Fifty-three years ago, the October 12, 1967 edition of the New York Review of Books published “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” as part of antiwar activists’ efforts to support draft resistance in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Over 20,000 people signed it, including academics, clergymen, and writers. It urged “that every free man…
Fifty years ago, on Sunday, August 3, 1970, the Reverend Daniel J. Berrigan stepped up to the pulpit of the United Methodist Church of Germantown, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and gave the sermon below. Berrigan, a Jesuit, pacifist, and dedicated anti-Vietnam War activist, was also a fugitive at the time as a member of the Catonsville…
Fifty years ago, on January 15, 1968, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of women’s peace groups, organized an anti-war march in Washington, D.C. that would become the largest march by women since the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. Rankin led five thousand participants from Union Station to the steps of the Capitol Building, where they presented…
On this day sixty years ago, Linus Pauling presented a petition signed by over 9,000 scientists urging an end to nuclear bomb tests. The “Scientists’ Test Ban Petition” to the United Nations called for an end to testing due to its threat to the planet and its children in particular, noting that “If testing continues…
All of David Swanson’s reports from his recent trip to Russia are worth reading. You can find them all via links found in Why You Should Visit Russia. The list of differences in arms control between Russia and the USA given Swanson during a meeting with Vladimir Kozonov I found to be of particular interest,…
Here’s an urgent message from Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy: I need you to make a plan to call your Senators at 1-855-68-NO-WAR. [1-855-686-6927]. With the Senate, it’s always hard to know for sure when a vote will be. We now believe that a Senate vote on Trump’s Saudi arms deal is expected by Tuesday…
On May 8, 1967 Muhammad Ali was indicted by a federal grand jury for refusing to serve in the U.S. military over his opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Two weeks earlier, in response to a reporter’s question about Ali’s opposition to the war, he stated: Why should they ask me to put on…
Here’s a high quality audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, recorded on April 4, 1967 at the Riverside Baptist Church in New York City. Follow along with the transcript below. The speech marked a major turning point for King, and may very well have sealed his fate, as he linked the…
Let’s prevent the folks so eager to engineer a confrontation with Iran from starting another war in the Middle East, by convincing out representatives to invoke the War Powers Act vis-a-vis the Saudi-Yemen conflict. Twelve days into the Trump Administration, it should come as no surprise at this point that the new folks in D.C.…
On this day – January 3, 1971 – Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-New York) introduced a resolution to the 95th Congress that would withdraw all U.S. troops from Southeast Asia. It was her first full day in the House of Representatives. Born one month after the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in…
