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| September |
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| Nazi Germany invaded
Poland, starting the second world war. |
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Charles
Liteky & George
Mizo and two other veterans began a Fast For Life on the
steps of the U.S. Capitol. They were opposing U.S. support
of Nicaraguan contras and repressive regimes in El Salvador
and Guatemala.
read
more
Charles
Liteky George
Mizo
|
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|
 Brian
Willson bird-watching California, 1997.
Brian's
Biography
|
During
a nonviolent protest at the Concord (California) Naval Weapons
Station, a Navy munitions train ran over Brian Willson.An
Air Force and Vietnam veteran, Willson and the other
protesters were attempting to stop shipment
of weapons to Nicaragua and El Salvador. They
considered U.S. policy in Central America (as in Vietnam)
a violation of
the Nuremberg Principles. Willson lost both legs and suffered
other injuries but has remained an active and articulate
leader in the anti-military movement.
|
Ron
Kovic (author 'Born
on the Fourth of July')
and Brian Willson (also born on the Fourth of July)
|
Willson’s
testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee
on Investigations
|
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White House staffers decided to
purchase some crack cocaine so Pres. George H.W. Bush could
hold the illegal drug in his hands during a national address.
On the first attempt, the drug dealer didn't show up. On
the second try, an undercover drug agent's body microphone
didn't work. Trying for the third time, Bush's team managed
to purchase the crack, but the camera operator videotaping
the deal missed the action as a homeless person assaulted
him.
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Kurdish & British
activists blockaded an arms trade exhibition outside
London. 89 members of Campaign Against the Arms Trade
(CAAT)were arrested for protesting the presence of Turkish,
Chinese and Indonesian government representatives in
Britain to purchase weapons. The Labour government had
pledged " [We will] not permit the sale of arms
to regimes that could use them for internal repression
or external aggression...." Great Britain is the
world’s second largest arms manufacturer after
the U.S.
|
read
more |
|
September
1 - International
Day of War Tax Resistance.
|
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“Refusing
to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first
taxes levied for warfare...”
History
of War Tax Resistance
|
 |
|
| A mob of white coal miners, led by the
Knights of Labor, violently attacked their Chinese co-workers
in Rock Springs, Wyoming,
killing 28 and burning the homes of 75 Chinese families.
The white miners wanted the Chinese barred from working in
the mine. The mine operators had brought in the Chinese ten
years earlier to keep labor costs down and to suppress strikes. |
 |
Chinese fleeing Rock Springs |
the
story |
|
 |
Revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh
declared Vietnam a republic and independent from France (National
Day). Half a million people gathered in Hanoi to hear him
read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence which was
modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
read
the text
note:Ho
Chi Minh translates to 'He Who Enlightens'
|
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| On
what was supposed to be the first day of school in Grenada,
Mississippi—and the first day in
an integrated school for 450 Negro children—the school
board postponed opening of school for 10 days because of "paperwork." Nevertheless,
the high school played its first football game that night.
Some of the Negro kids who had registered for that school
tried to attend the game but were beaten and their car windows
smashed. |
|
|
 |
Frederick Douglass made
his escape from slavery in Baltimore and went on in life
to become an Abolitionist, journalist, author, and human
rights advocate.
|
The
escape from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
An American Slave”
a
Frederick Douglass biography
|
|
| Vietnamese
revolutionary and national leader Nguyen Tat Thanh (aka
Ho Chi Minh), 79, died of natural causes in Hanoi. |
 |
Ho
and his struggle for Vietnamese independence |
Ho Chi Minh
|
|
| Representatives from 27 African nations, the Caribbean
nations, four South American countries, Australia, and the
U.S. met in Atlanta, Georgia, for the first Congress of African
People. |
|
| The
Musa Anter, or Kurdish Peace Train (named after an assassinated
Kurdish writer) was organized by peace activists to call
attention to the oppression of the Kurdish people in Turkey
by their own government. At the time, the words for Kurd,
Kurdish, guerilla and torture were banned; it was illegal
to speak the Kurdish language. The train was to leave London
and travel through Europe to Diyarbakir in Eastern Turkey
to celebrate International Anti-War Day there. |
|
Germany
disallowed passage of the Train through their territory
(the Germans and Turks have strong military ties). The group
then flew to Istanbul, intending to take a group of busses
to the Kurdish region. Turkish troops stopped them from reaching
Diyarbakir, forcing them back to the capital.
On this day they tried to hold a press conference to discuss
the Kurdish issue. The police arrested or beat all present,
including foreign diplomats.
the
story of the Musa Anter Peace Train
|
|
|
The
Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against
the H-Bomb in London’s Trafalgar Square. The PPU
dates back to October 1934.
|
 |
the PPU today
|
history
of the Peace Pledge Union
|
|
Young
Peace Pledge Union members today. |
|
|
Elizabeth
Eckford and eight other young Negroes were blocked from
becoming the first black student at Central High School
in Little Rock, Arkansas. Gov. Orval Faubus had called
out the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration
of the public schools in the state’s capital.
Pres. Dwight Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the law
was enforced. |
 |
| Elizabeth Eckford |
read
more |
Elizabeth
Eckford followed by mob, 1957. |
|
|
Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid
American Withdrawal). Over the following three days more
than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla
Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey,
to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion
of small rural hamlets along the way.
|
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|
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|
 |
Operation
Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition:
|
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| Simultaneous
demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and
in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. were organized
by the War Resisters League, calling for nuclear disarmament. |
|
| Well
over 10,000 workers marched to protest working conditions
in the first-ever U.S. Labor Day parade, held in New York
City, demanding the 8-hour day. About a quarter million
New Yorkers turned out to watch. |
|
The
idea was that of Peter J. McGuire, a union carpenter
and cofounder of the Federation of Organized Trades and
Labor
Unions, a precursor of the American Federation of Labor.
He wanted to honor the American worker and create a holiday
break between the 4th of July and Thanksgiving.
read
more
|
|
| Originally
the second Tuesday of the month, it is now the first Monday,
and recognized as a national holiday. |
1st Labor Parade in Union
Square, NYC 1882 |
|
|
In
48 coordinated raids across the country, later known
as the Palmer Raids, federal agents seized records, destroyed
equipment and books, and arrested hundreds of activists
involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
known fondly as the Wobblies. Among the arrested was
William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, a leader of
the IWW, for the “crimes of labor" and "obstructing
World War I."
read
more
|
|
|
Attorney
General Mitchell Palmer
|
Big
Bill Haywood
|
|
The
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was established outside
Greenham Air Base in England, as "Women For Life On
Earth."
|
|
|
read
more
Greenham
Peace Camp
April,
1983.
|
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|
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All Jews over the age
of six in German-occupied territories were ordered by the
Nazi regime to wear a yellow Star
of David
on their clothing.
|
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|
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Anti-nuclear marchers
who began in Glasgow, Scotland, arrived in London and attempted
to present a dummy missile to the British Imperial War
Museum.
|
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3,000
attended a rally to publicly launch the Peace Council
in Melbourne, Australia.
|
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|
The first New York meeting was held
for the Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneer lesbian organization.
The group was founded two years earlier in San Francisco.
read
more
cover
from their magazine "The Ladder", October ,1968
|
|
|
The Ploughshares
Two activists were sentenced to 15 months for disabling an
F-111 bomber in Oxford, England. |
|
| South
African troops killed at least 24 people and injured 150
more at an African National Congress (ANC) rally on the
border of Ciskei in South Africa. 50,000 ANC supporters
had turned out to demand Ciskei’s re-absorption into
South Africa. Ciskei was one of ten black “homelands,” so
designated to keep blacks from claiming citizenship in
South Africa itself. They were a legal fiction, not recognized
by any other country, that was part of the racially separatist
apartheid regime. |
 |
read
more |
|
|
Two
women were arrested for trespass at the Norfolk (Virginia)
Naval
Base after walking into the base with a banner reading, "Love
Your Enemies." |
|
|
In
Norway, 2000 workers in the shipyards went on strike against
diversion of milk, "depriving
mothers and babies," to
military use by the German soldiers in Finland. In retaliation,
Oslo was placed under a 7 o'clock curfew, transportation
was stopped after that hour, public meetings were prohibited,
radios seized, dancing forbidden. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides
and Salvation Army organizations were dissolved.
|
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Table grape pickers, the mostly Filipino members of the
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by
Larry Itliong, went on strike for higher wages in Delano,
California.
read
more
|
|
| Religious
conscientious objector Corbett Bishop was arrested after
walking out of a Civilian Public Service Camp. During subsequent
trials and imprisonments, he refused any type of cooperation
with the government until he was released 193 days later. |
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|
|
" I'm
not going to cooperate in any way, shape or form.
I was
carried in here.
If
you hold me, you'll have to carry me out.
War
is wrong. I don't want any part of it."
- Corbett Bishop, 1906-1961 |
|
| Students at a
boys' high school in Saigon, tore down the government flag
and raised a Buddhist flag to protest the corrupt Diem
regime in South Vietnam; 1,000 were arrested. |
|
|
The
Attica (New York) State Penitentiary revolt began. The interracial
revolt was led by blacks but featured cooperation between prisoners
of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. |
|
It was finally brutally suppressed by the state five
days later, upon orders from Gov. Nelson Rockefeller
who refused to become directly involved. 29 prisoners
and 10 guards were shot and killed by attacking state
troopers in the bloodiest prison confrontation in U.S.
history. The prisoners had been demanding improvements
in their living and working conditions at the increasingly
overcrowded facility.
read
more
|
|
|
|
Eight
activists from the Atlantic Life Community were arrested
after hammering the nose cones
of two missiles at the GE plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
This action would become the first of an international
movement of dozens of "Plowshares" anti-nuclear
direct actions.
read
about Plowshares 8
|
 |
The
Plowshares 8(in alphabetical order):
Daniel
Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Carl Kabat, Elmer
Maas, Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt
|
 |
This
action would become the first of an international movement
of dozens of "Plowshares" anti-nuclear direct
actions.
a
chronology of Plowshares actions
|
|
| Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's
allied political party, formally renounced violence by accepting
the principles put
forward by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell (D-Maine)
who was mediating the talks between the Republicans and the
Unionists on Northern Ireland's future. |
 |
Sen George Mitchell |
The
Mitchell Principles:
• To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues;
• To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations;
• To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction
of an independent commission;
• To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use
force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party
negotiations;
• To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party
negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in
trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree; and,
• To urge that "punishment" killings and beatings stop and to
take effective steps to prevent such actions. |
|
|
Nineteen
unarmed striking coal miners were killed and 40 more
wounded by sheriff's deputies in Latimer, Pennsylvania,
for refusing to disperse, by a posse organized by the
Luzerne County sheriff. The strikers, most of whom were
shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers,
but later organized themselves.
|
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|
Twenty
black students entered public schools in Birmingham,
Tuskegee and Mobile, Alabama, following a standoff between
federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace, who resisted
integration by ordering Alabama state troopers to stop
the court-ordered integration of Alabama’s elementary
and high schools.
|
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|
Sheryl
Crow's 2nd album was banned from Wal-Mart stores because
the song, "Love Is A Good Thing" opens with
“Watch
out sister, watch out brother,
Watch our children while they kill each other
With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores....”
|
|
| Mohandas
Gandhi began a nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg,
South Africa, demanding rights and respect for those of
Asian descent. It was the birth of his idea of Satyagraha,
or passive resistance. |
He
led a meeting of 3000 of the town's Indians, protesting
the Transvaal Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. That ordinance
required all Asians to obey three rules: those of eight years
or older had to carry passes for which they had to give their
fingerprints; they would be segregated as to where they could
live and work; new Asian immigration into the Transvaal would
be disallowed, even for those who had left the town when the
South African War broke out in 1899, and were returning.
The meeting produced the Fourth Resolution, in which all Indians
resolved to go to prison rather than submit to the ordinance.
read
Gandhi's Satyagraha
|
Ghandi,
London, 1906
|
|
Chile's
armed forces staged a coup d'etat against the government
of President Salvador Allende, the first democratically
elected socialist head of state in Latin America. Some
three thousand were held in Santiago's national stadium
where guards singled out folksinger Victor Jara as he continued
to sing protest songs.
Jara was viciously beaten, and his mutilated body machine-gunned in front of
the other prisoners. |
 |
 dissidents
held in the stadium
|
read
more on Victor Jara
|
 Victor
Jara plays to young supporters |
Victor
Jara
|
The U.S.
government, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
had worked for three years to foment the coup against
Allende. Striking Chilean labor unions, instrumental
in destabilizing the Allende government, were secretly
bankrolled by the CIA.
During the brutal and repressive 17-year rule of General
Augusto Pinochet that followed, more than 3,000 political
opponents were assassinated or "disappeared." The
U.S.-backed military dictatorship banned Jara's music,
image, name and, for a time, even outlawed the public performance
of the folk-guitar.
read
more
|
|
 |
Suicidal
Islamist terrorists, most of them Saudis, hijacked four
commercial airliners in the eastern U.S., and managed
successfully to turn three of them into missiles: two
flew into New York City’s World Trade Center towers,
destroying them, and a third into the west side of the
Pentagon. On the fourth, passengers heroically seized
back control and crashed it into an empty field in Western
Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 were killed that day: passengers
and crew, workers in the twin towers and the Pentagon;
democracy
and the American sense of invulnerability were
badly wounded.
|
|
Women
In Black (WIB) Baltimore started the first Peace Path as
a response to 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The nonviolent
action presented images of peace rather than war and militarism
as a response to problems.
Now
in its 5th year, the path will extend for 12 miles
through Baltimore. Others are
beginning to create 9/11 peace paths in their own communities.
|
 |
Participants
in WIB vigils wear black as a sign of mourning for all
that is lost through war and violence. The group seeks
to bring together people of
all races, faiths, nationalities, and genders who support positions
of nonviolence and who seek peace through mutual understanding
and constructive
dialogue. |
|
for more
information |
|
|
|
Steve
Biko, the leader of the black consciousness movement,
and probably the most influential young black leader
in in South Africa, died while being held by security
forces in Port Elizabeth, the forty-first person to die
while in police custody in South Africa.
read
more about Steven Biko
|
|
|
|
|
President George W. Bush told skeptical world leaders at
the United Nations to confront the ''grave and gathering
danger'' of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or to stand aside
as the United States acted.
|
|
| Bertrand Russell, aged
89, and 32 others were arrested during a major demonstration
against nuclear weapons in Trafalgar Square, London. |
|
|
The European Parliament
voted to phase out promotion and advertising of war toys
throughout the 25 countries of the European Union (formerly
European Economic Community).
|
 |
|
The
first group from Peace Brigades International (PBI) arrived
in Guatemala to provide unarmed and nonviolent witness & protection
for indigenous leaders. Following decades of severe repression
of native ethnic groups by the unelected military government,
the PBI team accompanied the Mutual Support Group (GAM in
Spanish) of Families of the Disappeared, the first human
rights group to emerge from the terror and survive.
Learn
more about PBI
|
|
 |
The
Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the leader
of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser
Arafat, shook hands before cheering crowds on the White
House lawn in Washington after signing an accord granting
limited Palestinian autonomy.
read
more
|
|
 |
Eugene
V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing
U.S. entry into World War I. Debs had been an elected official
in Indiana, a labor organizer, writer and editor, had founded
the first industrial union in the U.S., the American Railway
Union, and had run for President four times on the Socialist
Party ticket.
|
|
He
ran again for president from prison in 1920 with the
slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House,” and
received nearly one million.
learn
more about Eugene V. Debs
|
|
|
|
Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing
for the first peacetime draft (though Japan had
already invaded China in 1937 and Germany had
invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939) in
U.S. history. |
|
|
| A
groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York City at
the site of the United Nations' world headquarters. |
 |
The
39-story building on 18 acres of Manhattan (donated by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) was the first major example of
the International Style with simple geometric form and
a glass curtain wall.
|
 |
| The
site selected for the permanent headquarters of the United
Nations as it was in 1946. |
The UN building today. |
|
| Television
network ABC invited singer, songwriter, banjo player and
activist Pete Seeger to appear on its Saturday night folk
and acoustic music show, Hootenanny, despite the fact that
he had been blacklisted. |
|
|
But
the invitation stood only if he'd sign an oath of loyalty
to the U.S. He described his reaction: "This
is ridiculous. I’d sign ’em, if you sign ’em,
and everybody whose born will sign ’em, then we’d
all be clean."
In the 1940s Seeger traveled throughout the land with Woody
Guthrie, performing at union meetings and striker's demonstrations.
After World War II, he co-founded the Weavers, the legendary
folk group that gained commercial success despite being blacklisted.
more
about Hootenanny
|
|
 |
The
Free Speech Movement began at the University of California-Berkeley
when its Dean Towle announced that existing University
regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or
candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds
by student organizations at Bancroft and Telegraph, would
henceforth be ''strictly enforced."
read
more
|
|
| Wisconsin became the first
state to support a nuclear freeze referendum. |
|
|
The Pentagon announced a
$20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Saud
royal family
|
 |
|
| The South African government, the African
National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party signed the
National Peace Accord, leading to multi-racial elections
and the end of South Africa's apartheid system in 1994.
|
Text of the National Peace
Accord |
|
In a letter Turkish Minister of the Interior Mehmet Talaat
Pasha explained that the real intention of sending the Armenians
to the Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) Desert (now in Syria) was to
annihilate them. Talaat had primary responsibility for planning
and implementing the Armenian Genocide.
The day before, The New York Times reported that the murder
of 350,000 Armenians in Turkey had already occurred. |
read
about the Turkish Adolf Eichmann |
|
| The “Law
for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and
the “Reich Citizenship Law” were adopted by
the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers') Party Rally
in Nuremberg, depriving German Jews of their citizenship. |
|
During
Sunday School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing
four children in the basement changing room, and injuring
23 others. Prime suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
and Nacirema (white supremacist organizations; Nacirema,
fittingly, was derived from "American" spelled
backwards). A week before the bombing Gov. George C.
Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration
Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."
This event set off racial rioting and other violence in which
two African-American boys were shot to death, and became a
turning point in generating broad American sympathy for the
civil rights movement. A member of the church, studying on
a scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School
student Angela Davis.
read
more
|
 |
|
Addie
Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson
(14), Denise McNair (11)
|
|
|
Vice
President Spiro Agnew said the youth of America are being "brainwashed
into a drug culture" by rock music, movies, books,
and underground newspapers.
more on Spiro
|
 |
|
 |
A blockade
started at a nuclear power plant construction site in Diablo
Canyon, California. Over two weeks, 1,901 are arrested
in the largest occupation of a nuclear power site in U.S.
history.
|
|
|
|
Vietnam
Veterans Duncan Murphy & Brian Willson joined Charles
Liteky & George Mizo in the Fast For Life, opposing
U.S. support for the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua.
|
Duncan
Murphy, Brian Willson, Charles Liteky, George Mizo
read
more about the Fast for Life |
|
| 6,000 rallied and 1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters
Grove in rural Carlotta, California, in a protest against
the logging of one of the last large unlogged stands of redwood
trees in the world. |
|
Sinn
Fein, the political party closely allied with the goals
of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), entered Northern
Ireland's peace talks for the first time.
|
|
|
|
Four
days after 9/11, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA)
cast the only congressional vote against authorizing
President Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate
force" against anyone associated with the terrorist
attacks of September 11. "I am convinced that military
action will not prevent further acts of international
terrorism against the United States.”
read
more
|
|
William
Whipper, an ex-slave from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
published "An Address on Non-Resistance to Offensive
Aggression" in the The Colored American. This landmark
essay predated Thoreau's on “Civil Disobedience” by
12 years.
“...fatal
error arises from the belief that the only method of maintaining
peace, is always to be ready for war.”
read
Whipper’s words
|
 |
William Whipper |
| Whipper
edited a newspaper, The National Reformer, a publication
of the National Moral Reform Society, and furnished food and
transportation assistance to fugitive slaves who reached Pennsylvania.
|
|
August Dickmann,
a German and a Jehovah's Witness, became the first conscientious
objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during World War
II. The execution by firing squad took place in Sachsenhausen
concentration camp before all prisoners, including 400 Jehovah's
Witness inmates.
|
|
|
Threatened
by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate,
none of the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO
position. Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses
by guillotine or hanging, not wanting to spend bullets
on COs. German military courts sentenced and executed
270 Jehovah's Witnesses, the largest number of COs executed
from any victim group during World War II.
watch
a timeline
|
|
NY
Times, Sept 16, 1939
|
August
Dickmann
|
|
|
A federal judge dismissed all charges
against American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks
and Russell Means stemming from the 1973 occupation of
Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
|
Dennis
Banks
|
Russell
Means
|
On
February 27, 1973, AIM and supporters seized control
of Wounded Knee to draw attention to corruption and conditions
on
the Pine Ridge (Lakota Sioux) reservation.
Wounded Knee was the site where, on December 29, 1890, over
200 Sioux men, women and children were mercilessly gunned down
by U.S. cavalry.
read
more
|
|
President
Gerald Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for
Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, provided they
swear allegiance to the country and agree to work two
years in the branch of the military they had abandoned.
He did this one month following his pardon of resigned
former President Nixon.
|
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| |
