On August 23rd, 1989, two million people joined hands to form a human chain crossing the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in protest against the Soviet Union, and in support of each nation’s independence. The Baltic Way, as the human chain was called, spanned 420 miles, engaging people of all ages in […]
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Tag: history
Know Your Nonviolent History: In 1976 Cl...
On August 1st, 1976, the first nonviolent mass demonstration of the Clamshell Alliance took place at the proposed site of the Seabrook Nuclear Energy Facility in New Hampshire. The Clamshell Alliance was a group of anti-nuclear activists who worked to stop nuclear power plant construction at a time when President Nixon’s “Project Independence” had proposed […]
Know Your Nonviolent History: Love Canal
This week in nonviolent history commemorates a turning point in the long struggle to demand justice for the residents of Love Canal, a residential community in upstate New York that was situated on top of a leaking toxic waste dump. On August 2nd, 1978, State Health Commissioner Robert Whalen issued a state of emergency ordering […]
Know Your Nonviolent History – August 20
On August 20, 2013, Antoinette Tuff (right) nonviolently disarmed a school shooter, saving the lives of hundreds of school children. Antoinette was a bookkeeper. She wasn’t supposed to be at the school that day. She was just filling in as a front desk receptionist as a favor to a friend. That morning, during her prayer […]
The Nonviolent History of American Indep...
Independence Day is commemorated with fireworks and flag-waving, gun salutes and military parades . . . however, one of our nation’s founding fathers, John Adams, wrote, “A history of military operations . . . is not a history of the American Revolution.” Often minimized in our history books, the tactics of nonviolent action played a […]
Helen Keller: Socialist, Pacifist, Women...
The name Helen Keller conjures up, for many people, a deaf-blind-mute girl learning to communicate via sign language. It is a scene straight out of “The Miracle Worker,” the biographical play recounting Anne Sullivan’s role in reaching young Helen Keller. However, the amazing part of Keller’s story is not that the way she learned to […]
Celebrating Grace Lee Boggs
On June 27, 1915, Grace Lee Boggs was born in Providence, Rhode Island, above her father’s restaurant. Grace later said, “because I was born to Chinese immigrant parents and because I was born female, I learned very quickly that the world needed changing.” Over her 100 years of life, Grace would, indeed, change the world […]
Dorothy Day Refuses To Duck-And-Cover
On June 15th, 1955, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day joined a group of pacifists in refusing to participate in the civilian defense drills scheduled on that day. These drills were to prepare the citizenry in the event of a nuclear attack, and involved evacuations of city centers, taking shelter in subway tunnels, and, for schoolchildren, […]
On June 2nd Remember the Mother’s Day Pe
Every year in May, peace activists circulate Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation. But, Howe did not commemorate Mother’s Day in May . . . for thirty years Americans celebrated Mother’s Day for Peace on June 2nd. It was Julia Ward Howe’s contemporary, Anna Jarvis, who established the May celebration of mothers, and even […]
Teach-Ins and Nonviolent Movements
This week in nonviolent history, we celebrate the effective and versatile tactic of the teach-in. One of the largest teach-ins during the Vietnam War, for example, was held on May 21st-23rd, 1965 at UC Berkeley with 10-30,000 students attending. The State Department was invited to send a representative, but declined. An empty chair was set […]