.
” …Jews and Jewesses shot from two pistols at the same time…
The Jewesses carried loaded pistols in their clothing with the safety catches off…
At the last moment, they would pull hand grenades out…and throw them at the soldiers….”
 
Captured Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Learn more about The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (it’s the search page for the national Holocaust Museum.)
April 19, 1971

As a prelude to a massive anti-war protest, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. The generally peaceful protest was called Dewey Canyon III in honor of the operation of the same name conducted in Laos.
They lobbied their congressmen, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery, and staged mock “search-and-destroy” missions.

Read more about this action 
April 19, 1997
Two Swedish Plowshares peace activists, Cecelia Redner, a priest in the Church of Sweden, and Marija Fischer, a student, entered the Bufors Arms factory in Karlskoga, Sweden, planted an apple tree and attempted to disarm a naval cannon being exported to Indonesia. Cecelia was charged with attempt to commit malicious damage and Marija with assisting in what was called the Choose Life Disarmament Action. Both were also charged with violating a law which protects facilities “important to society.”
Both women were convicted, arguing over repeated interruptions by the judge, that, in Redner’s words, “When my country is arming a dictator I am not allowed to be passive and obedient, since it would make me guilty to the crime of genocide in East Timor. I know what is going on and I cannot only blame the Indonesian dictatorship or my own government.” Fischer added, “We tried to prevent a crime, and that is an obligation according to our law.” Redner was sentenced to fines and three years of correctional education. Fischer was sentenced to fines and two years’ suspended sentence.
Both the prosecutor and defendants appealed the case.
No jail sentences were imposed.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april19

Peace & Justice History for 12/27

December 27, 1914
The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), an inter-religious peace group, was founded in Cambridge, England.

“The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is an international spiritually based movement composed of people who commit themselves to active nonviolence as a way of life and as a means of transformation – personal, social, economic and political.”

“Your goal is, in my opinion, the only reasonable one and to make it prevail is of vital importance.”
–Albert Einstein, in a letter to the FOR
Read more 
December 27, 1971
Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged a peace protest at historic Betsy Ross House, Philadelphia.
December 27, 2002
North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and said it would restart the Yongbyon plutonium Plant to meet the fuel needs of its nuclear power reactor. The plant had been shut down and sealed by the U.N. in 1994 in exchange for shipments of fuel oil. When it was discovered that the North Korean had been pursuing a uranium-based weapons program, the U.S. and Japan, South Korea and the European Union suspended the fuel shipments.
December 27, 2002
1500 people gathered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the protest the Israeli military occupation of land beyond the 1948 borders of the country. With the slogans “End the Occupation” and “No to Racism,” and dressed mostly in black, they used a variety of means – drumming, singing, art installations, giving away olives and olive oil – to express their frustration and anger over the ongoing occupation.
Alternative Ten commandments at demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel
The Coalition of Women for Peace also showed a movie, Jenin, Jenin, which had been banned for public showing, in defiance of police orders to stop the projector. Shown on a large outdoor screen, it was a narrative about the actions of the Israeli army the previous Spring in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december27

Peace & Justice History for 12/26

December 26, 1862
38 members of the Santee Sioux tribe were hanged in a public mass execution in Minnesota. 300 members of the band had been convicted of participating the the Minnesota Uprising and ordered to hang. However, all sentences except the 38 had been commuted by President Abraham Lincoln.
For decades white settlers had been encroaching on Santee Sioux territory, and they had been victimized by corrupt federal Indian agents on the reservations.In July agents and contractors had withheld food when their demands for kickbacks had been refused. The Indians eventually struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking some hostages. In two battles with the U.S. Army, they killed or wounded dozens of soldiers, but ultimately lost and were put on trial.

America’s only legal mass execution
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December 26, 1966
The first Kwanzaa was celebrated in Los Angeles, California. It was conceived and organized in the wake of the Watts riots by Dr. Maulana (Ron) Karenga, a professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. Kwanzaa is a non-religious African-American holiday focusing on family, community, and culture.The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” which means “first fruits” in Swahili. The celebrations are expressed through song, dance, drumming, storytelling, poetry and the lighting of candles in a Kinara, all followed by a large traditional meal. The holiday is observed for seven days, each representing a different principle:

a Kwanzaa Kinara
• Umoja (oo-MO-jah) Unity
• Kujichagulia (koo-gee-cha-goo-LEE-yah) Self-Determination
• Ujima (oo-GEE-mah) Collective Work and Responsibility
• Ujamaa (oo-JAH-mah) Cooperative economics
• Nia (NEE-yah) Purpose
• Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity
• Imani (ee-MAH-nee) Faith

Ron Karenga lighting the Kinara
History, Principles, and Symbols of Kwanzaa 
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December 26, 1971

Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War “liberated” the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.
more on this action 
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December 26, 1992

photo: Simran Sachdev Belgrade, 7.2009
Women In Black began campaign against rape during war, Belgrade, Serbia.
WIB website 
Women in Black is a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and
other forms of violence.
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December 26, 1999
Alfonso Portillo Cabrera scored a resounding victory (nearly 70% of the vote in the second round) in Guatemala’s first peacetime presidential elections following a 36-year civil war.

Alfonso Portillo Cabrera after his election
Some perspective 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december26