peace history november

November

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

November 1, 1872

Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop. They were part
of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register
in her home town of Rochester.
Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, "demanded that we register them as voters."

The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: "If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!"
The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: "Young men," he said, "do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?" Registering the women, the registrars were advised, "would put the entire onus of the affair on them." The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register.

In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: "Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon ... if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

November 1, 1929

Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.

November 1, 1954

A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830.

read more movie The Battle of Algiers

French troops clash with Algerian civilians

November 1, 1954

The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion ever in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout.

November 1, 1961

50,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests.

The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to founding of Women Strike for Peace.

<“Women's Strike for Peace" storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.

Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP>

November 1, 1970

Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.

November 1, 1983

A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz of intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980.

November 1, 1990

As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of federal law.

November 1, 2003

The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Yitzhak was right, and his path just," said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. "His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue."

November 2, 1920

Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs received nearly one million votes for President though he was serving a prison sentence at the time for his criticism of World War I and his encouraging resistance to the draft.

November 2, 1983

A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be observed on the third Monday of January) was signed by Pres. Ronald Reagan.
King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 King organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience of the laws that enforced racial segregation.

MLK Day by Coretta Scott King

the history of Martin Luther King Day

(pdf)

November 3, 1883

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but … as wards subject to a guardian … as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.”

more on Chief Crow Dog

Chief Crow Dog, 1898

November 3, 1917

Bolsheviks took control of Moscow and the Kremlin as the Russian revolution succeeded.

November 3, 1969

President Nixon announced the "Vietnamization" program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.”

The last U.S. troops didn’t return home until 1975.

November 3, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the "Trail of Broken Treaties," a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

November 3, 1979

Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a "Death to the Klan" rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The labor organizers had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present.
Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.

biographies of the Greensboro Five

November 3, 1985

The Rainbow Warrior bombed

Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand.

November 4, 1956

Two hundred thousand Russian troops attacked an anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Russian government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive. Soldiers and Hungarian National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought along with the Russians. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came.

Hungarian 'freedom fighters' temporarily forced

back Soviet tanks and troops

Soviet tanks in Budapest.

November 4, 1984

The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%) in the country's first elections since the revolution five years previous, defeating six other parties.
The high turnout election (83%) was monitored for fairness by 400 independent election observers.

November 4, 1995

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv's Kings Square in Israel.

Yitzhak Rabin

The rally in Kings of Israel Square

November 5, 1872

Susan B. Anthony and a few other women in Rochester, New York, voted in the presidential election, all of them for the first time. She wrote later that day to her fellow Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “If only now—all the women suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the existing constitution—supremacy of national law over state law—what strides we might make....”

The Trial of Susan B. Anthony for Illegal Voting

Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

November 5, 1949

The Peace Pledge Union in Great Britain set up the Non-Violence Commission to study nonviolent resistance and how the ideas of Gandhi could be used to reach the Union’s goals of getting U.S. troops out of Britain and to end production of nuclear weapons there.

November 5, 1969

	Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panther Party, was sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of contempt of court during the federal Chicago Eight trial in Chicago. He was charged as he insisted on his right to choose his own lawyer, or to represent himself. After the Chicago Eight verdict, the contempt charges were withdrawn.
Bobby Seale

November 5, 1982

36 were arrested in a demonstration at Honeywell, Minnesota's largest defense contractor. The "Honeywell Project," a local campaign against the arms maker, dogged the company for over three decades, at times with success.

Protests at Alliant continue today.

It continues today, targeting Alliant Technologies, the arms-making branch of Honeywell that was spun off in the 1990s.
Alliant is the manufacturer for the Pentagon of artillery shells made with depleted uranium (DU or U-238, a by-product of uranium enrichment) which have been used extensively in Iraq and Kosovo. The Defense Department denies any health effects from use of DU (though army manuals warn soldiers of its toxicity) and contests accusations of its role in Gulf War Syndrome.

an interview with one of the organizers

November 5, 1987

Govan Mbeki

Govan Mbeki, an early leader of the African National Congress, was released from Robben Island prison after serving twenty-four years (for treason) alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and many others who fought apartheid. His son, Thabo Mbeki, was elected to succeed Mandela, the first president elected following the end of apartheid.

read more about Govan Mbeki

November 6, 1913

Mohandas K. Gandhi led 2,500 ethnic Indian miners, women and others from South Africa’s Natal province across its border with Transvaal in the Great March. This was a violation of the pass laws restricting the movement of all non-whites in the country.
Originally granted the rights of British subjects, Indians’ rights were steadily eroded beginning in the 1890s with the denial of the right to own property.

Shortly before the march, a court in Capetown had invalidated all Muslim and Hindu marriages.
Gandhi and many others were arrested and jailed after refusing to pay a fine.

Mohandas Gandhi, 1915

The Great March to Transvaal

read about the early resistance in South Africa

November 6, 1962

The 17th session of the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 1761 condemning apartheid in South Africa and called on all member states to terminate diplomatic, economic and military relations with the country.

The racial policies of the country were declared a threat to international peace and security.
Apartheid was the racially separatist regime under which black and, to a somewhat lesser extent, so-called colored South Africans, were without political, civil or economic rights. All political power and wealth were held by the white population, approximately 15% of the country. "Apartheid" is the Afrikaans word for "apartness." (Afrikaans is the language of the Boers, or [white] Afrikaners.)

The day-to-day reality of apartheid

November 6, 1986

Although an American plane with supplies for the Nicaraguan Contra insurgents had been shot down the previous month, and a Lebanese newspaper reported that the U.S. government had arranged for the sale of weapons to Iran, President Ronald Ronald Reagan denied involvement (“... a story that came out of the Middle East, and that to us has no foundation....”) in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Both the aid to the contras and the weapons sale to Iran were violations of U.S. law.

November 7, 1837

Abolitionist, clergyman and editor Elijah P. Lovejoy, 34, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, as he defended his newly delivered printing press.

Elijah P. Lovejoy

He had lost two other presses to mob attacks, but refused to surrender this one, which had been contributed by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. For this he was shot five times in the fatal attack. Lovejoy had moved 20 miles to Alton from St. Louis where, after denouncing the lynching and burning of a black man, a mob tore down his office.

Warehouse with Lovejoy's press set ablaze by mob

"We must stand by the Constitution and laws, or all is gone."

Elijah Lovejoy, The Observer

November 7, 1916

Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Missoula, Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. American women nationwide would not even be able to vote for another four years.

November 7, 1919

Hundreds presumed to be members of the Union of Russian Workers were arrested in New York and other cities across the country on that second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, and Intelligence Division chief, John Edgar Hoover, used the Sedition and Espionage Acts to thwart what they saw as a Communist plot to overthrow the government.
This was but one many assaults on radicals in what was known as the Palmer Raids. Thousands were arrested and thousands deported. It had been a year of significant labor unrest including steel, coal, Boston police strikes, and a Seattle general strike. There was high unemployment in the wake of the demobilization after World War I. Around May Day there had been dozens of mostly intercepted mail bombs, and a suicide bomber died outside Palmer’s house.

Attorney General Mitchell’s view

Another view

November 8, 1892

Thirty thousand black and white workers factory and dock staged a general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition, closed shops (where all co-workers join the union), and hour and wage gains. They were joined by non-industrial laborers, such as musicians, clothing workers, clerks, utility workers, streetcar drivers, and printers.

November 9, 1935

United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other other labor leaders formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). They had split with the existing labor union umbrella organization, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which was not interested in organizing unskilled workers, such as those in the steel, rubber, textile and auto industries.

John L. Lewis

November 9-10, 1938

Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria. Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to "the Night of Broken Glass," so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops, 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000).

November 9, 1969

Seventy-eight Indians from 20 tribes seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, offering to buy the island from the federal government for $24 worth of beads (the alleged price paid to the Canarsee Delaware Indians for Manhattan Island (it was actually 60 Dutch guilders)). They were reclaiming it as Indian land and demanding fairness and respect for Indian peoples. The occupation lasted for more than a year. "We hold The Rock," said Richard Oakes, a Mohawk from New York.

a new entrance to Alcatraz Photo/Michelle Vignes

Indian people and their supporters wait for the ferry. Photo/Ilka Hartmann

LaNada Boyer (formerly Means) inside one of the Alcatraz guard barracks where occupiers lived from 1969-71. Much of the graffiti from 30 years ago remains throughout the island today. Photo by Linda Sue Scott.

November 9, 1984

U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.

November 9, 1989

For the first time since World War II, free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, was opened in response to nonviolent popular action.

November 9, 2002

Florence, Italy 11.9.2002

Somewhere between 450,000 and a million Europeans peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq in Florence, Italy.

Many joined those attending the first European Social Forum on globalization.

Anti-globalization activists look at a US flag, whose stars have been replaced with logos of multinational companies, displayed at the entrance of the old Leopolda Station in Florence, Italy.

November 10, 1924

The Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., was founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber, a German immigrant. He had been inspired by Germany’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee, formed to oppose the oppression of men and women considered "sexual intermediates."

Henry Gerber-one of the founders.

November 11, 1942

Congress approved lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to 37 less than a year after having declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy. In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, had passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, the first peacetime draft imposed in the history of the United States.

read about the good war and those who refused to fight it

November 11, 1972

The U.S. Army turned over its massive military base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese army, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. The last American forces, however, did not leave until 1974.

U.S. military leaving the Long Binh base

November 12, 1969

Seymour Hersh, an independent investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, revealed the extent of the U.S. Army's charges against 1st Lt. William L. Calley at My Lai, a Vietnamese village.

My Lai

Hersh wrote: "The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in an alleged Viet Cong stronghold known as 'Pinkville.'"
The same Seymour Hersh first wrote about abuses of Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib prison by Americans in 2004.

Seymour Hersh has been instrumental in exposing abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

read an interview

Seymour Hersh

November 12, 1982

The Polish Government freed the leader of the outlawed Solidarity union movement, Lech Walesa, after 11 months of internment. His release came only two days after riot police used tear gas, water cannon and phosphorous rockets to disperse big pro-Solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw and other cities.

Lech Walesa

November 12, 1989

Tens of thousands of Americans joined “Mobilize for Women’s Lives” in more than 150 cities and towns nationwide. They were organized to protect women’s right to reproductive choice, including abortion. Their focus was on state legislatures in their own states where laws were being introduced to put limits of a woman’s right to choose when she should bear children.
More than 2500 defenders of legalized abortion gathered at the First Parish Unitarian Church in Kennebunkport, Maine, just a few miles from Pres. George H. W. Bush's summer home, to hold a candlelight vigil.

National Abortion Rights Action League / Pro Choice America

November 13, 1933

The first recorded "sit-down" strike in the U.S. was staged by workers at the Hormel Packing Company in Austin, Minnesota. The tactic worked: Hormel agreed to submit wage demands to binding arbitration.
The success of this strike reinvigorated the labor movement, which had been in decline through the 1920s.

Hormel strikers

November 13, 1956

U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation unconstitutional in public transportation. The case, Browder v. Gayle, was brought by several women, including Aurelia Browder, who had refused to surrender their bus seats to whites (months before Rosa Parks had done so).

Aurelia Browder

The four plaintiffs had been arrested for violating Alabama law which required segregation on public buses. They challenged the law and the Court agreed, finding the law under which they were arrested violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

A roadside monument was dedicated in 2004 to the four plantiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case.

November 13, 1960

Over 1000 Quakers surrounded the Pentagon for a silent vigil to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first Quaker Peace Testimony issued to King Charles II in 1660.

From the 1660 Peace Testimony: "We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world...."

November 13, 1974

Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist (Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers' Union) at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium fuels production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, was killed in a one-car crash.