In
the "Jerry Rescue," citizens of Syracuse, New
York, broke into the city’s police station and
freed William Henry (known as Jerry), a runaway slave
who had been working as a barrel-maker. The federal Fugitive
Slave Law required "good citizens" to assist
in the return of those who had fled “ownership” by
another. A group of black and white men created a chaotic
diversion and managed to free Jerry but he was later
re-arrested. At his second hearing, a group of men, their
skin color disguised with burnt cork, forcibly overpowered
the guards with clubs and axes, and freed Jerry a second
time; he was then secretly taken over the border to Canada.
read
more
Jerry
Rescue monument
Syracuse,
New York
Samuel
Ringgold Ward, whose parents were also escaped slaves,
urged the crowd to help release Jerry. “They say
he is a slave. What a term to apply to an American! How
does this sound beneath the pole of liberty and the flag
of freedom?” He asked those present not ever to vote
for those who support “. . . laws which empower persons
to hunt, chain and cage men in our midst.” Ward also
fled to Canada.
more
on Sam Ward
October
1, 1925
The
Anti-Kriegs (anti-war) Museum, first museum for peace,
opened in Berlin
by Ernst Friedrich, a former printer’s
apprentice, political organizer and author of “War Against
War.”
History
of the Friedrich and his work
Ernst Friedrich
The museum today
October
1, 1962
James
Meredith became the first black American to attend classes
at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In the nearly
two years Meredith spent trying to register for classes at
then all-white “Ole Miss,” he had to file a federal
lawsuit and, ultimately, be escorted through registration
by U.S. Justice department attorney John Doar, protected
by U.S. Army troops.
The night before whites had rioted and attacked U.S. Marshalls
after Mississippi Highway Patrol officers withdrew as the crowd
became larger and more unruly.
Pres.
John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent
the troops and federalized the state’s National
Guard to enforce the federal court’s order which
Gov. Ross Barnett refused to accept.
Meredith went on to graduate in 1964 and still lives nearby.
a
visual and audio chronology of Meredith’s
struggle
role of the U.S. Marshalls
October
1, 1964
The
Free Speech Movement was launched at the University of California – Berkeley
when mathematics grad student Jack Weinberg was arrested
for setting up an information table for CORE (Congress of
Racial Equality) in front of Sproul Hall, the administration
building.
Hundreds
of students surrounded the police car holding Weinberg
for 32 hours, keeping him from being taken away. Many made
speeches from atop the car, and ultimately Weinberg’s
release was negotiated.
University Chancellor Clark Kerr had been under pressure
from the Board of Regents to ban expression of views considered
communist, but the students, inspired by the Civil Rights
movement, questioned and resisted the restrictions.
read
more
Jack
Weinberg
October
1, 1984
Five
activists, in what became known as the Trident II Plowshares,
hammered and poured blood on six missile tubes and unfurled
a banner which read: "Harvest of Hope – Swords
into Plowshares" at shipbuilder Electric Boat’s
Quonset Point facility in North Kingston, Rhode Island.
General
Dynamics built the fourteen Ohio-class nuclear-powered
submarines there, each of which is armed with 24 Trident
II nuclear-tipped missiles (3.8 megatons each) launched
from underwater with a range of 4000 nautical miles (4600
miles; 7400 kilometers).
Plowshares participants, individually or in groups, actually
or symbolically damage parts of the U.S. first-strike nuclear
arsenal or its conventional weaponry, and take public responsibility
for their actions.
read
more about this action
a
chronology of Plowshares actions
October
2, 1869
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,
the Indian nationalist leader whose philosophy of nonviolence
would influence movements around the world, was born in
Porbandar, one of the cities of Gujarat State. He came
to prominence as the leader of the successful nonviolent
resistance to British colonial rule of India.
a
brief biography
October
2, 1961
Ten
months after its start in San Francisco, an anti-nuclear
peace march sponsored by the Committee for Nonviolent Action
arrived in Moscow’s Red Square where they distributed
leaflets calling for disarmament.
October
2, 1967
Thurgood
Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the
United States Supreme Court, the first African American
on the nation's highest court. He was appointed to the
Court by Pres. Lyndon Johnson who previously had appointed
him Solicitor General, the legal officer in the Justice
Department responsible for representing the United States
before the Supreme and federal appellate courts. Marshall
had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education
case which led to the end of legal segregation in the nation’s
schools.
read
more about Thurgood Marshall
October
3, 1932
With the
admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Great Britain
terminated its control over the Arab nation, making Iraq
independent after 17 years of British and centuries of
Ottoman rule. It had taken 11 years from a plebiscite creating
a constitutional monarchy under King Feisel until the new
country achieved complete independence. Iraq had been created
in the wake of World War I by British foreign officer Gertrude
Bell who combine three provinces,, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra,
into one political entity under British mandate.
Excellent
history of Iraq
Gertrude
Bell and the invention of Iraq
October
3, 1952
Great Britain successfully tested its first atomic bomb,
dubbed Hurricane, at the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest
coast of Australia.
read
more
"Hurricane"
October
3, 1962
The
Mississippi House of Representatives passed a concurrent
resolution (as did the Senate two days later) that condemned
the effort to ensure James Meredith’s enrollment at
the University of Mississippi (as its first negro student).
They considered the federal court order an encroachment on
their state’s sovereignty, the federalizing of the
state’s national guard a violation of the second amendment,
and the presidential use of the army to enforce a federal
court order an invasion.
read
the resolution
October
3, 1967
Thich
Nu Tri, a Buddhist nun, immolated herself in protest of the
repression of the Government of (South) Vietnam. It had denied
participation in recent elections of peace and neutralist
elements. Buddhist leaders thus boycotted the elections,
and the Ngo Dinh Diem regime received only 35% of the vote.
Within four weeks, three more nuns followed Thich Nu Tri’s
example (among them Thich Nu Hue and Thich Nu Thuong), all
in an effort to bring peace to the their country, split in
two and caught up in a war with their countrymen in the North,
and the escalating presence of U.S. troops.
October
3, 1967
Woody
Guthrie
1912-1967
Folksinger/songwriter
Woody Guthrie died in New York City at the age of 55. He
had spent the last decade of his life in the hospital,
suffering from Huntington's chorea. Woody called his songs "people's
songs," filled with stinging honesty, humor and wit,
exhibiting Woody's fervent belief in social, political,
and spiritual justice.
extensive
bio with photos and Woody’s writing:
October
3, 1972
The SALT
I treaties, which placed the first limits on nuclear arsenals,
went into effect. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks succeeded
when U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev agreed to limit anti-ballistic missile systems,
and to freeze the number of intercontinental and submarine-based
missile launchers (1,710 for the United States, some of which
had multiple warheads, and 2,347 for the Soviet Union).
October
3, 1981
Irish republicans at the
Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months
of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives.
The
first to die was Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish Republican
Army (IRA)
leader who initiated the protest on March 1—the fifth
anniversary of the British policy of "criminalisation" of
Irish political prisoners.
Prior to 1976, Irish political prisoners
were incarcerated under "Special Category Status," which
granted them a number of privileges that other
criminal inmates did not enjoy.
Despite Sands's election (while an inmate) as member
of Parliament from Fermanagh and South Tyrone after
the first month of his hunger strike, and his death
from starvation a month later, the government of British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not give in,
and nine more Irish republicans perished before the
strike was called off.
The dead included Kieran Doherty, who had been elected
to Parliament in the Irish Republic during the strike.
In the aftermath, the British government quietly conceded
to some of the strikers' demands, such as the rights
to wear civilian clothing, to associate with each other,
to receive mail and visits, and not to be penalized
for refusing prison work.
October
3, 1994
The
United States and South Africa signed a missile non-proliferation
agreement committing South Africa to abide by the The
Missile Technology Control Regime, and to end its missile
program and its space-launch vehicle program.
more
about MTCR
October
4, 1976
Earl
Butz resigned as Pres. Gerald Ford’s
agriculture secretary with an apology for what he called the "gross
indiscretion" of uttering a racist remark.
October
4, 1997
Demonstrations
across the country occurred protesting the scheduled launch
of the space probe Cassini because its power
source was three plutonium-fueled Radioisotope Thermoelectric
Generators.
The
probe carried 72.3 pounds of plutonium, the most ever
put on a device to be launched into space. The concern
was for an accidental release in the event of a launch
mishap
Plutonium
is the most toxic substance known. "It is so toxic," says Helen Caldicott,
president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "that
less than one-millionth of a gram is a carcinogenic dose.
One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically
induce lung cancer in every person on Earth."
radioactive dangers and space
an interview with Dr. Caldicott
October
5, 1887
Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce Indians, surrendered
to the American Army, ending a desperate struggle by his people
for self-determination, and to maintain their traditional homeland
in the Wallowa Valley of Northeastern Oregon. "I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since
I was a boy. I realized then that we could not hold our own
with the white
men. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had
small country. Their country was large. We were contented to
let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They
were not, and would change the rivers and mountains if they
did not suit them."
The
struggle and skill of the Nez Perce
October
5, 1923
Birthday
of activist Philip Berrigan. He spent four decades devoted
to opposing war and violence. From his final statement
prior to his death in 2002: "I die with the conviction,
held since 1968 and Catonsville [see May 17, 1968], that
nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for
them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse
against God, the human family, and the earth itself."
Brother Dan Berrigan's Meditation on the Action of the Catonsville
9
October
5, 1966
A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial core
meltdown at the
Enrico Fermi I fast-breeder nuclear power reactor
in Monroe, Michigan, on Lake Erie near Detroit.
While
conducting a power test, two fuel assemblies overheated
and two others partially melted, but there was no release
of radiation. The public did not find out until one
of the engineers who witnessed it wrote the book, “We
Almost Lost Detroit.” The event inspired the
Gil Scott-Heron song of the same name.
the
Fermi plant
read
the lyrics
what
actually happened
October
5, 1979
2,000
activists demonstrated against development of uranium mines
in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This followed the Department
of the Interior’s releasing its final environmental
impact statement, endorsing the North Central Power Study's
plans to turn the Black Hills into a "national sacrifice
area." The plan was to devote nearly 200,000 acres
to mineral extraction and energy production with up to
25 nuclear power plants.
Uranium
Mining in the Black Hills
October
5th
Raoul
Wallenberg Day, honoring the Swedish diplomat who saved
as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews from deportation and
probable death in concentration camps during WWII. He did
this through bargaining with Nazi officials, establishing
safehouses, distributing false passports, disguising Jews
in Nazi uniforms and setting up checkpoints to avert deportations.
He had attended the University of Michigan.
read
more about Raoul Walenberg
October
5, 1986
The
cover-up of the Iran-Contra scandal began to unravel when
Eugene Hasenfus was captured
by government troops in Nicaragua after the plane in which
he was flying was shot down; three others on the plane died
in the crash. Under questioning, Hasenfus confessed that
he had been shipping military supplies from the U.S. into
Nicaragua for use by the contras, an insurgent force trying
to bring down the the country’s Sandanista government.
A
captured Eugene Hasenfus
The contras had been recruited and trained by the United States,
and supported financially in violation of specific
law passed by Congress that forbade it. The operation
was directed from the White House and run by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). Funding came from the sale
of nearly 1500 missiles to Iran for use in its war
with Iraq, though weapons sales to Iran were also illegal.
good summary of
the Iran-Contra Affair and implications for presidential
power
October
5, 1991
Pres.
Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union responded in kind to
Pres. George H.W. Bush’s announcement of unilateral
partial reduction in nuclear weapons. Bush had committed
to withdrawal of all U.S. land- and sea-based tactical nuclear
weapons; standing down strategic bombers on day-to-day alert,
and to store their weapons; deactivating missiles scheduled
for elimination under the SALT I treaty; and ending some
new nuclear weapons programs. Pres. Gorbachev announced a
comparable Soviet reduction.
a
timeline of strategic arms control
October
5, 1993
China broke an informal moratorium on nuclear weapons testing
and exploded a nuclear device beneath its western desert. There
had been active negotiations throughout the year on developing
a comprehensive test ban treaty.
October
6, 1683
Thirteen
Mennonite families from the German town of Krefeld arrived
in Philadelphia on the ship Concord. Having endured religious
warfare in Europe, the Mennonites were pacifists, similar
to the Society of Friends (often known as Quakers) who
opposed all forms of violence. The first Germans in North
America, they established Germantown which still exists
as part of Philadelphia.
Modern
Mennonite peace activism:
More
about the Mennonites in America
October
6, 1955
Poet
Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" for
the first time at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem
was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world
and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and
later. " Howl and Other Poems" was printed in England,
but its second edition was seized by customs officials as it
entered the U.S.
City
Lights, a San Francisco bookstore, published the book
itself to avoid customs problems, and storeowner (and poet)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried for obscenity,
but defended by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Following testimony from nine literary experts on the merits
of the book, Ferlinghetti was found not guilty.
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti outside City Lights
Working
on Howl in San Francisco, circa June, 1956.
more
about City Lights
read
Howl
read
more about Allen Ginsberg
October
6, 1976
An
airliner, Cubana Airlines Flight 455, exploded in midair, killing
73 mostly young passengers including the entire Cuban youth
fencing team. The plot was engineered by Orlando Bosch and
Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban former CIA agent, who was based
in Venezuela at the time.
The
Posada Carriles file from the National Security Archive
October
6, 1978
346
protestors were arrested at the site of the proposed Black
Fox Nuclear Power Plant in Inola, Oklahoma. In 1973 Public
Service of Oklahoma announced plans to build the Black Fox
plant about 15 miles from Tulsa. It was also near Carrie Barefoot
Dickerson’s family farm. She became concerned as a nurse
and a citizen about the potential health hazards.
Through her group, Citizens’ Action for Safe Energy (CASE),
and the consistent opposition of informed and persistent allies,
the project was canceled in 1982. There are no nuclear plants
in the state of Oklahoma, and no nuclear plant has been built
in the U.S. since then.
Carrie
Barefoot Dickerson
Aunt
Carrie's War Against Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant
October
6, 1979
Over 1400
were arrested at Seabrook, New Hampshire, the construction
site of two new nuclear power plant. The occupation was
organized by the Clamshell Alliance.
Clamshell
Memories Discipline, Humor, and the Power of Nonviolence
by one participant
issue
of Peacework e-magazine devoted to Clamshell
Seabrook
Nuclear Power Plant protest - late 1970s
October
7, 1989
Tens
of thousands (estimates ranged from 40,000 to 150,000)
from
all over the country marched on Washington, lobbied Congress
and Housing Sec. Jack Kemp to provide affordable housing for
the homeless. Some of the signs read, “Build Houses,
Not Bombs.”
Kemp signed a letter committing the George H.W. Bush administration
to several steps to help the homeless, including setting aside
about 5000 government-owned single-family houses for them.
October
7, 1998
Matthew
Shepard
Matthew
Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming,
was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post
outside Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. His
death helped awaken the nation to the persecution of
homosexuals and their victimization as objects of hate
crimes.
A play about the incident, and later an HBO movie, “The Laramie
Project,” has been performed all over the country.
More
about the movie
read
more Matthews's
Place
October
8, 1945
President Harry S Truman announced
that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only
with Great Britain and Canada.President Harry S Truman announced
that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only
with Great Britain and Canada.
October
8, 1982
Solidarnosc
leader Lech Walesa, 1982
The
Polish Parliament overwhelmingly approved a law banning Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity),
the independent trade union that had captured the imagination
and allegiance of nearly 10 million Poles. The law abolished
all existing labor organizations, including Solidarity, whose
15 months of existence brought hope to people in Poland and
around the world but drew the anger of the Soviet and other
Eastern-bloc (Warsaw Pact) governments. The parliament created
a new set of unions with severely restricted rights.
October
9, 1919
The
International Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded
in Bilthoven, the
Netherlands. Its members have since been active in promoting
programs and activities for reconciliation, peace-building,
active nonviolence, and conflict resolution.
more
about FOR
October
9, 1990
The U.S.
began making reparations payments to survivors and families
of Japanese-Americans taken from their homes put into internment
(or concentration) camps during World War II.
The
payments were a result of the Civil Liberties Act of
1988 signed by President Reagan. Popularly known as the
Japanese American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged
that "a grave injustice was done" and mandated
Congress to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in
reparations. The first nine redress payments were made
at a Washington, D.C. ceremony. 107-year-old Rev. Mamoru
Eto of Los Angeles was the first to receive his check.
A
chronology of internment during WWII
Some
of the housing in the concentration camps was in former
horse stalls.
Note: In
the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted
of spying for Japan, all of whom were Caucasian.
October
9, 1991
Women
In Black in Belgrade (Zene u Crnom) began regular weekly
silent vigils in Republic Square. They stood to protest
the nationalist violence that had erupted in the disintegration
of Yugoslavia. They encouraged men who refused to serve
in the military, and engaged in many educational efforts.
They were initially encouraged by “Women Visiting
Difficult Places,” a group of Italian women who encouraged
women on both “sides” in conflict-ridden countries
to communicate. They in turn were inspired by Israeli Jewish
women who organized in 1988 during the first intifada to
protest their country’s occupation of Palestinian
territories, and held vigils in as many as forty locations,
later joined by Israeli Palestinians.
A
Short History Of Women In Black
Women
In Black • New York City
October
9, 2007
The
Imagine Peace Tower, a work conceived by Yoko Ono and dedicated
to John Lennon’s
memory, was dedicated on the island of Videy, within sight
of Reykjavik, Iceland. The LennonOno Grant for Peace will be
awarded there each year. Iceland was chosen because Iceland
has no standing army and it is a world leader on the environment.
The installation bears the inscription, Imagine Peace, in 24
languages. The Tower is lit the first week of Spring, on October
9 and December 8 (the dates of Lennon’s birth and death)
and on New Year’s Eve. The electricity comes solely from
the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant.
Note:
A few peace buttons from peacebuttons.info were buried
in a time capsule at the base of the Imagine Peace Tower.
October
10, 1699
The Spanish issued a royal decree
which stated that every African-American who came to St. Augustine,
Florida, and adopted Catholicism would be free and protected
from the English.
October
10, 1963
The
Limited Test Ban Treaty—banning nuclear tests in
the oceans, in the atmosphere, and in outer space—went
into effect. The nuclear powers of the time—the United
States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—had signed
the treaty earlier in the year.
Linus
Pauling
In
1957, Nobel Prize-winner (Chemistry) Linus Pauling drafted
the Scientists' Bomb-Test Appeal with two colleagues, Barry
Commoner and Ted Condon, eventually gaining the support of
11,000 scientists from 49 countries for an end to the testing
of nuclear weapons. These included Bertrand Russell, Albert
Einstein, and Albert Schweitzer.
Pauling then took the resolution to Dag Hammarskjöld,
then Secretary-General of the United Nations, and sent copies
to both President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita
Kruschev. The final treaty had many similarities to Pauling’s
draft. It went into effect the same day as the announcement
of Pauling’s second Nobel Prize, this time for Peace.
October
10, 1967
The Outer Space Treaty (Treaty on
Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration
and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial
Bodies) demilitarizing outer space went into force.
It
sought to avoid "a new form of colonial competition" as
in the Antarctic Treaty, and the possible damage that
self-seeking exploitation might cause. Discussions on
banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit had begun
among the major powers ten years earlier.
read
more
1949
painting by Frank Tinsley of the infamous "Military
Space Platform"
proposed
by then Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the December
1948 military budget.
The
text of the treaty plus the signatorie
October
10, 1986
Elliott
Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American
affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
(in closed executive session) that he did not know that Marine
Lt. Col. Oliver North, a White House employee in the Reagan
administration, was directing illegal arms sales to Iran
and diverting the proceeds to assist the Nicaraguan contras.
Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to withholding information on the
Iran-contra affair during that congressional testimony, but
was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.
Elliott
Abrams
Presidents
George W. Bush &
George
H.W. Bush
Oliver
North
read
more about the pardons
October
10, 1987
Thirty
thousand Germans demonstrated against construction of a
large-scale nuclear reprocessing installation at Wackersdorf
in mostly rural northern Bavaria.
October
10, 2002
The
House voted 296-133 to pass the “Joint Resolution to Authorize the
Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” giving
President George W. Bush broad authority to use military
force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without
U.N. support.
October
11, 1987
More than
half a million people flooded Washington, D.C., demanding
civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans, now celebrated
each year as National Coming Out Day.
Many of the marchers objected to the government's response
to the AIDS crisis, as well as the Supreme Court's 1986 decision
to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick.
The
NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was first displayed there,
bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on gay
communities, a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels
each a tribute to the life of one who had been lost in
the pandemic.
The AIDS quilt, first displayed in 1987 in Washington, DC
October
12, 1492
Natives of islands off
the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer
Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route
to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October
12, 1945
Pfc. Desmond Doss
became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist,
enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays.
On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved
the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them,
one by one, down a 400-foot cliff. The guest house at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor.
October
12, 1958
A Reform
Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed
with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support
of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s
Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of
civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally.
Review
and interview with the author
October
12, 1967
British
zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his
book, “The Naked
Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist's
perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic
abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals
at the London Zoo.
read
more
October
12, 1967
"A Call to
Resist Illegitimate Authority" appeared in The Nation
and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including
academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every
free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every
effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with
it, and to encourage others to do the same.”
This document became the main basis for the federal government's
criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five
of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell
Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin.
read
the Call
October
12, 1970
Lt. William Calley was court-martialled
for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village
of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident.
The
full sad story (general)
Lt.
Calley
(link/viewer
caution advised:)
October
12, 1977
“Regents
of the University of California v. Bakke" was argued
in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the
University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment's
equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted
in the repeated rejection of Bakke's application for admission
to its medical school?
Listen
to the oral argument in front of the Supreme Court:
October
13, 1934
The
American Federation of Labor (AFL) voted to boycott all
German-made products as a protest against Nazi antagonism
to organized labor within Germany.
October
14, 1943
As
the result of an uprising at the Sobibor extermination
camp in
Poland, about 300 of its Jewish prisoners escaped,
though only about 50 survived until the end of the war. Following
the escape, the remaining inmates were killed and the camp
was promptly closed by the Germans. Though Sobibor’s
six gas chambers could exterminate 1200 people at a time, it
was the smallest of the death camps.
Some of the people who took
part in the uprising at Sobibor (picture taken in 1944).
The
story of Sobibor
October
14, 1979
The first national gay and lesbian march for civil rights in Washington,
D.C., drew over 100,000 demanding an end to all social, economic,
judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people.
a
photo gallery of the march
October
14, 1981
Dock
workers in Darwin, Australia, began a seven-day strike,
refusing to load uranium on board "Pacific Sky" for
eventual use by the U.S. military. After a week, the
ship was forced to leave without its cargo.
October
15, 1965
In
demonstrations organized by the student-run National Coordinating
Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning
of a draft card in the United States took place.
These
demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across
the country. In New York City, David Miller, a young
Catholic pacifist, became the first U.S. war protester
to burn his draft card, doing so in direct violation
of a recently passed federal law forbidding such acts.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation later
arrested him; he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced
to two years’ imprisonment.
Memoirs
of a Draft-Card Burner
David
Miller burning his draft card, 1965.
October
15, 1966
Huey
Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense in Oakland, California. Its revolutionary
agenda, and the fact that its members, all U.S. citizens,
were armed, prompted FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to refer to
it as as "the greatest threat to the internal security
of the United States."
Read
the Panthers’ Ten Point Platform and Program:
<First
6 members - Top Left to Right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard;
Huey P. Newton, Sherman Forte, Chairman, Bobby Seale.
Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton.
Bobby
Seale(L) and Huey Newton(R)>
Black
Panther Party Legacy and Alumni
October
15, 1966
The "Endangered Species Preservation Act" became
law. It allowed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to identify
plant and animal varieties threatened with extinction, and
to acquire land to preserve their habitats.
How
the law has evolved
October
15, 1969
22
million took part in the National Moratorium, a protest
against the continuing war in Vietnam. This was
an effort by David Hawk and Sam Brown, two anti-war activists,
to forge a broad-based movement against the war.
The
organization initially focused its effort on 300 college
campuses, but the idea soon grew and spread beyond colleges
and universities. Hawk and Brown were assisted by the New
Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which
was instrumental in organizing the nationally coordinated
demonstrations.
One
of the largest of the many events involved 100,000 people
converging on Boston Common, but activities nationwide
also included smaller rallies, marches, and prayer vigils.
The demonstrations involved a broad spectrum of the population,
including many who had never before raised their voices
against the war. This was considered unprecedented: Walter
Cronkite (then CBS news anchor) called it "historic
in its scope. Never before had so many demonstrated their
hope for peace."
Later, a declassified Kissinger (then Nixon’s National
Security Advisor) file revealed that these protests discouraged
a plan by Nixon to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
read
more
Reissued
The
original Vietnam Moratoium Peace Dove button
October
16, 1649
The British colony of Maine
granted religious freedom to all citizens the same year that
King Charles I was excommunicated
from the Roman Catholic church.
October
16, 1859
Abolitionist
John Brown led a group of 21 other men, five black and sixteen
white, in a raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
John
Brown
They
had hoped to set off a slave revolt — throughout
the south — with the weapons they had planned to
seize. Virtually all his compatriots were killed or captured
by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s troops; Brown was wounded
and arrested, and hanged for treason within two months.
read
more
The
Tragic Prelude (John Brown)
mural
by John Steuart Curry (1937-1942)
Former
slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said
of Brown that he was a white man "in sympathy a
black man, as deeply interested in our cause as though
his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery."
October
16, 1901
Pres.
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, founder
of the Tuskegee Institute and the most prominent African
American of his time, to a meeting in the White House.
The meeting went long and the president asked Washington
to stay for dinner, the first black person ever to do so.
<
Pres. Theodore Roosevelt
Newspapers
in the both the South and North were critical, but the
South with more venom. The Memphis "Scimiter" said
that it was "the most damnable outrage that has ever
been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Roosevelt
claimed he had invited a friend to dinner with his family
and it was no one else's business.
<
Booker T. Washington
October
16, 1934
Dick
Sheppard, who volunteered and joined the Army as a chaplain
in World
War I, started the Peace Pledge Union in England. In a
letter published in The Guardian newspaper and elsewhere,
Sheppard, a well-known priest in the Church of England,
invited those who would be willing to join a public demonstration
against war to send him a postcard. Within a few weeks
he had received 30,000 replies. Members of the Peace Pledge
Union vowed to “renounce war and never again to support
another.”
read
more
Rev.
Sheppard had been the first ever to broadcast religious
services on the radio and, when Vicar of St. Martin-in-the
Fields, Trafalgar Square, he had opened the building to
the homeless of London.
“Up
to now the peace movement has received its main support
from women, but it seems high time now that men should
throw their weight into the scales against war.” -Dick
Sheppard
October
16, 1964
China detonated its first atomic bomb, becoming the fifth
nuclear-armed nation. The 20-kiloton fission device (equivalent
to 20,000 tons of TNT) was detonated in the vicinity of Lop
Nor, a lake in a remote region of the Central Asian province
of Sinkiang.
" To defend oneself is the inalienable right of every sovereign
State. And to safeguard world peace is the common task of
all peace-loving countries. China cannot remain idle and
do nothing in the face of the ever-increasing nuclear threat
posed by the United States.
China
is forced to conduct nuclear tests and develop nuclear
weapons . . . In developing nuclear weapons, China's
aim is to break the nuclear monopoly of the nuclear Powers
and to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Chou En-lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, sent messages to all heads of government
for a world summit conference on nuclear disarmament. U.S. Secretary of State
Dean Rusk told a news conference that the United States did not regard Communist
China's proposal "as having any practical value."
Deng
Jiaxian. The father of the chinese bomb.
Bizarre film of the Chinese test
from TRINITY AND BEYOND™
(The
Atomic Bomb Movie), a documentary by Peter Kuran
More on Peter
Kuran’s
award-winning film
October
16, 1967
Folksinger
Joan Baez was arrested in a peace demonstration as rallies
took place across America during “Stop the Draft
Week.” 1158 young men returned their draft cards
in eighteen U.S. cities. Baez was among 122 anti-draft
protesters arrested for sitting down at the entrance of
the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California;
she was sentenced to 10 days in prison.
read
more
Joan
Baez the day after the arrest
October
16, 1968
During medal
presentations at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico
City, winning sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised
their black-gloved fists while the U.S. national anthem
was played. They were suspended from the team by the U.S.
Olympic Committee two days later. Smith later told the
media that he raised his right fist in the air to represent
black power in America while Carlos's left fist represented
unity in black America.
read
more
October
16, 1973
Henry
Kissinger
U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, though accused of
war crimes
by some for the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia, was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with North Vietnam’s
Le Duc Tho (who refused the honor) for the cease-fire agreement
they had negotiated. This occurred just a month after the
bloody military coup, fully supported by the Nixon administration
and aided by the CIA, that overturned the democratically
elected government of Chile, and installed Gen. Augusto
Pinochet as military dictator for the next 17 years.
October
16, 1984
Desmond Tutu, the archbishop of South Africa, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in fighting apartheid. He has gone on to be a relentless advocate for justice around the world.
Desmond Tutu - Nobel peace prize recipient
October
16, 1998
In
a human rights and international law breakthrough, British
authorities, after receiving an extradition request from
Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, placed former Chilean
dictator, and senator-for-life, Gen. Augusto Pinochet
under arrest for "crimes of genocide and terrorism
that include murder."
Augusto
Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher
chronology
of Pinochet’s rule
October
16th every year
United
Nations’ World
Food Day is recognized every year. About the annual day of hunger awareness
October
17, 1898
The U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. One year
after Spain granted Puerto Rican self-rule, following
their rout in the Spanish-American War, troops raised
the U.S. flag over the Caribbean island nation, formalizing
American authority over the island's one million inhabitants.
Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth, though
the U.S. controls all aspects of its military, trade, media,
banking and international affairs. Though Puerto Ricans
are citizens, they don’t pay income taxes, nor are
they represented in Congress or able to vote for president.
a
history of the struggle for Puerto Rican Independence
October
17th, every year
International
Day for the Eradication of Poverty was designated by the United
Nations in 1992. It began in 1987 when 100,000 people gathered
in Paris and declared poverty a violation of human rights.
This
year’s events on the
60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
October
18, 1648
I.
Marc Carlson
The
Shoemakers Guild of Boston became the first labor union
in the American colonies.
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.
The other women activists in the Famous Five: Henrietta Muir
Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby.
Sculpture
by Barbara Paterson of the Famous Five in Ottawa, first
on Parliament Hill to honor women
The
Persons Case
October
19, 1923
The War Resisters League was founded in New York
City.
WRL
history
Above:
One of the founders, Jessie Wallace Hughan (r), 1942
photo:
WRL/Swarthmore Peace Collection
The War Resisters League
site with a comprehensive list of ongoing peace activities
October
19, 1960
Martin Luther King, Jr., and 36 others were jailed
after being arrested during a sit-in at the snack bar
of Atlanta's Rich's department store where they requested
service and were refused on account of their race.
read
more
October
19, 1980
J.P.
Stevens & Co. was
forced to sign its first contract with a union after a
17-year struggle in North Carolina and other southern states.
The workers, organized by the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile
Workers Union, were supported by a widespread boycott of
Stevens products by labor, progressive and religious organizations.
read
more
October
20, 1947
The
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened
public hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood.
To counter what they claimed were reckless attacks by
HUAC, a group of motion picture industry luminaries,
led by actor Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall,
John Huston, William Wyler, Gene Kelly and others, established
the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA).
read
more
October
20, 1962
A
folk music album, "Peter, Paul and Mary," hit
No. 1 on U.S. record sales charts. The group’s music
addressed real issues – war, civil rights, poverty – and
became popular across the United States. The trio's version
of "If I Had A Hammer" was not only a popular single,
but was also embraced as an anthem by the civil rights movement.
About
Peter, Paul and Mary
October
20, 1967
The
biggest demonstration to date against American involvement
in the Vietnamese War took place in Oakland, California.
An estimated 5,000-10,000 people poured onto the streets
to demonstrate in a fifth day of massive protests against
the conscription of soldiers to serve in the war. [see
October 16, 1969]
read
more
October
20, 1973
In
what was immediately called the "Saturday Night Massacre," Pres.
Richard Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, announced that
Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox had been dismissed.
Cox had been investigating Nixon, his administration and re-election
campaign. Nixon had demanded that he rescind his subpoena for
White House recordings.
Archibald Cox
Earlier
in the day, Attorney General Elliot Richardson had resigned,
and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus had been
fired, both for refusing to dismiss Cox. Solicitor General
Robert Bork, filling the vacuum left by the departure of
his two Justice Department superiors, fired Cox at the
president’s direction.
Richard Nixon
October
21, 1837
The
U.S. Army, enforcing Pres. Andrew Jackson’s 1830
Indian Removal Act, captured Seminole Indian leader Osceola
(meaning "Black Drink") by inviting him to a
peace conference and then seizing him and nineteen others,
though they had come under a flag of truce. Under the law,
they and the others of the “Five Tribes” (Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Creeks and Cherokees) were to be moved, by
force if necessary, west of the Mississippi to Indian Territory
(Arkansas and Oklahoma).
The Seminole had moved to Florida (then under the control of
Spain) from South Carolina and Georgia as they were forced
from their ancestral lands, then forced further south into
the Everglades where they settled.
read
more
Osceola
painted by George Catlin, 1838
October
21, 1967
In
Washington, D.C., more than 100,000 demonstrators from
all over the country surrounded the reflecting pool between
the Washington and Lincoln monuments in a largely peaceful
protest to end the Vietnam War.
It
was organized by "the Mobe," the National Mobilization
Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Some then marched
on, encircled and attempted to storm the Pentagon in
what some considered to be civil disobedience; 682 were
arrested and dozens injured.
This protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and
Western Europe, the most violent of which occurred outside
the U.S. Embassy in London where 3,000 demonstrators attempted
to storm the building.
at
the Pentagon
Read
two different accounts of the day with photographs:
October
21, 1983
In
the first public action of the new Seattle Nonviolent
Action Group (SNAG), 12 people blockaded the Boeing Cruise
Missile plant in Kent, Washington; none were arrested.
October
21, 1994
In
an "Agreed Framework" to "freeze" North
Korea's nuclear program, the United States and North Korea
(Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea or DPRK) agreed
over the next 10 years to construct two new proliferation-resistant
light water-moderated nuclear power reactors (LWRs) in exchange
for the shutdown of all their existing nuclear facilities.
The DPRK also agreed to allow 8,000 spent nuclear reactor fuel
elements to be removed to a third country; to remain a party
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and to allow
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In the deal negotiated by Ambassador at Large Robert Gallucci,
the U.S. agreed to normalize economic and diplomatic relations
with Pyongyang and to provide formal assurances against the
threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States.
The
details of the agreement and what has followed
Interview with Robert Gallucci, Dean, Walsh School
of Foreign Service, Georgetown U.
October
22, 1963
200,000 students boycotted Chicago schools
to protest de facto segregation.
October
22, 1968
More
than 300,000 protesters marked International Antiwar Day
in Japan. The U.S. war in Vietnam and the ongoing (since
the end of World War II) and massive American military
presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa helped swell
the ranks of the demonstrators; nearly 1400 were arrested.
October
22, 1979
The
deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, arrived
in New York for medical treatment from Mexico. He received
permission to do so from the U.S. government (which had
installed him as shah in a 1954 coup) despite warning
from the newly established Islamic republic in Iran demanding
that the Shah be turned over to them for trial.
more
on the Shah
October
22, 1983
Capping a week of protests, more than two million people
in six European cities marched against U.S. deployment
of Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles: 1.2 million
Germans, including 180,000 in Bonn; a 64-mile human
chain between Stuttgart and New Ulm (and Hamburg,
W. Berlin); 350,000 Rome; 100,000 Vienna; 25,000
Paris; 20,000 Stockholm; 4000 Dublin; plus 140 sites
in U.S.
In London, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held
its biggest protest ever against nuclear missiles with
an estimated one million people taking part.
read
more
October
23, 1915
33,000
women marched in New York City demanding the right to vote.
Known as the "banner parade" because of the multitude
of flags and banners carried, it began at 2 o'clock in
the afternoon and continued until long after dark, attracting
a record-breaking crowd of spectators. Motor cars brought
up the rear decorated with Chinese lanterns; once darkness
fell, Fifth Avenue was a mass of moving colored lights.
Myths
and misconceptions spread by the opponents of women’s
suffrage
October
23, 1945
Jackie Robinson and pitcher John Wright were signed by Branch Rickey,
president of the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club, to play on a
Dodger farm team, the Montreal Royals of the International League.
Robinson
became the first black baseball player to play on a
major league team.
Jackie
Robinson
October
23, 1947
The
NAACP filed formal charges with the United Nations accusing
the United States of racial discrimination. "An
Appeal to the World," edited by W.E.B. DuBois,
was a factual study of the denial of the right to vote,
and grievances against educational discrimination and
lack of other social rights. This appeal spurred President
Truman to create a civil rights commission.
W.E.B.
DuBois
October
23, 1956
The
Hungarian revolution began with tens of thousands of people
taking to the streets to demand an end to Soviet rule. More
than 250,000 people, including students, workers, and soldiers,
demonstrated in Budapest in support of the insurrection in
Poland, demanding reforms in Hungary.
Hungarian
students,1956
The
day before, the students had produced a list of sixteen
demands, including the removal of Soviet troops, the
organization of multi-party democratic elections, and
the restoration of freedom of speech. On the evening
of the 23rd a large crowd pulled down the statue of Josef
Stalin in Felvonulási Square.
read
more
Hungarian
revolution monument
October
23, 1984
The Fact-Finding Board looking into the assassination
of Filipino democratic leader Benigno Aquino confirmed that
his death was the result of a military conspiracy, and indicted
Chief-of-Staff Gen. Fabian Ver, the first cousin of dictator
Ferdinand Marcos.
Marcos had blamed the chair of the Communist Party for the
assassination, despite the fact that Aquino had been in the
custody of the Aviation Security Command and surrounded by
military personnel as he disembarked from the plane returning
him to the Philippines. The chair of the Board, Corazon J.
Agrava, was pressured into submitting a minority report clearing
Gen. Ver. He and the 25 other military officials charged were
all acquitted.
October
23, 1994
In
an "Agreed Framework" to "freeze" North
Korea's nuclear program, the United States and North Korea
(Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea or DPRK) agreed
over the next 10 years to construct two new proliferation-resistant
light water-moderated nuclear power reactors (LWRs) in exchange
for the shutdown of all their existing nuclear facilities.
The DPRK also agreed to allow 8,000 spent nuclear reactor fuel
elements to be removed to a third country; to remain a party
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and to allow
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In the deal negotiated by Ambassador at Large Robert Gallucci,
the U.S. agreed to normalize economic and diplomatic relations
with Pyongyang and to provide formal assurances against the
threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States.
The
details of the agreement and what has followed
Interview with Robert Gallucci, Dean, Walsh School
of Foreign Service, Georgetown U.
October
24, 1935
Langston
Hughes's first play, "Mulatto," opened on Broadway.
It was the longest-running play (373 performances) by an
African-American until Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin
in the Sun" which premiered in 1959.
First-rate brief bio of Langston Hughes
Langston
Hughes
October
24, 1940
The 40-hour workweek
went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,
requiring employers to pay overtime and restricting the use
of child labor.
Decades of labor agitation and a considerable
number of lives made this change possible.
Background on the struggle
to end child labor:
October
24, 1945
The
United Nations World Security Organization came into being
when the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
or USSR) in mid-afternoon deposited its instrument of ratification
of the U.N. Charter. The USSR became the last of the five
major powers and the 29th of 51 nations, the minimum necessary
to bring this about. James F. Byrnes, U.S. Secretary of
State, then signed the protocol formally attesting that
the Charter of the United Nations had come into force.
This is now considered United Nations Day.
read
more
October
24, 1970
Salvador Allende Gossens,
an avowed Marxist and head of the Unidad Popular Party, became
the president of Chile after being elected and confirmed
by the Chilean Congress.
For
the next three years, the United States exerted tremendous
pressure to destabilize and unseat the Allende government.
In 1958, and again in 1964, Allende had run on a socialist
/communist platform. In both elections, the United States
government (as well as U.S. businesses such as International
Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), which had significant
investments in Chile) worked to defeat Allende by sending
millions of dollars of assistance to his political opponents.
Allende
and supporters
more on Allende
October
24, 1981
More than 250,000 people, organized by the Committee for
Nuclear Disarmament (CND), marched through London to protest
the siting of American nuclear missiles in the United Kingdom.
Watch footage of the march
More background
October
25, 1955
Sadako
Sasaki, following the Japanese custom of folding paper
cranes – symbols of good fortune and longevity – persisted
daily in folding cranes, hoping to create senbazuru (1000
paper cranes strung together) when a person's dream is
believed to come true, died.
the
Sadako story
Sadako
Sasaki
Sadako
was two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and at 12 was diagnosed with Leukemia, "the atom bomb" disease.
Children’s
Peace Monument in Hiroshima showing Sadako holding a
golden crane
Photo:
Mark Bledstein
October
26, 1916
Margaret Sanger and her sister were arrested
for disseminating birth control information at her Brownsville
Clinic in Brooklyn; she was arrested again a few weeks later
for the same reason and the police shut the clinic down within
10 days.
Margaret Sanger
October
26, 1970
"Doonesbury",
a cartoon series addressing political and social issues written
by Garry Trudeau, and initially published in a the Yale
Daily News when Trudeau was a student, debuted in 28 newspapers.
read
Doonesbury
Garry
Trudeau, 1976
October
26, 1986
Pres. Ronald Reagan vetoed a bill passed by the Congress
that would have imposed trade sanctions on the racially separatist
apartheid regime of South Africa.
October
26, 1994
Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Jordanian Prime Minister
Abdelsalam al-Majali, with President Clinton in attendance,
formally signed a peace treaty ending 46 years of war at a
ceremony in the desert area of Wadi Araba on the Israeli-Jordanian
border. President of Israel Ezer Weizman shook hands with Jordan’s
King Hussein.
read
more
October
27, 1659
William Robinson and Marmaduke
Stevenson, two Quakers (formally, members of the Society
of Friends) who came from England in 1656 to escape religious
persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
for their religious beliefs. The two had violated a law,
passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before,
banning Quakers from the colony under penalty of death.
Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek
spiritual insight and consensus through egalitarian Quaker
meetings. They advocated sexual equality and became some of
the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America.
October
27, 1967
Phillip
Berrigan, artist Tom Lewis, poet David Eberhardt, and United
Church of Christ minister James Mengel, members of the Baltimore
Interfaith Peace Mission, entered the draft board at the
United States Customs House and poured duck’s blood
on several hundred draft records.
The
Baltimore Four, as they became known, were arrested and later
tried and convicted for the action which they saw as a symbolic
act of civil disobedience — a nonviolent attack on
the machinery of war. This day later became known as Plowshare
Action Remembrance Day.
read more
Phillip Berrigan pouring blood on draft files
Berrigan in his jail cell
drawning by Tom Lewis
October
27, 1967
120,000
marched against the Vietnam War in London. Violence erupted
when a 6,000-strong Maoist splinter group broke away and
charged the police outside the United States Embassy in
Grosvenor Square.
read more
October
27, 1969
Ralph
Nader set up a consumer organization with young lawyers
and researchers (often called "Nader's Raiders")
who produced systematic exposés of industrial hazards,
pollution, unsafe products, and governmental neglect of
consumer safety laws.
Ralph
Nader (center)
Nader
is widely recognized as the founder of the consumer rights
movement. He played a key role in the creation of the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
the Freedom of Information Act, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety
Commission.
Recollections
of some of Nader’s raiders
read
more
October
27, 2002
Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil
in a runoff, becoming the country's first elected leftist
leader.
read
more
Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva
October
28th
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October
29, 1940
The first national lottery for drafting young men
(21-35) was held after passage of the first compulsory peacetime
draft in United States. At the time the U.S. Army was smaller
than that of Poland.
What is was like
Recommended: Washington
Goes to War by
David Brinkley
October
29, 1966
National
Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Washington,
D.C. The 30 attendees at that first meeting elected Betty
Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, as NOW's first
president.
read
about NOW
Betty
Friedan
October
29, 1969
anti
ROTC demo
One
hundred demonstrators disrupted the University of Buffalo’s
ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) with "nonviolent
ridicule." The urgency of opposition to the Vietnam
War made many military-related activities targets of anti-war
activity that had previously seemed otherwise legitimate.
a contemporaneous account
October
29, 1969
U.S. Federal
Judge Julius Hoffman ordered a defendant in the courtroom
gagged and chained to a chair during his trial after he repeatedly
asserted his right to an attorney of his own choosing or
to defend himself.
The
defendant, Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale, and seven
others had been charged with conspiring to cross state lines "with
the intent to incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate
in, and carry out a riot" by organizing the anti-war
demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National
Convention.
The Chicago Eight included Seale, David Dellinger, Rennie
Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner,
and John Froines.
Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen,
an animated film about the trial
October
29, 1975
In "Alice
Doesn't Day," tens of thousands of women in cities
across the US took to the streets to demand equality. Defying
mounted police, 50,000 marched down New York City's 5th
Avenue. Dutch women marched on the U.S. embassy in Amsterdam
to show their support, while French feminists demonstrated
at the Arc de Triomphe, carrying a banner that read: "More
Unknown Than the Unknown Soldier: His Wife."
Alice
Doesn’t Day from the perspective of one of the participants
October
29, 1983
Because
the U.S. planned to site 48 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles
in their country, over 500,000 Dutch took part
in a rally in the Netherlands’ capital city, The Hague.
The numbers at the protest were swelled by anger over the U.S.
invasion of Grenada, a small Caribbean island, earlier in the
week.
what
was happening
October
30, 1967
Martin Luther King, Jr. and seven
other clergymen were jailed for four days in Birmingham,
Alabama. They were serving sentences on contempt-of-court
charges stemming from Easter 1963 demonstrations they had
led against discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld their convictions for violating
a court order enjoining them from marching [Walker
v. Birmingham].
Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor
had twice denied them a parade permit. The law Connor used
was declared unconstitutional two years later [Shuttlesworth
v. City of Birmingham].
Over 80
people were arrested at Sugarloaf Mountain in southern Oregon
during a massive direct action to prevent clear-cutting of
old-growth forests on public land by private timber companies.
Sugarloaf
protest
October
30, 2000
George Mizo of the United States, Rosi
Hohn-Mizo of Germany (his wife) and Georges Doussin of France
were awarded Vietnam's
first-ever State Medal of Friendship by the President of
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for their work in building
the Vietnam Friendship Village.
The
Vietnam Friendship Village after five years; the medical
clinic is in the foreground, other buildings are residences.
Mizo
and the Vietnam Veterans Association built a residential
facility for orphan children and elderly or disabled adults.
George Mizo was a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the
struggle to end U.S. support of the contra insurgency in
Nicaragua, and repressive regimes elsewhere in Central
America
[see September 15, 1986].
General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam’s senior military commander during both
the French and American wars advised the Mizo’s 12-year-old son, Michael, “Never
go to war.”
A
Brief History of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project
October
31, 1929
George
Henry Evans, an English-born printer and journalist, published
the first issue of the Working Man’s Advocate, “edited
by a Mechanic” for the “useful and industrious
classes” of New York City. Evan covered the Workingmen’s
Party (which he helped found) and the early trade union movement.
In his Prospectus, Evans focused on the inequities between
the “portion of society living in luxury and idleness” and
those “groaning under the oppressions and miseries imposed
on them.” He advocated “a system of education which
shall be equally open to all, as in a real republic it should
be” and opposed “every thing which savors of a
union of church and state.”
Evans became a U.S. citizen one week later.
October
31, 1950
Earl
Lloyd became the first of three African Americans who began
to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA) when
he started with the Washington Capitols. He and Jim Tucker
went on to become the first African Americans to play on
a championship team in 1955 as members of the Syracuse Nationals,
which is now the Philadelphia 76ers.
After retiring as a player, Lloyd was a Detroit Pistons assistant
coach for two seasons and a scout for five.
October
31, 1952
The
U.S. successfully detonated "Mike," the world's
first hydrogen (or fusion) bomb, in the atmosphere at the Eniwetok
Proving Grounds on the Elugelab Atoll, part of the Marshall
Islands in the southern Pacific.
The 10.4-megaton device was the first thermonuclear device built
upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion.
Mike's
Mushroom cloud
The
incredible explosive force of Mike was apparent from the
sheer magni tude of its mushroom cloud – within
90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and
entered the stratosphere
at a rate of 400 mph. One minute later it reached 108,000 feet,
eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an
hour after the test, the mushroom stretched sixty miles across,
with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.
The explosion wiped Elugelab off the face of the planet, leaving
a crater more than 50 meters (175 feet) deep, and destroyed
life on the surrounding islands.
The
details and the results
Front page of the Times and
how the world found out
October
31, 1958
The U.S., the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics aka Soviet Union) and Great Britain began
negotiations in
Geneva on whether to let the nuclear testing moratorium become
a permanent test ban. General Secretary Nikita Kruschev had
unilaterally declared a moratorium on Soviet testing earlier
in the year, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold
MacMillan following suit in August.
There had been growing concern over the health effects of radioactive
fallout in the atmosphere from the nuclear explosions. Nonetheless,
all three nations did further last-minute tests before the
moratorium took effect.
October
31, 1972
20-POINT POSITION PAPER
PREAMBLE
AN INDIAN MANIFESTO FOR RESTITUTION, REPARATIONS, RESTORATION
OF LANDS FOR A RECONSTRUCTION OF AN INDIAN FUTURE IN AMERICA
THE TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES: "We
need not give another recitation of past complaints nor engage
in redundant dialogue of discontent. Our
conditions and their cause for being should perhaps be
best known by those who have written the record of America's
action
against Indian people. In 1832, Black Hawk correctly
observed: You know the cause of our making war. It is known
to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it.
The government of the United States knows the reasons for
our going to its capital city. Unfortunately, they
don't know how to greet us. We go because America has been
only too
ready to express shame, and suffer none from the expression
- while remaining wholly unwilling to change to allow life
for Indian people.
We seek a new American majority - a majority that is not
content merely to confirm itself by superiority in numbers,
but which
by conscience is committed toward prevailing upon the public
will in ceasing wrongs and in doing right. For our part,
in words and deeds of coming days, we propose to produce a
rational, reasoned manifesto for construction of an Indian
future in America. If America has maintained faith
with its original spirit, or may recognize it now, we should
not
be denied.”
October
31, 1978
30,000
Iranian oil workers went on strike against the repressive
rule of the U.S.-installed Shah and for democracy, civil
and human rights.
Photo:
December 1978 issue of Resistance. A publication of the Iranian
Students Association in the U.S. (ISAUS)
read
more
Striking Iranian oil workers.
October
31, 1984
Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot to death by two Sikh
members of her own security guard while walking in the garden
of her New Delhi home. Gandhi's son, Rajiv,
a member of parliament and a leader in the Congress-I Party,
was sworn in as Prime Minister following the assassination.
This
Week In History compiled by peacebuttons.info from various
sources
which are available upon request.
Submissions are always welcome. Please furnish sources. cb@peacebuttons.info
Reproduction
of this calendar for non-profit purposes
is permitted and encouraged. Please credit/link to www.peacebuttons.info
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti outside City Lights
Matthew
Shepard
Elliott
Abrams
Oliver
North
Henry
Kissinger
Ralph
Nader (center)
anti
ROTC demo 
Mike's
Mushroom cloud
Photo:
December 1978 issue of Resistance. A publication of the Iranian
Students Association in the U.S. (ISAUS)