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May Day also became known as International Workers’
Day in 1886 when 340,000 went on strike for the 8-hour work
day.
May
1, 1890 May Day labor demonstrations spread to thirteen other
countries; 30,000 marched in Chicago as the newly prominent
American Federation of Labor threw its weight behind the 8-hour
day campaign. |
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The
Catholic Worker newspaper was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter
Maurin.
"God meant things to be much easier than we have made
them." -Dorothy Day
Peter
Maurin wanted to build a society "where it is easier
for people to be good."
read
more about the Catholic Worker |
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Soviet
youths openly defied police & danced the twist
in Moscow's Red Square during May Day celebrations.
read
more
In
the early 60s the Twist had been banned in Buffalo, NY and
Tampa, FL
The religious right claimed the Twist was actually a pagan
fertility dance.
|
 Are
you old enough to remember Chubby Checker?
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Following
a 24-hour occupation at the site of two proposed nuclear power
plants in Seabrook, New Hampshire, 1,414 people were arrested.
The non-violent civil disobedience, organized by the Clamshell
Alliance, became a model for anti-nuclear direct actions across
the country. National and international news coverage brought
the issue of nuclear power into public focus and no nuclear
reactors were ordered after that time. |
The
ones in the pipeline eventually went online, including Seabrook
Unit I, but Unit 2 was never built.
There is still no permanent method for long-term safe storage
of highly radioactive waste generated by these plants. Most
of the radioactive isotopes in high-level waste emit large
amounts of radiation and have extremely long half-lives (some
longer than 100,000 years). Currently, it is stored on-site
at nuclear plants around the country.
read more |
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One
million South Africans demonstrated their opposition to apartheid
in a strike organized by the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU).
read
more about COSATU
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President
George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln off the California coast and, in a speech
to the nation, declared major combat in Iraq over. The banner
his staff posted on the ship read “Mission Accomplished.” |
| Since
that presidential declaration more than 2000 Americans and more
than 30,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, in addition to the
tens of thousand of others injured in the hostilities. |
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| <Iraq
body count read more
Cost of War>
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The Poor People's Campaign began with groups from several
locations around the U.S. setting out for Washington, DC,
to draw attention to the conditions of poor people in the
United States. Conceived and organized by Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and despite his murder the previous month, it was
led by his successor at the head of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.
read
more
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first wave of demonstrators arrived in Washington on May 12.
One
week later, Resurrection City was built on the Washington
Mall, a settlement of tents and shacks to house the protesters.
watch
a video about poverty in our country today
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 Resurrection
City
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The Nixon administration ordered the arrest of nearly 13,000
anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe who
began four days of demonstrations in Washington, DC, on the
first. They aimed at shutting down the nation's capital by
disrupting morning rush-hour traffic and other forms of non-violent
direct action, skirmishing with metropolitan police and Federal
troops throughout large areas of the capital. The slogan of
the Mayday tribe: "If the government won't stop the war,
we'll stop the government."
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The
first broadcast of National Public Radio’s evening news
and public affairs program, "All Things Considered,"
was aired on NPR affiliates around the country. |
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Sixty-thousand marched on the Pentagon to urge the end to U.S.
military involvement in El Salvador. |
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At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for
an eight-hour workday turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.
A mass meeting had been called for that night when a large
force of 176 police officers arrived with a demand that the
meeting disperse. Someone, unknown to this day, then threw
a bomb at the police. In their confusion, the police began
firing their weapons in the dark, killing at least four in
the crowd and wounding many more. Several police died (only
one by the bomb), the rest probably by police fire.
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more  |
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A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, DC for New Orleans
in a first challenge to racial segregation on interstate buses
and in bus terminals; it was organized by the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE).
read more about the freedom riders
The
Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery before
traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana. |
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Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-war protesters
at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding
nine others. The previous day, President Nixon had announced
a widening of the Vietnam War with bombing in neighboring
Cambodia. There were major campus protests around the country
with students occupying university buildings to organize and
discuss the war and other issues.
read
more
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Draft resisters publicly burned 231 military induction orders
in Los Angeles. |
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| Irish
Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze
Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food. He
had just been elected to a seat in Parliament while still
serving the last of a 14-year sentence for possession of firearms.
read
more and some poetry by Bobby Sands
“Our
revenge will be our children’s smiles.” -
Bobby Sands
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Reformers swept Iran's run-off elections, winning control
of the legislature from conservatives for the first time since
the 1979 Islamic revolution. |
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Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman started the No Conscription
League in the U.S. This was prior to American troops’
being sent to Europe in what is known as World War I.
read
the No-Conscription League Manifesto
Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman
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14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their country’s
nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean. |
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| The
Battle at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended after 55 days with
Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French forces. An agreement
for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months
in Geneva.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese
troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French
soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet
Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against
French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946. |
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American
veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court
settlement with seven chemical companies in their class-action
suit relating to the use of herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness
from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate
cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S.
Agent
Orange: An Ongoing Atrocity |
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| The
American Peace Society was established when the peace societies
of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania
merged to become a national organization. Based in Boston,
the merger was a result of a suggestion by William Ladd.
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more  |
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Mohandas
Gandhi began a 31-day fast to support political rights for
the Dalit (or untouchables) whom he called Harijans, the children
of God. He had been jailed by the British to interfere with
his movement to end their colonial control of India. |
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An
estimated 9,000,000 people in Belgium participated in a
ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons.
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In
April, Muhammad Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army
due to his religious convictions. He angered many Americans
after claiming, "I ain't got no quarrel with those
Vietcong." He was stripped of his heavyweight boxing
title and his license to fight.
In June, a court found him guilty of draft evasion, fined
him $10,000, and sentenced him to five years in prison.
He remained free, pending numerous appeals, but was still
barred from fighting.
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| The
New York Times revealed the United States had been secretly
bombing Cambodia--officially a noncombatant, neutral country
during the Vietnam War. |
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| Five
days after the Kent State killings, 100,000 marched in Washington,
DC against the Vietnam War. About 600 Canadian protesters
defaced the Peace Arch at the U.S.-Canadian border in Blaine,
Washington. |
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At
least 18 demonstrators were killed and many wounded after
police opened fire on anti-government protesters outside
the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador, the capital
of El Salvador.
read
more
CBS
reporter: "The police continued to fire as bodies piled
up on the cathedral steps"
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Peace talks began between the US and North Vietnam with W.
Averell Harriman representing the United States, and former
Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy heading the North Vietnamese delegation.
The
Paris Peace treaty was finally signed on
January
27, 1973.
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The
National Organization for Women (NOW) organized 85,000 people
to march in Chicago in support of Illinois ratification of
the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
a
chronology of the Equal Rights Amendment, 1923-1996
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A
federal judge in Salt Lake City, Utah, found the U.S. government
negligent for its above-ground testing of nuclear weapons
in Nevada from 1951 to 1962.
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The
land of the Nevada Test Site is scarred with craters from
nuclear testing
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Nelson
Mandela was inaugurated following his election as South Africa’s
first black president after more than three centuries of exclusively
white rule, and nearly three decades of his imprisonment for
the struggle to attain political and civil rights for all
South Africans.
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Charges
against former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg for his role
in the release of the Pentagon Papers (a comprehensive classified
study of the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War) were
dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, citing government misconduct. |
| read
chapters from the Pentagon Papers history of the war
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers |
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| 80,000
turned out in New York City's Central Park to celebrate the
end of the Vietnam War. |
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The
Poor People's Campaign, organized by the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) began when contingents of the
poor, mainly from the south, began pitching tents in a "Resurrection
City" near the Lincoln Memorial. It was dismantled by
police on June 24. |
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Brazil, which imported more African slaves than any other
Western Hemisphere country (including the U.S.), abolished
slavery.
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"We
Want Beer" marches were held in cities all over America,
with 15,000 unionized workers demonstrating in Detroit. Prohibition
(the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring “the
manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”)
was repealed the following year. |
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| Natives
of the Marshall Islands pleaded for an end to atmospheric
H-Bomb testing in the south Pacific.
read
more |
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During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President
Richard Nixon's limousine was attacked with rocks and bottles
by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through
Caracas, Venezuela. The crowd was angered by U.S. Cold War policies
and their effect on Latin America. Five days before, the Vice
President was shoved, stoned, booed, and spat upon by protesters
in Peru. |
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Workers
joined Paris students’ protest in a one-day general
strike calling for the fall of the government and protesting
police brutality. The protest by French students included
occupation of The Sorbonne; by the end of the month over 10,000,000
had been involved in school and workplace occupations.
view
and read about the great poster art from Paris ‘68
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The
first groups of WWII conscientious objectors (COs) were ordered
to report to camp at Patapsco, Maryland.
World
War II COs |
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|  Phillip
Lafayette Gibbs
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Two
African-American students were shot to death and 30 others
wounded by government troops at primarily black Jackson State
University in Mississippi. The two were watching demonstrators
protesting the invasion of Cambodia and racial discrimination
from a nearby dormitory tower. Two days of riots ensued in
Jackson resulting in curfews and sealing off of the city.
read
more
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 James
Earl
Green
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Julia
Ward Howe, suffragist, abolitionist and author of the “Battle
Hymn of the Republic,” proposed Mother's Day as a peace
holiday.
She had seen firsthand some of the worst effects of war --
the death and disease which killed and maimed, and the widows
and orphans left behind on both sides of the Civil War --
and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing
of soldiers in battle. Mother’s Day did not become a
national holiday until declared by President Woodrow Wilson
in 1914.
"Disarm!
Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.”
read
her Mother’s Day Proclamation |
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The
National Labor Relations Act was passed, recognizing workers'
rights to organize and bargain collectively with their employer.
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more 
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Britain tested its first H-bomb over Christmas Island in
the south Pacific, after just two years of development.
Mushroom
cloud over Christmas Island.
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| The
American Friends Service Committee, SANE (The Committee for
a SANE Nuclear Policy), and Women March for Peace, with four
other organizations, sponsored a 10,000+ person anti-war picket
at White House and a 63,000+ rally at the Washington Monument
to oppose the Vietnam War. |
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In
response to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia (an expansion
of the Vietnam War) and the killings at Kent State and Jackson
State Universities, several million U.S. students held campus
strikes opposing the Vietnam War.
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May
15 (since the 1980's) |
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International
Conscientious Objectors Day, established to honor those who
leave or refuse to enter their country’s armed forces
for reasons of principle. |
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Are
you a CO? For more info visit PEACE-OUT
Read
the stories of 4 Conscientious Objectors
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| The
U.S. Congress passed the Sedition Act, legislation designed
to protect America’s participation in World War I. Aimed
at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, the
Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on anyone found guilty
of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution
of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, conscription,
the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against
the production of necessary war materials; or advocating,
teaching or defending any of these acts.
read
more |
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| Nhat
Chi Mai immolates herself in Saigon, the capital of South
Vietnam, to protest the war.
"I
offer my body as a torch / to dissipate the dark / to waken
love among men / to give peace to Vietnam."
read
more |
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In
a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed
down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education,
ruling "separate but equal" public education to
be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment which guaranteed
equal treatment under the law. The historic decision, bringing
an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically
dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl denied
admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas,
because of the color of her skin.
read
more |
Above:
Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie on the
steps
of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954.
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George
E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit (left to
right), the successful legal team, celebrate the Brown decision
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A group of anti-war activists who came to be known as the
"Catonsville Nine," including Philip and Daniel
Berrigan, broke into the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board
center and burned over 600 draft files.
The
Catonsville Nine in a picture taken in the police station
minutes after the action.
From
left to right (standing) George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel
Berrigan, Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) David Darst,
Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, Tom Melville.
photo Jean Walsh
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more about the Catonsville Nine
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100
protesters staged a silent "die-in" at Fifth Avenue
and Pine Street in downtown Seattle to protest shipment through
their city of Army nerve gas being transported from Okinawa,
Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot in eastern Oregon.
read
more |
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Bertrand
Russell |
Birthday
of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist,
and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s
anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his famous "Man's
Peril" broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb
tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development
of nuclear weapons. A year later, together with Albert Einstein,
he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the
curtailment of nuclear weapons.
He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament in 1958 resigning, however, in 1960 to form the
more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting
mass civil disobedience. He, along with Lady Russell led mass
sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence. |
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Maggie
Kuhn |
Margaret
(Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called
the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change)
to consider the common problems faced by retirees —
loss of income, loss of contact with associates and loss of
one of our society's most distinguishing social roles, one's
job. They also discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement
— the freedom to speak personally and passionately about
what they believed in, such as their collective opposition
to the Vietnam War.
Gray
Panther history |
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In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully
detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in
explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,
Japan.
The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha's
enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received
the message "Buddha has smiled" from the exuberant
test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made
India the world's sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly
of the five members of the U.N. Security Council--the United
States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France.
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| The
Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee decision established that corporations
are responsible for the people they irradiate. Karen
Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at
their Cimmaron, Texas, plant that manufactured plutonium.
She became the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and
Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety
issues, and suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained
incidents.
read
more about Karen Silkwood
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 Karen
Silkwood
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Author
and activist Lillian Hellman advised the House Committee on
Un-American Activities (HUAC) that she refuses to testify
against friends and associates, saying: "I cannot
and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
read
more about Lillian Hellman |
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A
white mob attacked "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery,
Alabama, prompting the federal government to declare martial
law and send in United States Marshals to restore order.
read
more
Freedom
Riders challenged racial segregation at Montgomery bus depot.
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| Arlington
Street Unitarian-Universalist Church in Boston offered sanctuary
to Robert Talmanson and William Chase, both wanted for acts
of disobedience to military duty.
Draft
resister Robert Talmanson dragged by authorities from Arlington
Street Church. |
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| A
delegation of U.S. pacifists traveled to Cuba to exchange children's
art. |
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| The
United States conducted the first airborne test of an improved
hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a B-52 bomber over the tiny
island of Namu, part of the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The United States first detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1952
in the Marshall Islands, also in the Pacific. This bomb was
far more powerful than those previously tested and was estimated
at 15 megatons or larger (one megaton is roughly equivalent
to 1 million tons of TNT). Observers said that the fireball
caused by the explosion measured at least four miles in diameter
and was brighter than the light from 500 suns.
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|  Donald
Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein
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The U.S. Senate approved a $20 billion program to return U.S.
to full-scale production of chemical and nerve-gas weapons.
Though the U.S. maintained a public policy opposing chemical
weapons, it extended financial and military assistance to
Iraq in its war against Iran, despite its almost daily use
of such weapons. Iraq had developed its “CW production
capability, primarily from Western firms, including possible
a U.S. foreign subsidiary.” (from a memorandum to Secretary
of State Alexander Haig) |
Watch
a video on the U.S./Saddam Hussein partnership
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Eugene
V. Debs was imprisoned for his role in the Pullman railway
strike in Woodstock, Illinois.
read
more about the Pullman strike and the origin of Labor Day
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Four
thousand protesters occupied the Trident nuclear submarine
base site in Bangor, Washington.
read
more
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Declaration of the Six-Nation Five Continent Peace Initiative.
“...the
pursuit of peace must be uncoupled from strategies of nuclear
deterrence,
and
such strategies must be universally repudiated....”
-Rajiv Ghandi, prime minister of India
read
more
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U.S. General Winfield Scott ordered the forced removal of
the Cherokee Indians from the east to the "Indian Nation"
(what is now Oklahoma).
Approximately one quarter of the 10,000 died on this march
called "The Trail of Tears." |
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10,000
marched in London in protest of British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher’s Falklands War. The Falklands were islands
off the coast of Argentina and Great Britain was fighting
to maintain colonial control over them; they | | |
