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    • A.J. Muste Conference Center
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A Peace of History

Vietnam Veterans Against the War: When They Threw Their Medals Away

4/15/2021

 
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A little less than fifty years ago in 1971, over 800 Vietnam War veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. and ceremonially threw their medals, ribbons, and other markers of military valor onto the grounds in front of the Capitol. The veterans were there to protest the brutal and unwinnable war that the United States was perpetrating in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia -- the war in which those veterans earned those medals and ribbons in the first place. The story of the veterans throwing away their military honors in protest made the front page of newspapers across the country, including The New York Times, but the memory of that dramatic demonstration has largely been forgotten, the significance of the event lost, and the event itself replaced with misleading and wrongful myths about veterans’ active roles in the antiwar movement.

It is a long-standing misconception that antiwar activists and war veterans are fundamentally at odds with each other, but even just a glance at the history quickly dispels the notion. The myth of antiwar protesters spitting on returning veterans has been effectively disproven, and one of the earliest and most popular slogans in the Vietnam era movement was “bring our boys home.” Antiwar activists have always directed criticism on the political and military leadership, not the soldiers themselves; in fact, much of antiwar activity centers around supporting active-duty soldiers and veterans as they struggle with what they have been forced to do in the military. For example, the Committee for Nonviolent Action, which founded the original iteration of the Voluntown Peace Trust, offered military counseling and support for resisters. But veterans were not merely passive victims; they themselves ultimately became leaders in the antiwar movement. Exactly 55 years ago, twenty recently discharged veterans joined an antiwar protest in New York City under a banner which read: “Vietnam Veterans Against War.” Later that day, six of those veterans decided to start a formal organization to give voice to other veterans who had come to oppose the war like themselves: Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). As the war continued, membership in the organization grew, especially after a few shocking events. On April 28, 1970, President Nixon authorized US troops to cross into neutral Cambodia, illegally extending the war. Days later at Kent State University, the National Guard fired about 67 live rounds with no immediate provocation at student antiwar protesters, killing four students and injuring nine more. The massacre triggered more protests across the country and thousands to join VVAW. A few months later, over Labor Day weekend in September, VVAW conducted Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Over 200 VVAW members, accompanied by members of other antiwar groups, marched from Morristown, New Jersey to Valley Forge State Park in Pennsylvania. Organizers had planted actors in towns along the route beforehand. When the VVAW would arrive in a town along the march route, they would conduct dramatized “search and destroy” missions with the actors, bringing the Vietnamese civilian’s war experience to American small towns’ streets. Operation RAW concluded with a four-hour rally at which future Presidential candidate John Kerry, civil rights leader Rev. James Bevel, and actor-activist Jane Fonda and other speakers addressed a crowd of over 1500. 

VVAW sponsored actions, investigations, and other projects to support those left out in the cold by the Veterans’ Affairs office. VVAW also continued to educate the American public about the horrible realities of the war. To serve both ends, from January 1971 to February 1972, VVAW sponsored the Winter Soldier Investigation into American war crimes that U.S. veterans witnessed or were forced to commit. The project was meant to expose the military’s lies that hideous massacres like at the village of My Lai were extraordinary cases. According to the testimonies of 109 Vietnam veterans, such atrocities committed by U.S. Armed Forces were routine. Although the testimonies were ultimately entered into the Congressional record and submitted to the Department of Defense to be used in an internal investigation, the Winter Soldier Investigation was the target of a media blackout. Therefore, the veterans’ testimonies never reached the wider public as organizers had hoped.

The VVAW action in April of 1971 outside the U.S. Capitol was harder to ignore. Named “Operation Dewey Canyon III” after a series of intense U.S. Marine invasions into Laos, participants ironically described it as “a limited incursion into the country of Congress.” On April 19, 1971, the American Gold Star Mothers (an organization for American mothers whose children died in service of the U.S. military) led over 1100 veterans to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. The gates had been closed and locked before the march arrived, but that did not stop the group from holding a memorial service for the lives lost on all sides of the conflict. Over the next few days, VVAW would perform more guerilla theater search and destroy missions, attempt to surrender to the Pentagon as war criminals, and lobby congressional representatives about ending the war. VVAW spokesperson John Kerry addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two hours to testify against the war. Patriotic songs were sung. A candlelight vigil was held. The veterans also defied an injunction against camping on the National Mall and prepared themselves to be detained for it, but were pleasantly surprised when park police refused orders to make any arrests. A group of 106 veterans were later arrested for protesting the injunction on the steps of the Supreme Court, but were shortly thereafter released.

Finally, on Friday, April 23, about 800 veterans lined up before the U.S. Capitol. After four days of anxiety and dramatic action, the veterans had had enough. The original plan was to put the medals, ribbons, and other military memorabilia into a body bag to deposit at the Capitol, but fences had been hastily erected to keep the veterans out. And so, in front of news media cameras and hundreds of people, the veterans formed a line. Someone played “Taps.” Then, each veteran gave their name, rank, military awards, and a few personal words before ripping off their war mementos and tossing them over the fence. Some Gold Star Mothers participated as well, throwing away the awards the military had posthumously granted to the Mothers’ children. The videos and photos that were captured that day speak to the raw fury and deep sadness, but also the profound catharsis of the action. Veterans alluded to the horrible acts for which they received commendations, the unjust reasons and propagandistic government lies that made them go to war in the first place, and the memories of those who had senselessly lost their lives. One said, “This is for my brothers.” Another named a comrade who had “died needlessly” for every medal he threw. A third tossed his commendations because they had been given to him “by the power structure that has genocidal policies against nonwhite peoples of the world.” And on and on, until the grounds before the Capitol was littered in hundreds of symbols of “ honorable military service.” 
Within two years of Operation Dewey Canyon III and the famous “throwing of medals” in particular, the United States would cease active military operations in southeast Asia. After the United States had left the war, VVAW continued to operate as an advocacy group for Vietnam veterans to both the government and to other veterans’ groups. VVAW also began to advocate for a blanket amnesty for draft resisters and military deserters: those who had escaped the war horrors to which so many veterans had been subjected. Due to their work, President Carter granted amnesty in 1980. Over two decades later, as the first U.S. veterans were returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, VVAW inspired Iraq Veterans Against the War, which continues to operate as a protest and advocacy group today under the name About Face.

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Support Us

We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust 

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Sources

Hunt, Andrew E. The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York University Press, 1999. 

Lembcke, Jerry. “The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester.” The New York Times. 13 October 2017 (accessed 14 April 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html 

Vietnam Veterans Against the War. (accessed 14 April 2021). http://www.vvaw.org/ 

“Veterans Discard Medals In War Protest at Capitol.” The New York Times. 24 April 1971 (accessed 14 April 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/24/archives/veterans-discard-medals-in-war-protest-at-capitol-veterans-discard.html

World Health Day: Past Pandemics & Modern Inequality

4/8/2021

 
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Yesterday, people across the planet celebrated the 72nd World Health Day. First recognized in 1950, World Health Day is sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) to celebrate international efforts to improve people’s health and to raise awareness of a particular health-related issue. In response to the extreme social and economic inequities exposed by the covid-19 pandemic, the theme for World Health Day 2021 is “Building a fairer, healthier world.” Many are already aware of the risks and sacrifices essential workers have been forced to make in most of the United States, but less have considered the global inequity that this pandemic has exposed, or what that inequity will mean in the long term. But this is far from the first time the WHO and the global community have worked together to address a deadly common threat. Now, as the vaccines are rolling out and the end of the pandemic may be in sight for some, let us examine a few of those past instances in order to duplicate our greatest successes -- and avoid our worst failures.

By 1950, due to widespread systemic changes to modern life in many parts of the world, an invisible menace would descend upon communities in the summer months, maiming and even killing 20,000 to 60,000 people, especially children, each year. The mysterious threat was the poliovirus, and in the first half of the 20th century, the disease was mutating to become even deadlier. Incurable, highly contagious, and easily spread by asymptomatic carriers (up to 70% of those infected), polio first attacks the intestinal tract, but then moves to attack the central nervous system in about 1% of victims. Once in the central nervous system, polio can cause muscle weakness, partial paralysis, and sometimes death. Around the middle of the 20th century, three brilliant U.S. scientists led teams to track, study, and eliminate this devastating illness. The vaccines that they developed saved countless lives around the world, and one is still used today in the WHO’s ongoing international quest to eliminate polio forever. 

The three men most responsible for the development of these vaccines were Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin. Many are familiar with the heroic story of Jonas Salk, who famously devoted two and a half years to the effort, tested the injected “killed” vaccine on himself and his family, and then famously refused to patent the vaccine so that its distribution would not be hindered. After years of trials, the Salk vaccine was approved in the United States in 1955 and saved thousands of lives. Few, however, know that Polish-born virologist Hilary Koprowski’s team developed an oral-delivery “live” vaccine first in 1950, which was never approved in the United States but saved countless lives overseas. Then, through the 1950s, Albert Sabin’s team developed a safer and more potent version of Koprowski’s vaccine, which was first approved in the United States in 1961. Before it was approved in the U.S., though, Sabin freely shared the vaccine with the Soviet Union, the rising rival to the United States, acknowledging that the polio pandemic was not just an American problem but a global one. Like Salk, Sabin never patented his team’s vaccine either. It is the Sabin-Koprowski vaccine that has gone on to be the primary vaccine used globally by the WHO today. 

Through international cooperation, humans have completely defeated one other viral threat to our species: smallpox, declared eradicated in 1980. Polio is likely next -- after the immense amount of attention and activity to develop and distribute a vaccine in the mid-20th century, the WHO with its regional partners have eliminated the poliovirus from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, East Asia, and most of South Asia. In recent years, the number of worldwide annual cases have reduced to a range between the hundreds and the low thousands. The main hurdle to complete eradication is regional political instability, in large part caused by violent nationalism and exacerbated by foreign interests looking to exploit the instability for their own ends.

In our current covid-19 pandemic, we have seen both ugly racial prejudices cropping up as well as an immense international effort to address the global threat. The scientific cooperation has been rather inspirational, if underreported. But former President Trump pulled the United States out of the WHO just when American expertise could have assisted the global community, as covid-19 became a global pandemic. Biden has rejoined the United States to the WHO, but international inequality in the distribution of vaccines continues. Rich countries are ordering and stockpiling many more vaccine doses than their total populations -- the United States has ordered a little less than double the number of its total population -- despite the immense difficulty that many poorer countries are having in acquiring any vaccine doses at all and despite the United States’ own massive culpability in incubating and spreading the covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, “vaccine nationalism” has convinced regional political entities like the European Union to halt the export of vaccine doses to their partners abroad, while their own citizens are not fully inoculated -- despite the failure of the EU vaccine rollout stemming from poor management and a lack of infrastructure as opposed to a lack of doses. Meanwhile, as rich countries subsidize the vaccine for their own citizens, some pharmaceutical companies are making tens of billions of dollars from these vaccines. A fourth issue is that after rich countries have reached the threshold to achieve herd immunity, international efforts to distribute the vaccine will significantly slow down. This was the pattern with HIV/AIDS; while a massive grassroots campaign of HIV-positive people and their allies was largely responsible for educating the public about HIV/AIDS and getting the medical community to address the epidemic, as the therapies became more effective at managing the symptoms, more privileged individuals and communities could live healthy and happy lives with the disease, while more impoverished communities were left behind. Today, the majority of HIV/AIDS cases occur in middle and low resource countries, and in rich nations, in poorer communities and communities of color. Some have described it as “a disease of inequality,” citing the strong correlation between HIV prevalence and income inequality, but it is just one on a long list. It is not unthinkable that a similar situation could develop with covid-19.

Of course, covid-19 is much more easily transmissible than HIV, and the thought of permanently eradicating covid-19 in one or a few countries while the rest of the world continues to suffer is completely nonsensical. In our global economy, as we have seen, regional diseases can become worldwide pandemics within a matter of weeks, and just as soon as one region seems to have it under control, visiting neighbors from another region can set entire communities back. With new technologies being pioneered with the covid-19 vaccines, the rate of new vaccine development is expected to accelerate in the next few years -- perhaps fast enough to keep pace with even more dangerous covid-19 variants. But even that is a pipedream, considering how much the United States relies on overseas labor and goods. This present pandemic has revealed how extraordinarily unequal this country is; as essential workers making starvation-level wages have been forced to risk their lives, oftentimes without health insurance, the call for Medicare for All is more relevant, pressing, and louder than ever. As of this date, over 515,000 American lives have been lost to the pandemic -- many of them with comorbidities or other risk factors that are preventable given adequate healthcare. Even if we quickly get the pandemic under control, we as a society will be dealing with the long-term health consequences (and associated costs) for years. The establishment of universal single-payer healthcare in the United States is an actionable, equitable, and immediately beneficial goal for us as Americans. In the 1970s, a movement to create equitable accommodations and to remove social stigma for people with disabilities was often led by polio survivors; they are the reason we have ramps next to stairs, special parking for the handicapped, and other accessibility options that have improved our society. But this is a global pandemic, and we live in a global community. As we as a nation begin to recover from this catastrophe, let us not forget that full recovery can only occur after the pandemic has been defeated everywhere.

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Support Us

We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust 

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Sources

Challacombe, Stephen J. “Global Inequalities in HIV Infection.” Oral Diseases, vol. 26, no. S1, 30 Aug. 2020, pp. 16–21., doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.13386.

Fox, Margalit. “Hilary Koprowski, Who Developed First Live-Virus Polio Vaccine, Dies at 96.” The New York Times. 20 April 2013 (accessed 7 April 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/hilary-koprowski-developed-live-virus-polio-vaccine-dies-at-96.html

Kollewe, Julia. “From Pfizer to Moderna: who’s making billions from Covid-19 vaccines?” The Guardian. 6 March 2021 (accessed 7 April 2021). https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/06/from-pfizer-to-moderna-whos-making-billions-from-covid-vaccines 

Noble, Greg. “From The Vault: Dr. Albert Sabin saved the world from polio.” WCPO Cincinnati. 29 July 2020 (accessed 7 April 2021). https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-dr-albert-sabin-saved-the-world-from-polio 

Seuss, Jeff. “Our history: Sabin and Salk competed for safest polio vaccine.” Cincinnati Enquirer. 10 May 2019 (accessed 7 April 2021). https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/05/10/our-history-albert-sabin-jonas-salk-competed-for-safest-polio-vaccine/1140590001/ 

“World Health Day 2021.” World Health Organization. (accessed 7 April 2021). https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2021

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The Genderless Spirit of the Public Universal Friend

4/1/2021

 
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Yesterday was Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual celebration of transgender, nonbinary, and other gender-variant persons and their contributions to society. While many usually highlight living transgender people on that day, the public still knows very little about historical gender-variance. Therefore, this week we will give tribute to a transgender American religious leader born in 1752 whose story of gender-nonconformity and prophethood gives much context to the Revolutionary Period of American history. It is a story about rejection, resurrection, and revolution: the story of the Public Universal Friend.

(A note about pronouns: contemporaries usually referred to the Public Universal Friend with masculine pronouns or avoided pronouns, opting to use “the Friend” or “P.U.F.” While the use of the pronouns “they/them” have been used informally to refer to singular persons for centuries, including in the time of Wilkinson/the Friend, it is only in recent years that the convention has begun to be formalized. For this piece, we will use feminine pronouns to refer to Jemima Wilkinson and modern gender-neutral pronouns for the Public Universal Friend, since followers considered the two to be distinct entities -- the former a woman, and the latter a genderless being.)

Assigned female at birth, Jemima Wilkinson grew up in the Quaker religious community of Rhode Island during a time of passionate spiritual revival and experimentation. With the Quaker community in her area increasingly insular and concerned with membership purity, Wilkinson began to explore other spiritual traditions and trends. By her early 20s, Wilkinson was starting to attend services of the New Light Baptists, a new religious sect inspired by the Great Awakening spiritual movement. The New Light Baptists rebelled against traditional sources of authority, including old church hierarchies and civil authorities, instead emphasizing the primacy of the Bible and the cultivation of a personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit. In principle, Quaker theology also highly regarded the individual relationship with God and the importance of every person’s “inner light,” but the vigorous energy and excitement around the New Light services stood in stark contrast to the somber and stilted atmosphere of Quaker services of the time. This spiritual exploration and other behaviors deemed unacceptable resulted in Wilkinson and some of her other family members from being expelled from the Quaker community in 1776. 

It was a tumultuous and uncertain time for the Thirteen Colonies. Colonists mostly in New England had been waging one rebellion after another against British authority for years: protests against the Sugar Act in 1764, the Stamp Act in 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767-1768, and of course, the Tea Act of 1773, which prompted the famous Boston Tea Party. In 1774, Parliament passed the so-called Intolerable Acts in order to discipline the colonists after the immense property destruction caused by the Boston Tea Party. Frustrations were boiling over, rebellion was in the air, and many colonists were starting to interrogate basic assumptions about people, society, and authority. The next year, colonists were already fighting battles against British soldiers in Massachusetts, and in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was made and a Continental Army formed. 

On October 5, 1776, Wilkinson fell severely ill with a sickness thought to have been brought to the area by the Continental Navy ship Columbus -- a fairly common occurrence in colonial Rhode Island. But while all others either eventually recovered or simply succumbed to disease, something peculiar seemed to happen to Jemima Wilkinson. After being bedridden and feverish for days, Wilkinson suddenly arose, apparently fully recovered, but proclaiming that the soul of Jemima Wilkinson had died and ascended to Heaven. In her place, God had allegedly instilled Wilkinson’s body with a divine spirit neither male nor female to be a holy servant: the Public Universal Friend. The Jemima Wilkinson name was abandoned, and the Public Universal Friend wasted no time in enacting their divine mission.

Regardless of how we conceive of gender today, it is clear that the Friend was convinced of their own transformation. At no point for the rest of their life did the Friend deviate from the new persona, consistently defending their identity as a divine genderless entity. The Friend kept few personal possessions and no real fortune. They spoke in an ambiguously deep, sonorous voice. They adopted androgynous dress: men’s hats and unique neck kerchiefs somewhat similar to masculine trends of the time, but also long hair and long flowing garments of their own design, halfway between clerical robes and gender-neutral morning gowns. In a society in which gender and style of dress was an essential conveyer of social standing, the Public Universal Friend’s ambiguous appearance confounded many.

The Public Universal Friend almost immediately began preaching, giving speaking tours around Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania to growing numbers of followers, many of whom had also been cast out by the Society of Friends (the official name for the Quakers). Much of the content of the Friend’s spiritual message was not too dissimilar from many other group’s beliefs. Unsurprisingly, the Friend borrowed much from Quaker theology, while also incorporating their charismatic leadership and millenarian apocalyptic prophecies drawn from the Great Awakening: a belief in free will over predestination, the equal value of all humans’ inner lights in the eyes of God, and an imminent apocalypse for which all must prepare. The result was a mix of doctrines familiar enough to both ex-Quakers and New Light adherents to attract a decent following of men and women, including some prominent members of society. But the Public Universal Friend also emphasized some of the more radical implications of these doctrines: the abolition of slavery and inclusion of Black followers at services, the rejection of traditional patriarchal authority, and universal hospitality regardless of faith or background. By 1790, the Friend and their followers, the Society of Universal Friends (not to be confused with the Society of Friends, a.k.a. Quakers) had bought land from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), founded a settlement in western New York, and put the land in trust. In their new home, woman-leaders took charge and became particularly prominent in the community. During the tense post-war negotiations between the new United States government and the Haudenosaunee (who had largely sided with the British), the Friend was the only American non-man who attended and spoke during the talks. The Friend gave a sermon, translated by an interpreter, to both the American men and the Haudenosaunee men and women in attendance. Speaking about the importance of love and peace between peoples, the Friend impressed the Haudenosaunee, and may have been a major contributing factor for them to agree to the landmark Treaty of Canandaigua. 

Detractors had disrespectfully questioned and rejected the Public Universal Friend’s gender, unique dress, and spiritual sincerity from the moment the Friend announced themself. Others spread false rumors of violence and charlantry. Some of the confusion and suspicion has continued over the centuries, with one book as recently published as in 1964 rejecting the Friend’s nonbinary gender identity in the very title: Pioneer Prophetess. Modern gender conceptions are still in flux, and were far less developed in 1964, but then and now, gender is largely known and expressed through performance: how one dresses, speaks, and behaves. The Friend deliberately blended traditional masculine and feminine features in attire and mannerisms to forge a wholly unique gender identity that was inseparable from their identity as a divine prophet. 

Today, we can remember the Public Universal Friend as an early American example of a nonbinary transgender leader, well before those terms were invented. The Friend arose in the wake of a society-shaking religious movement, in the middle of an uncertain political revolution, and at the start of a massive war. Some even to this day have accused the Public Universal Friend of simply being a character Jemima Wilkinson invented to break from patriarchal notions of gendered work, which at the time excluded women from the pulpit. Wilkinson, these accusers claim, simply took advantage of the revolutionary spirit of the time that forced so many to question basic assumptions of their lives. But regardless of the Friend’s sincerity with regards to prophethood, the sincerity of their nonbinary gender seems genuine. The Public Universal Friend died on July 1, 1819, and was ultimately buried in an unmarked grave according to their wishes. Having been centered around a charismatic leader, the Society of Universal Friends dwindled and eventually fell into obscurity, although some descendants still live in the area today and still keep old stories, if not artifacts, from the time when the Friend was with them. 

May the tumultuous and historic times we are currently experiencing force us to question some of our society’s basic assumptions. May we see in our own time prophets of peace, love, and spiritual rebellion blend tradition with modern thinking to explore new ways of being and to reveal what is possible in the world. May we all be inspired by this truly unique figure who carved out a seemingly impossible existence through religious conviction and community-building. And let us recognize, through our own still-developing conceptions of gender that transgender, nonbinary, and gender-variant persons have always been here.

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Supporting Us

We commit a significant amount of research and writing to produce A Peace of History each week. If you like our weekly posts, please consider supporting this project with a one-time or recurring donation. Your gift will be used to continue producing more A Peace of History posts as well as the greater mission of VPT. You may type in however much you would like to give; contributions of all sizes are appreciated. Click this link to learn more about what we do and how you can donate: https://www.mightycause.com/organization/Voluntown-Peace-Trust 


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Sources

Larson, Scott. “‘Indescribable Being’: Theological Performances of Genderlessness in the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776-1819.” Early American Studies, vol. 12, no. 3, 2014, pp. 576–600. Beyond the Binaries: Critical Approaches to Sex and Gender in Early America (Fall 2014). 

Moyer, Paul B. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. Cornell University Press, 2015.

Wisbey, Jr., Herbert A. Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Cornell University Press, 1964.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Today

3/25/2021

 
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One hundred and ten years ago today, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City caught fire, causing the deaths of 146 workers locked inside. Most of the 123 women and 23 men were recent Italian and Jewish immigrants in their teens and twenties: the oldest victim was 43-year old Providenza Panno, while the youngest victims were 14-year olds Kate Leone and Rosaria “Sara” Maltese. Most of the victims succumbed to fire or smoke inhalation inside the building, their deaths as invisible to bystanders outside as their daily toils had been in life. But witnesses also watched helplessly as 62 of the victims jumped or fell to their deaths from the 9th floor of the burning building. One of the deadliest and most infamous workplace disasters in American history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire sent a deep shock through New York and the country as a whole, marking a turning point for the labor movement. The political establishment in New York awakened to the social crisis of immigrant labor abuse, a flurry of progressive legislation was passed, and the owners of the Triangle Waist Company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, were disgraced. A closer examination of the details, however, reveals the broader societal reasons for the disaster which have largely persisted and continues to endanger, maim, and kill poor workers in the United States and around the world today.

The fire likely started from a lit cigarette tossed into a fabric scrap bin by a male worker or supervisor, as few women smoked at the time, but the fire jumped quickly through the cotton dust to the heaps of lightweight fabric all around the factory. Soon, the entire floor was roaring in flames -- the buckets of water hanging from the walls not nearly enough to slow the spread -- and workers attempted to flee. The floor only had two narrow staircases: within minutes, one was completely blocked by flames, while the other was found to be locked from the outside. Locking the doors of a factory was common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks or from stealing material from the company. The elevator operators for the two elevators servicing the 9th floor, Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillaro, both valiantly saved many workers’ lives by continuing to take people down from the burning level until the elevators failed. About 20 workers crammed themselves onto a fire escape, only for the poorly installed emergency escape to collapse and drop the workers to their deaths. Most of the remaining people trapped on the factory floor asphyxiated and burned. But at least a few dozen more chose to leap 100 feet to their deaths instead of die by fire. Louis Waldman, a New York Socialist state assemblyman and witness to the tragedy, years later wrote of the night: “Horrified and helpless, the crowds -- I among them -- looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.” 

At the time, the factory was considered state-of-the-art, with modern, well-maintained equipment, and the 10-year old building itself was designed to be fireproof -- indeed, the building was still structurally sound after the fire was put out. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was for a time held up as the model factory, head and shoulders above the typical sweatshop of the time. But there were no laws at the time mandating an anti-fire sprinkler system in factories, building codes were outdated for taller buildings and were rarely enforced anyway, the workers compensation law that was passed two years prior was ruled unconstitutional the day before the fire, and both government and law enforcement had largely sided with factory owners in labor disputes for decades. With a seemingly endless number of work-seeking immigrants in New York ready to be exploited, Harris and Blanck, like most factory owners of the time, had little incentive to care for the safety of their workers. 

A week after the fire, socialist union activist Rose Schneiderman, who helped lead a strike for waistshirt workers two years earlier in the Uprising of the 20,000, gave an impassioned public speech about the victims in which she argued that only worker solidarity could bring about positive change for workers: “I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting… The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.” Others in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and in the broader community turned to the government for greater workers’ protections. Frances Perkins, who later went on to be the first woman to serve in a US Cabinet and who had a large part in shaping the New Deal, headed a new Committee on Public Safety in New York City in the wake of the fire. Having witnessed the fire firsthand, Perkins would dedicate the rest of her life to labor reform. The work done by Perkins and her committee convinced the New York political establishment to take immigrant labor issues seriously, and led to the New York State Legislature forming their own Factory Investigating Commission. In just a couple years, the State’s Commission conducted interviews and investigations in hundreds of factories to determine how common dangerous working conditions were and what regulations were required to keep workers safe. 

Blanck and Harris were indicted on first- and second-degree manslaughter charges, but avoided conviction. During the trial, in a disturbing echo of modern conspiracy theories around “crisis actors” giving false testimony about mass shootings, eyewitness and survivor Kate Alterman’s testimony was scrutinized, and the defense attorney convinced the court that she had likely been coached to slander Blanck and Harris. Just two years later, Blanck was caught locking workers inside a factory again. He was fined the minimum amount: $20. 

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was one of those moments in history that suddenly gripped the country and convinced huge swaths of the public that radical change was necessary: like the Boston Massacre in 1770, Bleeding Kansas and John Brown’s Raid in the 1850s, the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis just last year. After each of these violent tragedies, after witnessing or hearing accounts from eyewitnesses, people all over were inspired to cause change, and a bevy of social movements working for reforms and solutions rose up. But 110 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, sweatshops still produce the majority of our clothes, underclass workers still toil in dangerous and restrictive jobs, and immigrants still struggle for basic rights. What’s worse, the labor movement that made such gains for working people in the first half of the 20th century has been gutted by the last few decades of deregulation and concerted anti-union rhetoric from some politicians. 

In the past decade, union organizers have allied with workers who don’t have unions for the Fight for $15 campaign. Starting with smaller campaigns at the local and state level in 2012, the Fight for $15 is now a national issue. This effort continues to expose not only the ubiquity of jobs that pay below a living wage, but also all the attending hardships that lead to shorter lifespans and unnecessary suffering. The covid-19 pandemic has thrown the inequity into an even starker light: consider “essential workers” in the last year being denied hazard pay and forced to risk their lives during a deadly global pandemic. The cause of improving conditions for working people intersects in multiple ways with women’s issues, immigration issues, the everyday difficulties of poverty, and so much more. We must not wait for the next tragedy to act; the tragedy has been happening all around us. Support workers’ struggles for better pay and working conditions. Participate in strikes, disruptions, boycotts, and other collective actions to force corporations and politicians to provide workers with necessary benefits, a living wage, and human dignity.

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Sources:

Blakemore, Erin. “How a tragedy transformed protections for American workers.” National Geographic. 25 March 2020 (accessed 25 March 2021). https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-transformed-protections-american-workers

Liebhold, Peter. “Why the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Makes for a Complicated History.” Smithsonian Magazine. 17 December 2018 (accessed 25 March 2021). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-makes-complicated-history-180971019/

“The Fire that Sparked the Labor Movement.” AFGE. 23 March 2018 (accessed 24 March 2021). https://www.afge.org/article/it-took-1-fire-and-146-dead-workers-to-change-workplace-safety-laws/ 

“Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.” AFL-CIO. (accessed 24 March 2021). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-makes-complicated-history-180971019/

Asian-American Women and Civil Rights

3/18/2021

 
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On Tuesday evening of this week, a young white man shot and murdered 8 people in three different spas around Atlanta, Georgia; 6 of the victims were Asian-American women. Over the summer last year, many Asian-American rights groups joined Black lives groups to call for justice in George Floyd’s murder. In the wake of Tuesday evening’s seemingly targeted murder spree (the shooter has denied a racial motivation), many groups that have organized around Black lives have since likewise made statements in solidarity with Asian-Americans against racist violence. This kind of interracial solidarity is not new, and in recognition of the little-known Asian-American contributions to civil right and other social justice movements, this Women’s History Month let us spread the stories of three Asian-American women who dedicated their lives to fighting injustice.


Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs was a philosopher, civil rights leader, and leftist revolutionary who contributed immensely to both the theoretical and practical aspects of social change. Born to Chinese immigrants in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, Boggs eventually moved to Chicago and became involved in the tenants’ rights movement and the workers’ movement. Through that work, she became involved in the historic 1941 March on Washington, which was primarily organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin and which was a major influence on Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington. In Chicago, Grace met African-American activist-organizer and auto worker James Boggs. In 1953, Grace and James married and moved to Detroit, where they continued their work on northern Black civil rights by helping to organize coalitions of communities to protect workers and women, to decrease street violence, and to resist the economic and police assaults on Black Detroiters. In 1992, Grace and James founded Detroit Summer, a summer program for volunteer youth from across the country to help revitalize neighborhoods in the city. 

A staunch leftist revolutionary, Grace Lee Boggs constantly challenged her own thinking, always growing in her understanding of injustice and the ways to resist it. Early on, she was heavily influenced by the German philosophers Kant and Hegel, and later by the Black revolutionary and her contemporary, Malcolm X. Later, Boggs became convinced of Dr. King’s revolutionary nonviolence and his insistence on the cultivation of the “beloved community” as a necessary and practical part of a successful political revolution. Having immersed herself in the Black civil rights movement for most of her life, Grace became a role model and a symbol of interracial solidarity for a new generation of Asian-Americans inspired by Black civil rights and disturbed by US aggression in Southeast Asia in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Deeply influenced by the growing Black Panther Party and the Asian liberation movements, in 1970, she and James along with other Asian-American activists in Detroit founded the Detroit Asian Political Alliance. Later that year, in a speech Grace gave to the Alliance, she said: “We are the first generation of Asian-Americans who are resisting assimilation… We have this choice today only because… the American Establishment… began opening up all sorts of doors to Chinese and Japanese. Now… we are repelled by the United States way of life. The Vietnam war has given us a glimpse into its biocidal and genocidal character. The Black revolt has given us an idea of the dehumanizing principles by which it operates.” But, it was not until after the death of her husband James in 1993 that Grace Lee Boggs deeply examined her Asian-American identity. In the last couple decades of her life, Boggs continued writing, working for her community, and evolving in her thinking. Her autobiography Living for Change was published in 1998, and her last book The Next American REvolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century was published in 2011. Grace Lee Boggs passed away on October 5, 2015 at the age of 100.


Marion Kwan

Marion Kwan was a dedicated Chinese-American member of the Black civil rights movement. In 1965, after attending a lecture at Hastings College about racial discrimination and violence against Blacks in the South, Kwan moved to Mississippi to work with the Delta Ministry. Through that group, Kwan became acquainted with many of the major civil rights groups of the time, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Kwan immediately recognized the physical segregation of African-Americans from whites in the South as similar to the zoning laws that kept Chinese people contained within “Chinatown” in San Francisco, but also knew that the situation was significantly more dire for African-Americans. In her own words: “It was there, all right; systemic racism may be evident, but so was the strength of the community that would not give up on itself. Chinatown, too, was like that to me. Both minority ghettos within cities, hanging on as hard as it could. But that’s where the comparison stops. I was able to go beyond the boundaries of San Francisco Chinatown without being in imminent physical danger -- hateful stares and verbal insults notwithstanding -- but in Hattiesburg, I knew that going beyond borders one could end up being dead. I had learned about how Chinatowns were burned down to the ground and about Chinese lynching of the past, but I did not know that was still happening -- before my eyes, right then and there in the Deep South, to another race of people.”

On her first day working for the Delta Ministry, Marion Kwan was tasked with attending the trial of a fellow civil rights activist from the North who had been arrested for walking alone by the highway. Southern jails were widely known to be dangerous for any civil rights workers, and so a strong presence from the movement was necessary during the trial proceedings. Before the trial could commence, however, Kwan and the 9 other civil rights workers there had to be divided into the “white” and “colored” sections. After forcing the Black activists to the “colored” section, the Deputy Sheriff apparently did not know where to place Marion. After a minute of whispering between the Judge and the Deputy Sheriff, the latter shocked the court by dismissing the case altogether. As Kwan said about the incident: “For that moment anyway, the conscience of the Nation sat in limbo and helped free my fellow-freedom fighter. That is the irony of racism. It’s not about color, it’s about human dignity and equal rights.” For the next few years, Kwan continued working in the movement: registering Black citizens as voters, organizing grassroots groups, and reaching out to others in the community. She eventually moved back to her home city of San Francisco, bringing with her the lessons she learned in Mississippi about community resilience, self-determination, civil rights and oppression. Back in San Francisco, Kwan continued to work in grassroots community organizations as well as national and international social justice. She worked as a Head Start Pre-K teacher in Chinatown, served as the YWCA Young Adult Program Director for a time, did social work for the International Rescue Committee in Hong Kong, and protested the US involvement in the war in Vietnam. Kwan is still alive today, continues to give interviews and work for social justice, and finds great inspiration in the new movement for Black lives.


Patsy Mink

Patsy Mink was the first woman of color and first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, representing the State of Hawai’i for 24 years from 1965 to 1977, then from 1990 to 2002. As a third-generation Japanese-American woman in ethnically diverse Hawai’i, Mink experienced One of the early examples of Patsy Mink’s commitment to justice occurred during her first year at the University of Nebraska when she organized her fellow students and successfully fought against segregated dorms. On her first day in Congress, Mink proposed and successfully passed a resolution protesting British nuclear testing in the South Pacific. She would go on to write the first draft of Title IX, the law that protects against discrimination based on gender in public schools and any other federally-funded education program; Mink would also co-write the final draft of the law. As the conflict in Vietnam increased in intensity and spread into Cambodia and Laos, Mink consistently criticized the United States’ critical role in escalating and accelerating the violence. 

In the second half of her career in Congress, Mink opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, co-leading a protest march to the Capitol to force the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual assault against Thomas. Mink worked tirelessly to restore, maintain, and progress civil rights and socio-economic protections that had been neglected or diminished since the last time she was in Congress in the ‘60s and ‘70s. She opposed Republican-sponsored welfare reform laws, which would have gutted the protections and programs she had dedicated herself to defending. She was a co-sponsor of the original DREAM Act, which would provide basic civil rights protections for undocumented minors in the United States. From the moment it was proposed to the day of her death, Mink vehemently opposed the formation of the US Department of Homeland Security, presciently warning against the kinds of human rights abuses the US government perpetrated on Japanese-American ethnic minorities during the Second World War. Patsy Mink passed away on August 30, 2002 at the age of 74, just one week after winning in the 2002 primary; later that year, Congress officially renamed Title IX to the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act” in honor of her significant contributions to the landmark legislation.


Sources:

Aguilar-San Juan, Karín. “‘We Are Extraordinarily Lucky to Be Living in These Times’: A Conversation with Grace Lee Boggs.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2015), pp. 92-123. University of Nebraska Press. 

Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Patsy Mink: 1927-2002.” National Women’s History Museum, 2019 (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/patsy-mink

“Asian Americans in the People’s History of the United States.” Zinn Education Project (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/asian-americans-and-moments-in-peoples-history/#Patsy_Mink

“Grace Lee Boggs.” Americans Who Tell the Truth (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/grace-lee-boggs

Kwan, Marion. “Fighting for Civil Rights in Hattiesburg, MS in 1965.” Eastwind: Politics & Culture of Asian America, 2020 (accessed 17 March 2021). 

Kwan, Marion. “They Hadn’t Counted On Me Comin’.” Civil Rights Movement Archives, 2016 (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.crmvet.org/nars/kwan-ct.htm

McFadden, Robert D. “Grace Lee Boggs, Human Rights Advocate for 7 Decades, Dies at 100.” The New York Times, 5 October 2015 (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/us/grace-lee-boggs-detroit-activist-dies-at-100.html

“Oral History/Interview: Marion Kwan March 2016.” Civil Rights Movement Archives, 2016 (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.crmvet.org/nars/kwan16.htm

“Patsy Mink.” National Park Service (accessed 17 March 2021). https://www.nps.gov/people/patsy-mink.htm

Against Empire & Patriarchy: Women of the Salt March

3/11/2021

 
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Tomorrow marks the 91st anniversary of the start of the famous Salt March, which inspired millions across British India to nonviolently rebel against their colonial masters. Although it was not the first campaign that Mahatma Gandhi led to resist British rule, it has been described as the event that transformed the thinking of myriad average Indians to envision self-government. Also known as the Salt Satyagraha (loosely, “truth-power”), the Salt March proved the power of nonviolent mass resistance, the prudence of focusing protest on a universally-used commodity, and the vital role of women in the independence movement. The Salt March was one of the most influential nonviolent direct action campaigns in history, inspiring colonized and oppressed peoples around the world to organize their own nonviolent mass resistance campaigns.

For almost 200 years of the modern era, much of south Asia including modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh was ruled by British entities in a vastly exploitative colonial system: first by the British East India Company starting in 1757, and then by the British Crown directly following the Indian Rebellion of 1857. During that time, British economic interests had come to monopolize and heavily tax entire industries in the region, including salt. Although the taxation of salt originated in ancient times, the tax burden increased dramatically with British Imperial rule, affecting every social class in British India. Thus, in December 1929 when the Indian National Congress’ demands for independence from the British were denied, and leaders were deciding on what form their mass civil disobedience should take, Gandhi suggested the salt tax.  

The original plan was for Gandhi and 78 trusted volunteer men following strict discipline to start the 240 mile walk from the Sabarmati Ashram in western British India to Dandi on the coast. The march would commence on March 12, 1930. In the weeks leading up to the event, Gandhi issued regular and increasingly dramatic statements to the Indian and international press about independence and his expectation of arrest. Along the 24-day walk itself, in the villages the group passed, Gandhi would stop to give speeches attacking the salt tax and British rule generally. Thousands would gather to hear what the man had to say. The international media coverage made Gandhi and this new stage of the Indian independence movement world-famous. When Gandhi and the satyagrahis reached the beaches of Dandi on April 5, he famously picked up a lump of salty mud and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” He then boiled the mud in saltwater, producing usable salt, defying the British salt monopoly, and forcing colonial authorities to recognize that this satyagraha nonviolent mass action represented a real threat to their rule. 

Sarojini Naidu, first woman-President of the Indian National Congress, met Gandhi and the 78 male satyagrahis in Dandi. Naidu was one of the most prominent Indian politicians of any gender at the time, and criticized Gandhi for excluding women from the original Salt Satyagraha plan. Naidu encouraged other women to take an active part in the satyagraha movement, going further than Gandhi’s call for women to stick to less risky forms of protest, like picketing shops. Thousands across British India began collecting, producing, processing, selling, and buying illegal salt -- many of whom were women defying Gandhi’s suggestion to stay in their separate sphere. These seemingly little acts of civil disobedience were all the more meaningful because they were small acts in which nearly anyone could participate. The fact that the matter was salt was especially close to the daily issues of women: with household cooking traditionally left to wives and mothers, these women understood the importance of salt. But since everyone must eat, the salt tax and rebellion against it affected Indians of all genders, ages, and social classes. 

The march to Dandi was just the first step of the Salt Satyagraha. Since reaching Dandi and producing the salt in early April, the Salt Satyagraha had inspired countless people to commit mass civil disobedience on their own, and several women filled the need for local leadership. On April 6, the same day that Gandhi first produced the illegal salt, Kamaladevi Chattopadhayay organized and led women to start their own illegal salt production. On April 13, women held a conference in Dandi affirming their commitment to the independence movement and refusing to be sidelined by men in the struggle. On April 16, Chattopadhayay led 500 people to protest the Wadala salt depot outside Bombay (now Mumbai). Around the same time, the writer Lilavati Munshi led a group to the Wadala salt depot for a similar purpose. These and other lesser-known women were beaten, burned, and arrested, but their actions proved to be absolutely instrumental to the movement’s success.

For the second step of the Salt Satyagraha, Gandhi planned a nonviolent raid of the Dharasana salt works, but was arrested in the night before the march and raid began. The Indian National Congress appointed the widely respected judge Abbas Tyabji to take over leadership of the action; Kasturbai Gandhi, the wife of Mohandas Gandhi, stepped up to the leadership role as well. But when both Tyabji and Kasturbai Gandhi were also arrested, it was Sarojini Naidu who took up the mantle and led the Dharasana Satyagraha. Though they were unsuccessful at raiding the site, the hundreds of protesters bravely withstood the violent tactics of the colonial authorities. They experimented with such strategies as the sit-down protest, as well as the strategy of exposing the brutish violence of the British in dealing with unarmed and nonviolent protesters; both would become popular and effective strategies during the US civil rights and antiwar movements. 

While it took 17 more years for south Asia to win independence from Britain, the 24-day march to Dandi and the rapid spread of the Salt Satyagraha campaign was a turning point in the struggle for many reasons. After the initial exclusion from the Salt March itself, enormous numbers of women -- most from modest backgrounds -- participated in active roles at every level of resistance for the first time in the independence movement. The dramatic entry of these women into the movement further inspired people of all genders across British India to stand up to colonial rule. Once south Asians understood they could stand up to the brutality of the British Empire without resorting to brutality themselves, they continued and eventually succeeded in their nonviolent resistance against the largest empire in history, inspiring independence movements around the world and creating a model that continues to be used and developed today. 

Sources:

Chatterjee, Manini. “1930: Turning Point in the Participation of Women in the Freedom Struggle.” Social Scientist, vol. 29, no. 7/8, 2001, pp. 39–47. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3518124

Live History India. “Women, Salt and Satyagraha: A Look at the Historic Protest at Mumbai’s Chowpatty Beach in 1930.” The Better India. 15 August 2017. https://www.thebetterindia.com/111930/the-chowpatty-satyagraha/ 

Karlekar, Malavika. “A Fistful of Salt: How Women Took Charge of the Dandi March.” The Wire. 30 January 2020. https://thewire.in/women/women-dandi-march-gandhi 

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The Enduring Conviction of Jeannette Rankin, First Woman US Congressperson

3/4/2021

 
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One hundred and four years ago to the day, Jeannette Rankin was seated as the first woman member of the US Congress. In her two nonconsecutive terms representing Montana, Rankin caused intense controversy for her work in the women’s suffrage movement, for her efforts to secure protections for workers, and most of all for her outspoken opposition to war. The uncompromising stance that she maintained over several decades on such controversial issues inspired many of her peers, inspired many the younger generation in the 1960s and ‘70s, and continues to inspire those who work against the grain in order to improve society for all.

Up until well into her twenties, Jeannette Rankin lived a fairly sheltered life in rural Missoula, Montana. She earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Montana in 1902, then worked as a teacher and a seamstress before becoming a caretaker for her sick father. It was not until 1904 that Rankin witnessed her first glimpses of urban, industrial poverty alongside unimaginable extravagance and wealth during a visit to the east coast. Returning home, Rankin began to read all the material she could find on progressive ideas, especially the issues related to women. After seeing the same inequality in San Francisco during another trip in 1907, Rankin was compelled to move to the city to teach recently-arrived immigrants at a private settlement house, then moved to the east coast to attend the New York School of Philanthropy in 1908. After graduating, Rankin moved back west to Washington state and became involved in the women’s suffrage campaign in Seattle. After the campaign was won in 1910, making Washington the fifth state in the Union to extend voting rights to white women, Rankin got a job as a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), traveling across the country to organize local women’s suffrage campaigns. Following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which killed 146 garment workers in New York City, Rankin also organized the immigrant women still working in similarly dangerous conditions in Manhattan’s Garment District. Meanwhile, Rankin led a revival of the women’s suffrage movement in Montana starting with a speech before the Montana legislature in 1911 -- the first woman to address the Montana legislature. The state legislature would pass a bill expanding voting rights to white women in 1913, and the public voted in favor of a women’s suffrage referendum in 1914, making Montana the 13th state in the Union to legalize women’s suffrage and the second women’s suffrage campaign that Rankin helped carry to victory. 

Hoping to build off of the landmark victory in her home state, Jeannette Rankin declared her candidacy for a Congressional seat representing Montana in 1916. Her platform followed a typical progressive slate including universal suffrage, child welfare legislation, and alcohol prohibition. Less universal among progressives was her outspoken opposition to US involvement in the First World War. But despite promoting what some may have thought were radical positions at the time, and despite being ignored by most of the newspapers in the state, Rankin won the second-most number of votes in Montana that year, becoming the first woman to be elected to Congress in the United States. Many women voters who knew the work Rankin had already done for them cast their votes for her, but Rankin’s modern, progressive platform convinced enough male voters as well that she beat the next runner-up by 6000 votes.

On her first day as a House Representative, Rankin introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment to guarantee and protect women’s suffrage in the US Constitution. Later that same evening, President Wilson requested Congress to declare war on Germany to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the days between Wilson’s request and the actual vote, Rankin’s colleagues and even her brother Wellington advised her to go against her personal feelings and vote in favor of the war. But she was not alone in her opposition to entering the war: the majority of the messages she received from her constituents in Montana urged her to vote against war, and 49 other House members also planned to vote against. Rankin apparently considered abstaining, but ultimately cast her vote, saying, “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.” The reaction was mostly negative and singled out Rankin despite the many other men who voted with her. In a parallel to civil rights leaders who expressed antiwar sentiments later on, Rankin was accused by some of her allies of sabotaging the broader women’s suffrage movement with her personal opinions. Still, Rankin continued leading the universal suffrage cause as the only woman in Congress. She was a founding member of the Committee on Woman Suffrage and continued to passionately argue for the Susan B. Anthony amendment. At one point, Rankin addressed the hypocrisy of Congress with regards to war and democracy: “How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” The measure was ultimately passed as the Nineteenth Amendment the year after her term ended. 

During her first term, Rankin also investigated accounts of worker abuse in government bureaus, as well as in the industries that encouraged the United States to join the war in the first place. In the two decades after her first term in Congress, Jeanette Rankin continued some of that work within a number of local, national, and international progressive organizations. She worked as a lobbyist, a field secretary, and traveling speaker, advocating for social welfare, increased education, and worker and consumer protections. When Senator Gerald Prentice Nye published his “merchants of death” investigation into powerful US arms manufacturers and their role in dragging the country into the First World War, Rankin publicized the findings. Those arms manufacturers had only grown in the last couple decades, and seemed to be sending the United States on another warpath. Eventually, the imminent threat of another war led Rankin to run in the Montana elections in 1940 and defeat her anti-Semitic opponent for the House seat. 

Early in her second term in Congress in 1941, Jeannette Rankin unsuccessfully introduced legislation to limit the range of the US military, hoping to make it legally impossible to join the brewing global conflict. On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor later that year, unlike in her last term, Rankin was the sole member of both houses in Congress to vote against declaring war. The reaction to her vote was so intense that afterward, Rankin was forced to take refuge in a phonebooth while reporters and other Congress members harassed her; she ultimately had to be escorted out by police. 

The vote effectively ended her political career, but after her second term, Rankin continued to travel and learn. She became more aware of the global decolonization movement, went to India several times to learn Gandhian nonviolent resistance, and continued to speak out against war and exploitation. In the 1960s, as the United States involved itself more in the Vietnam War, a new generation of war resisters emerged. Rankin had purposely stayed out of the headlines since she left Congress, but the accelerating war in Vietnam pushed Rankin, now in her eighties, to participate in the new antiwar movement. In advanced age and suffering from a painful medical condition, Rankin nevertheless helped to organize a coalition of 5000 women and several women’s peace organizations to form the largest women’s march on Washington since the 1913 suffrage march. The Jeannette Rankin Peace Brigade, as it was named, included several women’s groups which emphasized the nurturing, protecting, and mourning roles of traditional mothers and wives. But the group also included a faction which called for the need to “bury traditional womanhood” and to draw feminine political power from new sources -- Rankin, herself, never married or became a mother, after all. As a trailblazer of women’s rights, a nonconformist in many ways, and a courageously consistent voice for peace and social justice, a great variety of women in the 1960s and ‘70s found inspiration in Jeannette Rankin. Indeed, as we today grapple with rollbacks of civil rights protections, worsening worker exploitation, the continual growth of the military-industrial complex, and an expansion of our endless wars, we may do well to look to Jeannette Rankin’s lifelong resistance to violence and injustice, and find inspiration ourselves.

Sources:
O’Brien, Mary Barmeyer. Jeannette Rankin 1880-1973: Bright Star in the Big Sky. Falcon Press Publishing Co., Inc., 1995.

“Rankin, Jeannette.” History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/ 

Smith, Norma. Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience. Montana Historical Society Press, 2002. ​

CNVA and the Roots of Revolutionary Nonviolence in the US

2/25/2021

 
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(This week's post was written by VPT Board Chair Joanne Sheehan)

​For those who have been reading A Peace of History, or know the history of the Voluntown Peace Trust, you will recognize a number of people in the history of the roots of revolutionary nonviolence (read the article here:
https://www.warresisters.org/roots-revolutionary-nonviolence-united-states-are-black-community), which we hope you will read.  The roots of VPT’s own history as the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) grew from roots in the Black community, the transnational solidarity with the anticolonial movement in India, and the solidarity of White allies who were radical pacifists. 


As described in the article, Bayard Rustin was one of the Black activists committed to the development of nonviolent action in the US in the late 1930’s. Bayard worked closely with A.J. Muste, a Dutch-born minister whose organizing went back to the Lawrence, Massachusetts strike of 1919. They shared a deep understanding of the importance of strategic nonviolent action and played key roles in spreading the use of nonviolence. They were both co-founders of the Committee for Nonviolent Action in 1957.

The creation of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 attracted Marjorie Schaeffer Swann, another CNVA co-founder. As Marian Mollin (who lived at Ahimsa Lodge at VPT) wrote in her book Radical Pacifism in Modern America: 

“CORE organized its campaigns around discipline and deliberation, always militant but never reckless or hasty. Marjorie Swann, a young white pacifist who joined Chicago CORE as a charter member, recalled that “any time you did anything...there were certain rules. Nobody could do anything, even picket, without getting the training!” CORE’s well-disciplined tactics and carefully planned protests were strikingly successful.”

Nonviolence training was important to the preparation for action, and also helped deepen the understanding of nonviolent action. Wally Nelson and Juanita Morrow (Nelson), two Black activists involved in the early Civil Rights Movement, were both pioneers in the war tax resistance movement, nonviolence trainers, early CORE members, co-founders of the Peacemakers, and also worked closely with CNVA for decades.

In 1947, sixteen Black and white men, mostly war resisters, participated in the Journey of Reconciliation, an integrated interstate bus ride that became the inspiration for the better-known Freedom Rides of 1961. Over half of the participants became active in CNVA.

Polaris Action was organized by CNVA iIn the summer of 1960. Together with Peacemakers they organized a 16- day training in New London, CT. This brought together many of the people who had been actively developing nonviolence over the previous 20 years. Among the 24 listed as Faculty: Richard Gregg who wrote “The Power of Nonviolence” in the late thirties, co-founder of the Harlem Ashram Ralph Templin, Wally and Juanita Nelson and several others involved in war tax resistance, and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, AL who was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Barbara Deming came to the training as a skeptical journalist, stayed for the remainder of the training and became a committed nonviolent activist. 

In the mid 1970’s Marj Swann, who learned about nonviolence training in 1942 from CORE, and  Bernard Lafayette who was one of the Nashville students trained by Rev. James Lawson in 1960, co-facilitated a “Training for Trainers  in Boston. American Friends Service Committee  staff person Suki Rice participated and went on to train the first Clamshell Alliance activists who occupied the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in 1976, and helped design the participatory process and structure of nonviolent actions based on training and affinity groups.

There are so many lessons that we can learn from these stories. We need to know and appreciate the history of nonviolent social change,  particularly as so much of it was brought to us by Brown and Black people.  As the movement today looks at how to center the people most affected by racial inequality and racial injustice and how to understand the role of white allies, we can learn from our Elders in the overlapping social movements of the 20th century. The lessons of solidarity, building trusting relationships, taking the time to learn skills through trainings, and developing strategy were, and remain, key to transforming society. 

Erna P. Harris: African-American Defender of Japanese-American Rights

2/18/2021

 
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Seventy-eight years ago today, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 came into effect, forcibly moving an estimated 120,000 US residents of Japanese descent (most of whom were US citizens) out of their homes and jobs and into concentration camps for the remainder of the Second World War. While public opposition to this policy was scarce, some of the most vocal critics of the policy came from African-Americans, who more readily recognized the patterns of racial oppression -- Langston Hughes and George Schuyler were some of the most prominent critics of the time. But perhaps none wrote against Executive Order 9066 with more clarity and force than the columnist Erna P. Harris. Her example gives us a model for building alliances by recognizing patterns of our own oppression in others. 

Born in segregated Oklahoma in 1908, Harris became one of the first African-American women to earn a journalism degree. Her father was an early American follower of Gandhi and was widely considered in his community as courageous and principled. Taking after her father, Erna not only struggled against the endemic prejudice in her area, but she also faced backlash when she argued against mandatory military conscription in her own weekly newspaper, The Kansas Journal. Harris was forced to close her newspaper due to her politics in 1941, and then moved to Los Angeles where she joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an interfaith civil rights and social justice group, as well as the secular antiwar group the War Resisters League (WRL). About her experience with FOR and WRL, she later recounted: “We didn’t formalize it as a support group, but I was there taking my chances for going to prison… encouraging violation of the Selective Service Act and later when the guys were in the camp and some of them went over the hill from camps. A lot of them spent several nights on the floor in my living room in the apartment I rented with Ella, a German girlfriend. She and I had a little apartment and I would move out of my room and sleep back in her room so the COs could sleep on the floor in my room. They didn’t have any money and we were harboring criminals” (Harris, “US Women”). Erna also found a job with the Los Angeles Tribune, the youngest and most progressive of the three Black newspapers in the city. Now with a wider audience and some more support at her back, Erna began writing an editorial column around social issues, “Reflections in a Crackt Mirror.”

Not long after she began writing for the Tribune, President Roosevelt made Executive Order 9066, and law enforcement began rounding up Japanese-Americans in 1942. It quickly became apparent that the Tribune was the only newspaper, Black- or White-run, in Los Angeles to formally oppose the order. Harris particularly went after the executive policy, writing periodically about the internment issue for the duration of the war. As law enforcement began to forcibly remove tens of thousands of people from their homes, Harris wrote in the Tribune, “[T]o visit evacuation neighborhoods and talk with neighbors of the ‘evil, treacherous, fifth column menaces’ who are being summarily moved away, who have been adjudged guilty without any trial at which to claim innocence was to acknowledge an event with all earmarks of a legalized community lynching” (Harris, “Reflections”). The use of the word “lynching” to describe the federal policy must have been intentional to draw the connection between Black and Japanese oppression. 

Indeed, in 1944, Harris wrote in her column, “Ever since the evacuation of Americans of Japanese ancestry and Japanese along the Pacific Coast was proposed, I have pointed out that the issue was one of race and on that basis affected anyone who was physically distinguishable as ‘colored’” (Harris, “Reflections”; emphasis added). Two years into the policy, it was becoming clearer to some that a failure to stand up against these injustices could mean an expansion of these kinds of policies to other groups as well. Harris began writing for other publications at the same time, working hard to connect other Americans to the plight of Japanese internment, but also to humanize Japanese-Americans on their own terms. After the Second World War was concluded, and tens of thousands of people were released from the camps, Harris continued to encourage interracial solidarity against White supremacy and White leadership, specifically encouraging Blacks to reject White-led “Brotherhood” initiatives and instead to form their own groups that “Nisei [second-generation Japanese-Americans], American Indians and other Americans whose physical characteristics make them detectable” could join and support.

Harris’ persistent and clear stance against Japanese internment likely played a part in the newspaper’s decision to hire a bevy of excellent Japanese-American writers after the war. Thousands of African-Americans had moved into suddenly vacant neighborhoods during the war; now, many of the original Japanese-Americans were returning to their homes, only to find a new community already there. The Tribune sought to bridge the divide between the two communities. Until Harris’ departure from LA in the early 1950s to work more with the antiwar movement, this Black champion of Japanese-American rights worked with several Nisei individuals who would find renown as well: most notably, Hisaye Yamamoto, one of the best known Japanese-American writers of the post-war era. Yamamoto, in turn, would later become heavily involved in the antiwar and civil rights movements herself, joining FOR and communicating its activities to the Japanese-American community, as well as helping to organize the LA chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947. 

For decades, Executive Order 9066 was largely forgotten in the collective American memory, but in part as a consequence of the civil rights movement, a new generation of Japanese-Americans began to organize and seek justice. The issue of Japanese internment only began to be redressed decades after the fact when Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which officially apologized for the inhumane treatment of Japanese-American citizens and made reparations payments to the survivors. The US Supreme Court only reversed the notorious 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States (which upheld Executive 9066) three years ago in 2018, well after most of the victims had passed away. The State of California made its official apology for its role in the removal and internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII just last year in 2020. But even as recent lawmakers and justices patted themselves on their backs for these mostly symbolic acts of apology, the “Muslim ban” was still in effect and practically unchallenged, and ICE was still holding countless people including separated children in internment camps along the Southern border. As we now step into the next stage of the movement for Black lives, it is worth looking at how people built alliances in the past. Erna P. Harris’ showed us that alliance-building really begins with standing up for others -- and that such alliances can grow into movements that transform society.


Sources:
Cramer, Maria. “California Plans to Apologize to Japanese-Americans Over Internment.” New York Times. 18 February 2020.

Ellen, Elster and Majken Jul Sorensen, Editors. “Women Conscientious Objectors: An Anthology.” War Resisters International, 2010.

Hurwitz, Deena and Craig Simpson. “Against the Tide: Pacifist Resistance in the Second World War - An Oral Story.” War Resisters League Calendar, 1984.

Robinson, Greg. “Erna P. Harris: An African-American Champion of Equality.” Discover Nikkei. 26 November 2019. http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2019/11/26/erna-p-harris/

Robinson, Greg and Nichi Bei Weekly. “THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT--The life and times of Hisaye Yamamoto: writer, activist, speaker.” Discover Nikkei. 14 March 2012. http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2012/3/14/hisaye-yamamoto/ 

​

Excerpts from the WIN Special Supplement (1967) Honoring the Life of A.J. Muste

2/11/2021

 
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Today is the 54th anniversary of the passing of the illustrious A.J. Muste, perhaps the single most instrumental person in the 20th century US antiwar movement. At the end of his life,Muste. served as the National Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), had a seat in the national committee for the War Resisters League (WRL), and worked as Chairman of the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA, predecessor to the Voluntown Peace Trust). CNVA published a Special Supplement on A.J. Muste. 1885 - 1967 from magazine WIN: Peace & Freedom Through Nonviolent Action, co-published by WRL. The following are excerpts from that special supplement, written by supporters and admirers: from a civil rights leader to a famous US presidential candidate, from one of the most well-known communist leaders in history to the president of a liberal arts college in Connecticut. The sheer range of people Muste personally affected should speak to his incredible ability to bridge differences and build alliances between such different kinds of people, and provides to us a model for changing society.


On A.J.’s importance to the antiwar movement:

Neil Haworth, WIN editor, WRL member, CNVA activist
“Those of us involved in the large peace demonstrations of the past few years, in which tens of thousands have marched and hundreds have volunteered for arrest, have a hard time remembering that such events have a very recent genesis. Just ten years ago, civil disobedience protests against militarism were the province of a mere handful of people. 

A.J. Muste has been the central figure of this growth. While a large number of conscientious objectors chose prison in World Wars I and II, the idea of pacifists actively confronting militarism on its own ground had its real start in the U.S. in 1957.

As chairman of the group that became the Committee for Nonviolent Action, A.J. was frequently in the front line of the action and always present as major strategist, fund-raiser, and reconciler of differences. His work in this role has been absolutely vital in the development of a movement that has included conservative Quakers and other religious pacifists, angry young artists and Marxists, traditional liberals, and New Left students…”


Bradford Lyttle, founder of the US Pacifist Party and organizer for WRL and CNVA
“Polaris Action, launched the following summer [1960], stirred even greater controversy among pacifists than did Omaha Action. But in A.J.’s mind there seemed little doubt that Polaris Action could be an effort of high spiritual order and he backed it… 

A.J. stood by the San Francisco to Moscow Walk, too. He negotiated tirelessly with Peace Committee officials in the Communist countries… 

It came to me [last fall] that none combined a greater number of virtues than did A.J. It was an odd but inescapable fact that the tall, stooping, quivering, compassionate gentleman who worked in the office across the way had become the greatest man in the world…”


On A.J.’s physical and moral courage:

Barbara Deming, journalist, WRL member, CNVA activist: 
“It was during the trip (to Vietnam) that five of us made with him last April to protest the war in Saigon. On the last day of that trip, when we tried actually to make our protest, I was very scared for A.J., as well as for myself. For one thing, we had decided not to cooperate with Ky’s police when they arrested us; they would have to carry or drag us. None of us had any idea how rough they might be; and A.J. looked so very frail. As it turned out they were gentle with us, but up to the last moment of course one was never sure that the next official to handle us would be gentle.”


Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam at the time (by telegram):
“OUTSTANDING FIGHTER FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN USA AND WORLD”


Robert F. Kennedy, US Senator at the time and future US Presidential candidate (by telegram):
“A.J. MUSTE SPOKE TO ALL GENERATIONS BUT WAS LIMITED BY NONE. HIS COURAGE WAS BOTH MORAL AND PHYSICAL NOT ONLY IN HIS WILLINGNESS TO FACE IMMEDIATE DANGERS BUT MORAL AND PHYSICAL NOT ONLY IN HIS WILLINGNESS TO FACE IMMEDIATE DANGERS BUT ALSO THAT FAR MORE RARE WILLINGNESS TO OPPOSE HIS SINGLE CONSCIENCE TO THE OPINIONS OF HIS FELLOWS IN THE PURSUIT OF HIS IDEALS AND IN THE SERVICE OF US ALL. HE WAS ALWAYS READY TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP, THE NEXT STEP, OR THE LAST STEP.”


On knowing A.J. and his legacy

Gordon Chistiansen, WIN editor, WRL member, CNVA activist:
“Liberalism responds in strange ways when it bumps into radical pacifism. I encounter these extraordinary responses all the time here in New London, Connecticut. But what I’m thinking about right now are some reactions to A.J. Muste along about 1960 when Polaris Action was just beginning to bite into this community…

[Connecticut College President Rosemary Park] was saying that to truly know A.J. Muste is, in a way, tragic; to actually grasp and accept what is being said by that skinny Dutchman-preacher turned pacifist-revolutionary, whose face and words and actions could bore so gently but so irresistably [sic] into your conscience, is to lose control of your own destiny. When all that happens to you, the events, or the fates, or principles take over and your life moves inexorably toward… well, toward something. So far the judgment is a wise one; I believe that is what happens to anyone who is really touched by A.J. But the liberal goes on to structure it as a true tragedy by concluding that that “something” toward which the Muste-touched radical moves so inevitably is somber, unhappy, disastrous. He believes that dedication to the proposition that human beings should love one another and deal nonviolently with each other is fatal utopianism.

Here finally, is the tragedy of knowing A.J. It leads inevitably to the death of a liberal and to the destruction of cherished liberal standards. It is simply not possible, after once having been truly a part of A.J.’s life, to have an isolated, uninvolved life of one’s own. The radical tragedy comes if a person touched by A.J. tries to deny that knowledge and go back to being a conventional, establishment liberal; he is doomed to a life of denial, and he must live with the knowledge of his own denial. 

The tragic liberal judgement [sic] sees this denial of radical pacifist vision as the only alternative. He cannot understand the joy and freedom and fullness of a life of resistance to a violent, unloving system. Hence the liberal’s tragic judgment of A.J.’s vision.”


Barbara Deming, journalist and WRL member, CNVA activist: 
“I have sat with him at so very many committee meetings, where after hours it was easy to become dazed by our own endless words about this or that program of action which we might or might not adopt, and easy somehow to forget in the process the realities of the particular situation with which we were supposed to be concerned. And time after time I have seen A.J. at a certain point speak out of his own suddenly renewed sense of that situation, his sharp sense of the real people involved to whom real things were happening. And because it was real to him as he spoke, it would suddenly be real again to everyone in the room.”


James Bevel, Civil Rights activist since Nashville Lunch Counter Sit-in, Director of Spring Mobilization Committee to end the War in Vietnam (a role which A.J. Muste asked Bevel to take shortly before his death)
“We say A.J. is dead and the tragedy is that most of us don’t understand the process of life. We say A.J. is dead but anybody who was caught up in the process of bringing people together can never die.”


Source:
Reyes, Gwen, editor. WIN: Peace & Freedom Through Nonviolent Action, Special Supplement: A.J. Muste 1885-1967, 1967.

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