peace history september

September

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September 1

International Day of War Tax Resistance.

“Refusing to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied for warfare...”

History of War Tax Resistance

September 1, 1986

Charles Liteky & George Mizo began a Fast For Life against U.S. support of Nicaraguan contras in Washington, D.C.

Charles Liteky George Mizo

September 1, 1987

During a nonviolent protest at Concord Naval Weapons Station, a Navy munitions train ran over blockader Brian Willson. Willson lost both legs but has remained an active and articulate leader in the anti-military movement.

Brian's Biography read more

Brian Willson bird-watching California, 1997

Ron Kovic (author 'Born on the Fourth of July')
and Brian Willson (also born on the Fourth of July)

September 1, 1997

Kurdish & British activists blockaded an arms trade exhibition outside London. 89 were arrested.

September 2, 1945

Revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam a republic and independent from France (National Day). Half a million people gathered in Hanoi to hear him read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence which was based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

more on the Musa Anter Peace Train

September 4, 1954

Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb, Trafalgar Square, London, England.

The PPU dates back to October 1934.

history of the Peace Pledge Union

Young Peace Pledge Union members today.

September 4, 1957

Elizabeth Eckford was blocked from becoming first black student at Little Rock, Arkansas, Central High School.

Elizabeth Eckford

Elizabeth Eckford followed by mob, 1957.

September 4, 1970

Vietnam Veteran's Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Through Sept. 7, more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, re-enacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way.

Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition:

September 5, 1882

Ten thousand workers marched to protest working conditions in the first U.S. Labor Day parade, New York City, and demanded the 8 hour day.

About a quarter million New Yorkers turned out to watch.

September 5, 1917

In 48 coordinated raids across the country, later known as the Palmer Raids, federal agents seized records, destroyed equipment and books, and arrested hundreds of Industrial Workers of the World activists, known fondly as the Wobblies. Among the arrested is William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, a leader of the IWW, for the “crimes of labor" and "obstructing World War I."

Attorney General Mitchell Palmer

Big Bill Haywood

September 5, 1981

Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was established outside Greenham Air Base, England, as "Women For Life On Earth."

Greenham Peace Camp

April, 1983.

September 6, 1963

Anti-nuclear march from Glasgow, Scotland, arrived in London and attempted to present a dummy missile to the British Imperial War Museum.

September 7, 1957

First New York meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneer lesbian organization. The group was founded two years earlier in San Francisco.

cover from their magazine "The Ladder", October ,1968

September 8, 1965

United Farm Workers’ grape strike began in Delano, California.

September 9, 1944

Religious conscientious objector Corbett Bishop was arrested after walking out of a Civilian Public Service Camp; during subsequent trials and imprisonments, he refused any type of cooperation with the government until he was released 193 days later.

"I'm not going to cooperate in any way, shape or form. I was carried in here.

If you hold me, you'll have to carry me out.

War is wrong. I don't want any part of it."
- Corbett Bishop, 1906-1961

September 9, 1971

Beginning of the Attica (New York) Prison revolt. The interracial revolt was led by blacks but featured cooperation between prisoners of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. It was finally brutally suppressed by the state five days later, with 29 prisoners and 10 guards shot and killed by attacking state troopers. The prisoners were demanding improvements in their living and working conditions.

September 9, 1980

Eight activists from the Atlantic Life Community were arrested after hammering the nose cones of two missiles at the GE plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

read about Plowshares 8

The Plowshares 8(in alphabetical order):

Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt

This action would become the first of an international movement of dozens of "Plowshares" anti-nuclear direct actions.

a chronology of Plowshares actions

September 10, 1897

Nineteen unarmed striking miners were killed, 40 wounded by sheriff's deputies in Latimer, Pennsylvania, for refusing to disperse, by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later organized themselves.

September 10, 1963

Twenty black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Alabama, following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace, who resisted integration.

September 10, 1996

Sheryl Crow's 2nd album was banned in Wal-Mart stores because the song, "Love Is A Good Thing" mentions children killing each other with a gun they bought at a Wal-Mart discount stores.

September 11, 1906

Mohandas Gandhi began a nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa, demanding rights and respect for those of Asian descent. It was the birth of his idea of Satyagraha, or passive resistance.

He led a meeting of 3000 of the town's Indians, protesting the Transvaal Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. That ordinance required all Asians to obey three rules: those of eight years or older had to carry passes for which they had to give their fingerprints; they would be segregated as to where they could live and work; new Asian immigration into the Transvaal would be disallowed, even for those who had left the town when the South African War broke out in 1899, and were returning.
The meeting produced the Fourth Resolution, in which all Indians resolved to go to prison rather than submit to the ordinance.

read Gandhi's Satyagraha

Ghandi, London, 1906

September 11, 1973

Chile's armed forces staged a coup d'etat against the government of President Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected socialist head of state in Latin America. Some three thousand were held in Santiago's national stadium where guards singled out folksinger Victor Jara as he continued to sing protest songs. Jara was viciously beaten, and his mutilated body machine-gunned in front of the other prisoners.

dissidents held in the stadium

read more about Steven Biko

September 12, 2002

President George W. Bush told skeptical world leaders at the United Nations to confront the ''grave and gathering danger'' of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or to stand aside as the United States acted.

September 13, 1961

Bertrand Russell, aged 89, and 32 others were arrested during a major demonstration against nuclear weapons in Trafalgar Square, London.

September 13, 1982

The European Parliament voted to phase out promotion and advertising of war toys throughout the 25 countries of the European Union (formerly European Economic Community).

September 13, 1983

The first group from Peace Brigades International (PBI) arrived in Guatemala to provide unarmed and nonviolent witness & protection for indigenous leaders. Following decades of severe repression of native ethnic groups by the unelected military government, the PBI team accompanied the Mutual Support Group (GAM in Spanish) of Families of the Disappeared, the first human rights group to emerge from the terror and survive.

Learn more about PPBI

September 13, 1993

The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, shook hands before cheering crowds on the White House lawn in Washington after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

September 14, 1918

Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I.

Debs had been an elected official in Indiana, a labor organizer, writer and editor, had founded the first industrial union in the U.S., the American Railway Union, and had run for President four times on the Socialist Party ticket.

He ran again for president from prison in 1920 with the slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House” and received nearly one million.

learn more about Eugene V. Debs

September 14, 1940

Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime (though Japan had invaded China in 1937 and Germany had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939) draft in U.S. history.

September 14, 1948

A groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York City at the site of the United Nations' world headquarters.

<The site selected for the permanent headquarters of the United Nations as it was in 1946.

The UN General Assembly Building (L) and Secretariat building in 1952.

September 14, 1963

Television network ABC invited singer, songwriter, banjo player and activist Pete Seeger to appear on its Saturday night folk and acoustic music show, Hootenanny, despite the fact that he had been blacklisted.

But the invitation stood only if he'd sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. He described his reaction:"This is ridiculous. I’d sign ’em, if you sign ’em, and everybody whose born will sign ’em, then we’d all be clean."
In the 1940s Seeger traveled throughout the land with Woody Guthrie, performing at union meetings and striker's demonstrations. After World War II, he co-founded the Weavers, the legendary folk group that gained commercial success despite being blacklisted.

more about Hootenanny

September 14, 1964

The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California-Berkeley when its Dean Towle announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at Bancroft and Telegraph would henceforth be ''strictly enforced."

September 14, 1982

Wisconsin became the first state to support a nuclear freeze referendum.

September 14, 1990

Pentagon announced $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. George H. Bush was President.

Saud royal family

September 14, 1991

The South African government, the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party signed the National Peace Accord, leading to multi-racial elections & the end of South Africa's apartheid system in 1994.

September 15, 1935

The “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and the “Reich Citizenship Law” were adopted by the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers') Party Rally in Nuremberg, depriving German Jews of their citizenship.

September 15, 1963

During Sunday School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children in the basement changing room, and injuring some 20 others. Prime suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nacirema (white supremacist organizations; Nacirema, fittingly, was derived from "American" spelled backwards). A member of the church, studying on a scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School student Angela Davis.
This event set off racial rioting and other violence in which two African-American boys were shot to death, and became a turning point in generating broad American sympathy for the civil rights movement.

Lives cut short...

Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), Denise McNair (11)

September 15, 1970

Vice President Spiro Agnew said the youth of America are being "brainwashed into a drug culture" by rock music, movies, books, and underground newspapers.

read more about the Fast for Life

September 15, 1996

6,000 rallied and 1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters Grove in rural Carlotta, California, in a protest against the logging of one of the last large unlogged stands of redwood trees in the world.

September 15, 2001

Four days after 9-11, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the only congressional vote opposing the granting of unlimited military power to President Bush to deal with Iraq.

read her statement

September 16, 1837

William Whipper, and ex-slave from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, published "An Address on Non-resistance to Offensive Aggression" in the The Colored American. This landmark essay predated Thoreau's on “Civil Disobedience” by 12 years.

“...fatal error arises from the belief that the only method of maintaining peace, is always to be ready for war.”

read Whipper’s words

September 16, 1939

August Dickmann, a German and a Jehovah's Witness, became the first conscientious objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during World War II.

The execution by firing squad took place in Sachsenhausen concentration camp before all prisoners, including 400 Jehovah's Witness inmates.

Threatened by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate, none of the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO position. Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses by guillotine or hanging, not wanting to spend bullets on COs. German military courts sentenced and executed 270 Jehovah's Witnesses, the largest number of COs executed from any victim group during World War II.

watch a timeline

NY Times, Sept 16, 1939

August Dickmann

September 16, 1974

A federal judge dismissed all charges against American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means stemming from the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Dennis Banks

Russell Means

On Feb. 27, 1973, AIM and supporters seized control of Wounded Knee to draw attention to corruption and conditions on the Pine Ridge (Lakota Sioux) reservation.
Wounded Knee was the site where, on December 29, 1890, over 200 Sioux men, women and children were mercilessly gunned down by U.S. cavalry.

September 16, 1974

President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, provided they swear allegiance to the country and agree to work two years in the branch of the military they had abandoned. He did this one month following his pardon of resigned former Pres. Nixon.

September 16, 1991

The Philippine Senate defeated a treaty allowing continued operation of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The Americans had occupied the Philippines since 1898 (except after surrendering control to the Japanese in 1942 until the end of WWII), though on a “temporary” basis. More than two dozen U.S. military installations were established in the country, even after independence in 1945, notably Clark Air Base and the naval installation at Subic Bay.

September 16, 2003

New York Stock Exchange Chair Dick Grasso resigned amid a furor over his $139.5 million pay package.

September 17, 1961

1,314 arrested in anti-nuclear bomb sit-down in London’s Trafalgar Square. Philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell, aged 89, and 32 others were already in jail, having been arrested for days earlier during a major demonstration against nuclear weapons in Trafalgar Square.

Bertrand Russell at anti nuclear weapons March, 1961.

September 17, 1983

3,000 demonstrated against nuclear power iin Hamm-Uentrop, Germany.

September 17, 1988

Haiti's military government was overthrown.
From the report of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued on September 7, 1988:
“The Commission has come to the conclusion that the current military government in Haiti has perpetuated itself in power as a result of violence instigated by elements of the Haitian Armed forces resulting in the massacre of Haitian voters on November 29, 1987, the manipulation of the elections held on January 17, 1988, and the ouster of President Leslie Manigat on June 20, 1988.”

September 18, 1850

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing slave owners to reclaim slaves who escaped into another state. Fugitive Slave Act is passed, specifying harsh penalties for those who interfere with the apprehension of runaway slaves.

As part of the Compromise of 1850, it offers federal officers a fee for captured slaves. The underground railroad which became active twelve years earlier now became even more of a necessity.

read more about the Fugitive Slave Act and the Underground Railroad

September 19, 1893

With the signing of the Electoral Bill by Governor Lord Glasgow, New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant national electoral rights to women. The bill was the outcome of years of suffragette meetings in towns and cities across the country, with women often traveling considerable distances to hear lectures and speeches and pass resolutions.

Organizer Kate Sheppard delivered to parliament a petition signed by a quarter or more of all the women in the country. New Zealand women (both Päkehä (Anglo-European or non-Maori) and Ma¯ori) first went to the polls in the national elections in November of 1893.
The United States granted women voting rights in 1920, and Great Britain didn’t guarantee full voting rights until 1928.

Kate Sheppard, a leader of the New Zealand suffragette movement

September 19, 1926

80,000 demonstrated for democratic peace in The Hague, the Netherlands.

September 19, 1952

The United States prevented the director, actor and producer, Charlie Chaplin, from returning to his Hollywood home until he had been investigated by Immigration Services.
He had been on the FBI's Security Index since 1948, and was one of over 300 people blacklisted by Hollywood film studios and thus unable to work after refusing to cooperate during his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Informed that he would not necessarily be welcomed back, he retorted, "I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ were president," and surrendered his re-entry permit in Switzerland.

Chaplin’s FBI files

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin: "My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.

Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them."

September 19, 1957

The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test in the Nevada desert under the leadership of Edward Teller.

September 19, 1966

After 300 members of Grenada, Mississippi’s white community called for “an end to violence,” hundreds of Negro schoolchildren were allowed to integrate the local public schools. The leaders of the vicious organized attack on the kids the previous week (including the Justice of the Peace) had been arrested by the FBI, and the mobs were gone but the children were all escorted to school by community members, or driven in cars for safety. Folksinger Joan Baez had been in Grenada that first week lending support and running the same risks as Grenadans struggling against the segregationist way of life.

Chronology of a Movement Grenada Mississippi, 1966

Marching strong and proud

in Grenada, Mississippi, 1966

On the front line at the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right)

Forty years later Joan is still playing for

peace and justice.

She performed at Camp Casey in support of Cindy Sheehan and her protest against the war in Iraq.

September 19, 1966

A group of 22 eminent U.S. scientists, including seven Nobel laureates, urged President Lyndon Johnson to halt the use of antipersonnel and anti-crop chemical weapons in Vietnam. That same day in Congress, House Republicans issued a "White Paper" that warned that the United States was becoming "a full-fledged combatant" in a war that was becoming "bigger than the Korean War." The paper urged the President to end the war "more speedily and at a smaller cost, while safeguardi