December

December 1, 1891 

The International Peace Bureau was launched in Berne, Switzerland, “...to coordinate the activities of the various peace societies and promote the concept of peaceful settlement of international disputes.”

December 1, 1948 

Following the civil war in 1948, Costa Rican president Pepe Figueres constitutionally abolished the army and the Constitution prohibits presidential re-election. Money not spent on a military allows for one of the highest literacy rates in the continent, ninety-four percent.

December 1, 1955 

Rosa Parks, a black seamstress active in the local NAACP, was arrested by police in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Mrs. Parks faced a fine for breaking the segregation laws which said blacks had to vacate their seats if there are white passengers left standing.
Mrs. Parks had not been the first to defy the Jim Crow law but her arrest sparked the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. The Montgomery bus company couldn’t survive without the revenue from its black passengers who, for the next year, created car pools and other means to avoid using the city busses. The boycott was successful and Mrs. Parks became known as the "mother of the civil rights movement."

read more about Rosa Parks

December 1, 1966 

Comedian Dick Gregory was convicted in Olympia, Washington for his participation in a Nisqually Native American fishing rights protest.

read more

December 2, 1914 

Karl Liebknecht was the only member of German Parliament to vote against war with France and Britain.

read more

Karl Liebnecht

December 2, 1942

The result of this experiment made the atomic bomb possible and ushered in the nuclear age. Upon successful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world."

December 2, 1954

The U.S. Senate voted 65 to 22 to censure Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."

The condemnation, with all the Democrats and about half the Republicans voting against him, and was related to McCarthy's controversial, abusive and indiscriminate investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society. The House of Representatives and many states continued their own investigations.

read more

December 2, 1961

Following a year of severely strained relations between the United States and Cuba, Cuban leader Fidel Castro openly declared that he is a Marxist-Leninist.

Fidel Castro

December 2, 1964

Thousands in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement gathered on the steps of Sproul Hall, the administration building at the University of California campus to protest four students being disciplined for distributing political literature. Joan Baez performed. The next day, police arrested 773 who began a sit-in at Sproul Hall. 10,000 more students then went on strike and shut down the school.

The Free Speech Movement had began in October, when three thousand students surrounded a police car for 36 hours. Inside the car was a civil rights worker who had been arrested for distributing political literature on the UC-Berkeley campus. 

What was the Free Speech Movement?

Jack Weinberg

in police car.

December 2, 1977

Biko's funeral

A demonstration erupted outside a South African court after a magistrate ruled that security police were to be exonerated in the death of black consciousness leader Steve Biko, who died while in their custody.

His funeral had been attended by more than 15,000 mourners, not including the thousands who were turned away by the police.

Steve Biko

read about Steve Biko

December 2, 1980

Two Maryknoll nuns, one Ursuline nun and a lay missionary were raped, murdered, buried outside San Salvador, and unearthed shortly thereafter. U.S.-trained and -supported Salvadoran national guardsmen, widely known to act as death squads, were suspected.

read more

American Nuns Maura Clarke, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel - killed in El Salvador in 1980.

December 3, 1965

An all-white jury in Alabama convicted three Ku Klux Klansmen for the murder of white civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo.

Viola Liuzzo

The mother of five from Detroit was shot and killed while driving a young black activist, Leroy Moton, back to the town of Selma following a protest march to the state capital in Montgomery earlier in the year. It was later learned that one of the Klansmen in the car, Gary Thomas Rowe, was an FBI informant.

read more

Klansmen Collie Wilkins, Eugene Thomas and William Eaton at their trial

December 3, 1969

Protesters destroyed files at eight New York draft boards in protest of the

Vietnam War.

December 3, 1984

In the early morning hours, one of the worst industrial disasters in history began when American-owned Union Carbide’s pesticide plant located near the densely populated city of Bhopal in central India leaked a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate into the air.

Bhopal survivors still demanding justice 2004

Estimates of the fatalities vary widely, but of the approximately one million people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 were killed immediately, at least another 8,000 within a short time, and hundreds of thousands were injured, many still suffering today.
The U.S. blocked extradition of Union Carbide officials facing criminal prosecution in India. Union Carbide has since been purchased by Dow Chemical which continues to refuse responsibility for the incident or its victims, and has yet to clean up the site.

December 3, since 1992

The International Day of Disabled Persons was declared by the United Nations. “The annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons ... aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities ....”

2006 Theme: “E-Accessibility

December 3, 1997

The United States and approximately forty other countries have yet to sign the treaty, and fifteen countries continue to produce land mines. The Pentagon requested $1.3 billion for research on and production of two new landmine systems—Spider and Intelligent Munitions System—between fiscal years 2005 and 2011 but Congress has resisted funding the programs under pressure from nearly 500 U.S.-based organizations opposing the weapons.

Read more about the treaty:

Recent U.S. policy on land mines:

December 4, 1833

The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Philadelphia. He and his brother Lewis were active abolitionists throughout their lives, including providing legal defense for the Africans who mutinied on the slave ship Amistad.

read more

Arthur Tappan

December 4, 1916

Five members of a woman's suffragist group unrolled a banner from the visitor's gallery during President Wilson's annual message (state of the union) to Congress, asking, "Mr. President, What will you do for woman suffrage?" There was no mention of the issue in his speech.

December 4, 1967

National draft card turn-in.

December 4, 1968

December 4, 1969

President Richard Nixon, Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, and 40 U.S. governors embarked on a fact-finding mission to discover the causes of the generation gap. They viewed films of "simulated acid trips" and listened to hours of "anti-establishment rock music."

President Richard Nixon           Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew

December 4, 1970

Cesar Chavez was sentenced to 20 days in jail for refusing to call off United Farm Workers’ consumer boycott of lettuce.

read more

Lettuce & Grape boycott poster

December 4, 1980

United Nations agreed to establish the University of Peace and a short wave radio station, Radio Peace International,

in Costa Rica.

Listen to Radio for Peace International

Five days after Rosa Parks refused to give up her

bus seat to a white man, the African-American community of Montgomery, Alabama, launched their boycott of the city's bus system.

The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed to coordinate the boycott with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., elected as its president.

Out of Montgomery’s 50,000 black residents, 30,000-40,000 participated.

The boycott lasted (54 weeks) until the buses were integrated.

read more  

The American Federation of Labor, which had historically focused on organizing craft unions, merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, an organization of industrial unions, to form the AFL-CIO with a membership of nearly 15 million. George Meany was elected its first president.

read more

1,000 anti-war protesters tried to close a New York City military induction center. 585 were arrested including poet Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Simultaneous demonstrations occurred in Madison, Wisconsin, Manchester, New Hampshire, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New Haven, Connecticut.

Dr. Benjamin Spock                                      Allen Ginsberg

December 5, 1980

The United Nations adopted the charter for the University for Peace, Costa Rica.

read more

The monument sculpted by Cuban artist Thelvia Marín in 1987, is the world's largest peace monument.

December 5, 2002

At the 100th birthday celebration for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), Senate Republican leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) praised Thurmond's Dixiecrat Party 1948 presidential campaign (official slogan: “Segregation Forever!”).

President George W. Bush with Sen. Lott and Sen. Thurmond

“I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of him. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.” The reaction to this sentiment led to Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader.

December 6, 1865

Georgia provided the final vote needed for the 13th Amendment to become part of the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery.

slave auction  

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

read more

December 6, 1978

The voters of Spain approved a new constitution in a popular referendum by nearly 8-1. It proclaimed Spain to be a parliamentary monarchy and guaranteed its citizens equality before the law and a full range of individual liberties, including religious freedom. While recognizing the autonomy of the regions, it stressed the indivisibility of the Spanish state.

read more

December 6, 1998

In Venezuela, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier, was elected president. As a socialist reformer, Chavez’s policies have given land to the landless and, using Venezuela’s oil revenues, increased investment in housing and infrastructure.

read more

December 7, 1964

A leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, was arrested. One-third of the 27,000 students at the University of California campus, along with faculty, were on strike protesting to preserve their first amendment right to distribute political literature and organize on campus. A faculty resolution passed 824-115, supporting the rapidly growing Free Speech Movement.

more on Mario Savio

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop." - Mario Savio

December 8, 1886

The American Federation of Labor was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio.

read more

December 8, 1941

Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana), the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 1916, cast the only vote against U.S. entry into WWII. She had also voted against the U.S. entering WWI.

                 read more

December 8, 1953

The speech, known later as Atoms for Peace, included: “My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.”

December 8, 1987

December 8, 1988

   Intermediate Nuclear Force vehicle

On the first anniversary of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Force) Treaty, twelve Dutch peace activists, calling themselves "INF Ploughshares," cut through fences to enter the Woensdrecht Air Force base in The Netherlands. They made their way to cruise missile bunkers where they hammered on the missiles, carrying out the first disarmament action in Holland.

read more

December 9, 1949

U.S. Representative John Parnell Thomas, former chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was sentenced to 6 to 18 months in federal prison for "padding" Congressional payrolls and using the money himself.

John Parnell Thomas

December 9, 1961

Members of the Committee of 100, including Bertrand Russell, considered civil disobedience a legitimate means in their struggle. The CND avoided all illegal activities.

the CND is still active today

Bertrand Russell and the "Committee of 100"

at an earlier action in 1961.

December 9, 1990

Solidarity trade union founder and leader Lech Walesa won Poland's presidential runoff election in a 3-1 landslide.

He thus became the first directly elected Polish leader.

read more

Lech Walesa

December 10, 1948

The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."
After 1950 the anniversary of the declaration has been known as Human Rights Day.

Read the Declaration of Human Rights

Resolution 25

Detroit-born U.N. diplomat Ralph J. Bunche became the first Black American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The award was in recognition of his peace mediation during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

read more

Mr. Luthuli said he considered the award "a recognition of the sacrifices made by the peoples of all races [in South Africa], particularly the African people who have endured and suffered so much for so long.”
“It may well be that South Africa's social system is a monument to racialism and race oppression, but its people are the living testimony to the unconquerable spirit of mankind. Down the years, against seemingly overwhelming odds, they have sought the goal of fuller life and liberty, striving with incredible determination and fortitude for the right to live as men - free men.”

Albert Luthuli

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
From his speech in Oslo: “After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that [civil rights] movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.
Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.”

Read the speech:

Julia Butterfly Hill, age 23, climbed "Luna," a 1,000-year-old California redwood, to protect it from loggers.

read more

Julia Butterfly atop Luna

Iranian democracy activist Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted the award in Oslo, Norway "for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children."

read more

Shirin Ebadi

December 11, 1946

The General Assembly of the United Nations voted to establish the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to provide relief and support to children living in countries devastated by World War II.

UNICEF history

December 11, 1961

Two U.S. Army air cavalry helicopter companies arrived in Vietnam, including 33 Shawnee H-2lC helicopters and 425 ground and flight crewmen.

They were to be used to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat, the first direct military combat involvement of U.S. military personnel. President Kennedy had sent them to bolster the U.S. advisors in the country since the 1950s, and the failing of the Government of Vietnam’s armed forces to resist the Viet Cong insurgency movement and the Republic of [North] Vietnam.

December 11, 1972

New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk (Labour Party) announced withdrawal of his country’s troops from Vietnam and a phase-out of his country’s draft just three days after taking office.

Prime Minister Norman Kirk

Anti-War demo Parliament Buildings in Wellington, 1969

3,890 New Zealand military personnel had served there, suffering 37 dead and 187 wounded. This gave rise to a large and vocal anti-war movement.

The anti-war movement in New Zealand today

December 11, 1984

More than twenty thousand women turned out for an anti-nuclear demonstration at Greenham Common Air Base in England, where U.S. cruise missiles were deployed. Some tried to rip down the fence surrounding the base.

a Greenham Peace Camp scrapbook

Poster of Broken Missile taped to the fence of Greenham Common by a protester, 1982.

Greenham Women

The three major U.S. television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) agreed on joint standards to limit entertainment violence by the start of the following season.

read more about TV violence & children

The Chechens had declared their independence from the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprised of Russia and most of the countries previously part of the Soviet Union. Chechnya had been a Russian colony since 1859, and in 1943 Josef Stalin had deported the population en masse, their return to their homeland not allowed until 1957.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who ordered the invasion, would not deal with Dudaev, and had raised him to the rank of chief enemy, ignoring Chechen-Russian history.

Joseph H. Rainey (R-South Carolina) took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first black Member of Congress.

read more

Dr. Ben Reitman was arrested in Cleveland for organizing volunteers to distribute birth control information at an Emma Goldman lecture on birth control. He was sentenced to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine plus court costs.

The Philippine Civic Action Group, a 1,350-man contingent from the Army of the Philippines, left South Vietnam. The contingent was part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlist allies for the United States and South Vietnam, similar to President George Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing,” the multi-national force in Iraq.

read more

Seventy people were arrested in Boston outside a hotel where a "New Trends in Missiles" trade conference was being held. Inside the hotel, over 1,000 cockroaches were released to symbolize the likely survivors of nuclear war.  

December 12, 1986

Plowshares activists disarmed a Pershing missile launcher in West Germany. In a statement of intent the four said, "With awareness of our responsibility we understand that we are the ones who make the arms race possible by not trying to stop it."

read more

From a pershing plowshares action 1984

December 13, 1917

Denmark, which was not involved in World War I, recognized the right to conscientious objection to military service. Norway had done so in 1900, Sweden in 1920. The Netherlands went so far as to write it into their constitution in 1922, and Finland enacted it in 1931.

read more           

European Bureau for Conscientious Objection

December 13, 1942

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels recorded in his journal his contempt for the Italians' treatment of Jews in Italian-occupied territories. "The Italians are extremely lax in their treatment of Jews. They protect Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and won't permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David."

December 13, 1981

Poland's new military leaders issued a decree of martial law today, drastically restricting civil rights and suspending the operations of the Solidarinosc (Solidarity) trade union. The union's activists reacted with an appeal for an immediate general strike to protest.

read more

December 13, 1982

December 13, 2001

In Belgium, 80,000 labor and anti-globalization activists began several days of protests at a European Union summit conference in Brussels.
Despite a massive police presence and unlike other similar meetings, events remained peaceful.

read more

December 13, 2001

President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia (then the Soviet Union).

“I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.” - President Bush

December 14, 1917

U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O'Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing World War I Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and anti-war critic imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O'Hare was one of a number of prisoners Eugene Debs cited in his "Canton Speech" for which he in turn was imprisoned.

read the speech

Kate Richards O'Hare

In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced the United States would increase aid to South Vietnam, including the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam, wrote: "We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort."

read the letter

December 14, 1980

At Yoko Ono's request, at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time, John Lennon fans around the world mourned him with 10 minutes of silent prayer.

In New York over 100,000 people converged in Central Park in tribute, and in Liverpool, his hometown, a crowd of 30,000 gathered outside of St. George's Hall on Lime Street.

John Lennon's legacy

December 14, 1994

After eight years, the United States finally agreed to honor New Zealand's ban on nuclear weapons in its territory. U.S. Navy ships armed with nuclear weapons no longer visited New Zealand’s ports.

read more       

December 15, 1791

The Bill of Rights became law when Virginia ratified the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution.

The Bill of Rights                                        The Bill of Rights Defense Committee

December 15, 1930

   Albert Einstein, 1930

Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund. Einstein made his famous statement in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people. He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, "slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us."

Einstein on Peace and World Government

December 15, 1946

December 15, 1973

The American Psychiatric Association reversed its long-standing position and declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness and
"...deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation..."

Read  the APA postion statement

December 15, 2000

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after becoming the site of the world's worst nuclear accident ever. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – dozens of times as much as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – were released in the explosion. The radioactive fallout affected 23% of Belarus, with 4.8% of Ukrainian territory and 0.5% of Russia. The Belarussian government spends 30% of its annual budget dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Take a tour through the affected region:

December 16, 1942

Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, made public an order that Gypsies and those of mixed Gypsy blood be put on "the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."

Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed "inferior," as well as "asocial" types, (hardcore criminals, homosexuals, Communists, Slavs, Catholic priests). Gypsies fell into both categories according to Nazi ideology and had been executed widely both in Poland and the Soviet Union. The order of November 15 was merely a more comprehensive program, as it included the deportation to Auschwitz of Gypsies already in labor camps.

The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) — literally Devouring — is a term coined by the Roma (Gypsy) people to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of the Roma peoples of Europe.

read more

Gypsy arrivals to the Belzec death camp.

The U.S. under General Douglas MacArthur had attacked the North Korean Army at Inchon three months earlier, liberating Seoul, destroying three divisions and forcing a retreat by the North Korean People’s Army.

North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung (second from L)

with the Korean-Chinese joint military command

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, was elected president in the first free election in Haiti's history. He was overthrown in 1991 in a military coup led by led by Brigadier-General Raoul Cedra.

Read what happened next

December 18, 1999

Julia Butterfly Hill descended from her tiny platform 180 feet up in a giant Redwood tree named "Luna," after perching in it for 738 days to protect it from loggers.

Julia Butterfly Hill in the Ecology Hall of Fame     

"The question is not 'Can you make a difference?'  You already do make a difference.

It's just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet."

– Julia Butterfly Hill

Fire fighting. CPS 30, Walhalla, Michigan (Brethren)

Civilian Public Service camps were established for

conscientious objectors.

They served without weapons 

Juan Bosch was elected President of the Dominican Republic in the first free elections in 38 years.

He was overthrown by a U.S.-backed coup in September, 1963.

read more

Ho Chi Minh, Paris 1946

Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, the group struggling to expel French colonial rule from Vietnam issues the following statement: "All the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonials to save the fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will use spades, hoes, or sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save his country. Even if we have to endure hardship in the resistance war, with the determination to make sacrifices, victory will surely be ours." The first Indochina War had begun.

Ho Chi Minh and the U.S. "Declaration of Independence"

December 20, 1960

North Vietnam announced the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South and designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.

Ho Chi Minh biography

National Front for Liberation flag

December 20, 1990

Kansas reservist Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn refused orders to serve in the Gulf War and is later sentenced to prison. The Kansas medical board withdrew her her hospital privileges.

"The issue was not whether I belonged in the military but whether the military belonged in the Middle East waging war. I did not want to focus on the personal decision. I was trying to focus on the decision for which each and every American would have to be responsible."

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

December 20, 1999

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as wedded couples of the opposite sex.

read more

December 21, 1919

Amid a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, the "Red Scare" is launched with the deportation of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and some 250 other radicals. They were deported to Russia aboard the S. S. Buford ("The Soviet Ark") from the "Land of the Free."

J. Edgar Hoover, heading the Justice Department's General Intelligence Division, advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent possible the government's plan to deport all foreign-born radicals.

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman also organized against World War I

read more about Emma & Alex

December 21, 1989

Vice President Dan Quayle sends out 30,000 Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled"beakon."

"May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world."
-- The Quayles' 1989 Christmas card.

more Quayle quotes

December 22, 1943

A 135 day strike by 23 conscientious objectors (COs) ended dining hall segregation at Danbury Federal Penitentiary, Connecticut. The number of conscientious objectors had increased from 15 in early 1941 to 200 by the time of the strike.

December 22, 1982

December 23, 1944

General Dwight Eisenhower endorsed the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorized his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.

Slovik made no secret of his unwillingness to enter combat, but his pleas to be reassigned to noncombat status were rejected.

Eisenhower ordered that Slovik's execution be carried out to avoid further desertions in the late stages of the war.

read more

Eddie Slovik

James Davis of Livingston, Tennessee, was killed by the Viet Cong, and becomes the first of some 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

Lyndon Johnson later referred to him as “the first American to fall in defense of our freedom in Vietnam.”

Over two million Vietnamese would die before the end of the war.

James Davis                       

                                           anti war demo chant

"Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really war
We’re sending fifty thousand  more   To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese"

December 24, 1865

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee called the Ku Klux Klan. Its first priority, it declared in its creed, was "to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal."

Three Ku Klux Klan members, September 1871.

December 24, 1924

Costa Rica withdrew from The League of Nations to protest U.S. Monroe Doctrine which stated U.S. is “big daddy” of North and South America.

read more

December 24, 1992

President George Herbert Walker Bush pardoned six people in the Iran-Contra case, among them former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and Robert McFarlane, former national security advisor.

read more about this and

other presidential pardons

Iran-Contra Boys

Otto Reich /Elliott Abrams /John Poindexter/Edwin Meese
George H.W. Bush/Casper Weinberger/Oliver North/Robert McFarlane

December 25, 1914

German officer in the trenches with

British soldier

Just after midnight on Christmas morning, the majority of German troops engaged in WWI ceased firing their guns and artillery, and began to sing Christmas carols. At the first light of dawn, many of the German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no man's land, calling out "Merry Christmas" in their enemies' native tongues.

At first the Allied soldiers suspected it to be a trick, but they too soon climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the German soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings; the Christmas Truce lasted several days.

read more

The first Kwanzaa was celebrated in Los Angeles, California. Kwanzaa is a non-religious day African-American holiday focusing on family, community, and culture. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase "matunda ya kwanza", which means "first fruits" in Swahili. The celebrations is expressed through song, dance, drum, storytelling, poetry and the lighting of candles in a Kinara all followed by a large traditional meal.

The holiday is observed for seven days, each representing a different principle:

a Kwanzaa Kinara

Two dozen Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberate" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed bombings in Vietnam. Also, they flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.

Women In Black began campaign against rape during war, Belgrade, Serbia.

read more  

Women in Black is a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice

and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and other forms of violence.

Women in Black home

December 27, 1914

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), an inter-religious peace group, is founded in Cambridge, Great Britain.

read more

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

"Your goal is, in my opinion, the only reasonable one and to make it prevail is of vital importance."
--Albert Einstein, in a letter to the FOR

December 27, 1971 

Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged a peace protest at historic Betsy Ross House, Philadelphia.

December 28, 1973

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, is published in the original Russian version in Paris. The book is a first hand account of brutal and repressive conditions in the Soviet Union. It was published in the United States a few months later.

read more about the Soviet gulags

December 28, 1968

December 28, 1996

Three arrested at Capitol Hill Post Office in Seattle for refusing to leave after attempting to mail humanitarian supplies to Iraq in defiance of U.S.-led embargo.

read more about sanctions against Iraq

December 29, 1890

The U.S. Army killed approximately 400 Oglala Sioux at Wounded Knee, in the new state of South Dakota. The 7th Cavalry (Custer's old command) fired their artillery amidst women, children, and fleeing men. The Wounded Knee Massacre was the final major military battle in the genocide against Native Americans. 18 soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for their "bravery."

The wounded and dying were taken to a makeshift hospital in the Pine Ridge Episcopal Church. Ironically, above the pulpit hung a Christmas banner which read: Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

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December 30, 1936

The United Automobile Workers sat down at General Motors in Flint, Michigan. General Motors had refused to recognize the union so the workers adopted a tactic developed by French workers. Instead of picketing outside a factory only to be ignored or forcibly cleared away, the sit-down strike enabled workers to halt production and seize the plant "from the inside." Finally, on February 11, 1937, GM acknowledged the UAW as its employee's official "bargaining agent," sending ripples throughout the industry, as other auto makers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union. It was an inspiration to workers in other industries to organize themselves.

More about sitdown strikes

above: Workers sit down at GM

below: Supporters pass in food to sitdown strikers

December 30, 1971

Daniel Ellsberg was indicted by a federal grand jury for releasing Pentagon Papers to news media. The papers were part of a 7,000-page, top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971 and described air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the American public was told that such actions had already occurred.
These charges were later dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, who cited government misconduct in May, 1973.

December 31, 1970

The U.S. Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which in 1964 authorized a dramatic increase in U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in response to an attack on U.S. forces that was later revealed to be ficticious.

read what really happened

This Week In History compiled by peacebuttons.info from various sources
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