Hell No, We Won’t Go!
FEBRUARY 11 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of Julian Bond urging a large audience at City College in Manhattan to resist the U.S. Army’s efforts to turn them into cannon-fodder in Vietnam.
Bond, a civil rights activist and neophyte Georgia politician, was the featured speaker at a 1966 meeting that was co-sponsored by the local chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Independent Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the W.E.B. Du Bois Club. He called for “an organized movement of Negroes to avoid military service on racial grounds” because “we’re first-class citizens on the battlefield but second-class citizens at home.” He asked, “Why fight for a country that has never fought for you?”
If Bond had known it, he could have counselled his listeners that the most effective way to dodge the draft was simply to never register with the Selective Service System.
The federal government had the names, addresses and ages of most young men, but it was very easy to “disappear” by moving and not giving the Post Office a forwarding address. Because the authorities lacked the resources to track down the hundreds of thousands of men who relocated in that way, if such a person avoided arrest, they were almost certain of avoiding prosecution for draft evasion, at least until 1973, when the draft was abolished. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/12/uncovering-americans-long-history-conscription-conscientious-objection-draft-resistance/
The image is by Simeon Dorelus.
A Titan of a President
FEBRUARY 12 IS THE 217TH ANNIVERSARY of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
You can read “Lincoln and Marx” by historian Robin Blackburn, former editor of New Left Review, here: https://jacobin.com/2012/08/lincoln-and-marx
What Part of ‘War Crime’ Don’t You Understand?
FEBRUARY 13 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the UN Commission on Human Rights finding Israel responsible for committing war crimes in the West Bank. The vote was 23 to 1, with 8 abstentions. The United States cast the sole negative vote.
The 1976 resolution “deplores once again Israel's continued grave violations, in the occupied Arab territories, of the basic norms of international law and of the relevant international conventions . . . which are considered by the Commission on Human Rights as war crimes and an affront to humanity, as well as its persistent defiance of the relevant resolutions of the United Nations and its continued policy of violating the basic human rights of the inhabitants of the occupied Arab territories”.
The resolution condemns Israel’s “mass arrests, administrative detention and ill treatment of the Arab population” and moves to annex parts of the occupied lands. It accused the Israelis of destroying Arab houses and confiscating Arab property, of “purging” archeological and cultural property, interfering with religious freedoms and hindering “the exercise by the population of the occupied territories of their rights to national education and cultural life.” You can read the complete resolution here: https://www.refworld.org/legal/resolution/unchr/1976/en/8392
Bringing New York City to Its Knees
FEBRUARY 14 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the end of a 10-day strike by 3,500 New York City tugboat workers that brought the city to its knees.
In 1946 almost all the food and the fuel for heating and power consumed by New Yorkers was delivered to the city on barges powered by tugboats.
All of the tugboat workers were members of Local 333 of the International Longshoremen’s Association. When the tugworkers struck on February 4, the fuel and food supply-chain came to a screeching stop that could not possibly have been ameliorated by deliveries via railroad and truck. And even the little food and fuel that could be delivered to wholesalers by truck and train could hardly be distributed to retailers because of lack of fuel to operate delivery trucks.
Less than three days after the strike started, 15 thousand buildings had no heating fuel, a number that was expected to quadruple in three days. Outside, the temperature was around 40 degrees.
Four days into the strike, almost all the city’s coal and oil stocks were gone and all the schools were shut due to lack of heat. The mayor released a report saying “No more serious disaster has ever faced this city than confronts it right now.” The federal government took control of the tugboat companies, but the striking tugboat workers refused to return to work, so all tugs remained idle until Navy sailors began to try, with very slight success, to learn how to operate tugs safely and effectively. Some tugs belonging to the Navy started to move emergency supplies, but their numbers were totally insufficient to make up for the deficit caused by the strike.
As dire as the situation was, negotiations between the union and the tugboat owners association remained at a standstill until the owners finally agreed to binding arbitration. With an agreement to abide by an arbitrator's decision in place, the tug workers returned to work, and one of New York City’s most desperate moments came to an end. https://urbanarchive.org/city/ny/s/a5ec2c10-3241-4501-af58-59613875f50a/i/63f5b25f-f8f8-4b3e-a02b-3e5827f5d1e3
Kidnappers, Go to Hell!
FEBRUARY 15 IS THE 175TH ANNIVERSARY of one of the first acts of successful militant disobedience to the newly amended version of the thoroughly racist federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
On this day in 1851, a large group of outraged African-Americans burst into a Boston courtroom to rescue Shadrach Minkins, who was the first formerly enslaved, self-emancipated person arrested in New England under the recently amended law.
The new law required any and all law enforcement officials to assist in the recapture of the self-emancipated; refusal to do so was a federal offense.
When Minkins's former “master” learned that Minkins was in Boston, he had U.S. marshals arrest him. They took him to the federal building in Boston, where an angry crowd stormed the courtroom and freed Minkins.
He was taken to a nearby hiding place and then, that night, he began his journey on the Underground Railroad. Six days later he arrived in Canada, where he was not subject to arrest. Minkins settled among self-emancipated slaves in Montreal, married, raised a family, and worked as a barber.
While about two-thirds of U.S.-born blacks in Canada returned to the U.S. after the promulgation of the 13th Amendment, Minkins did not. He remained in Montreal, where he died in December 1875.
This post summarizes (and borrows from) the lengthier “Shadrach Minkins Seized” page on the Mass Humanities website. The excellent, more detailed version is here: https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/shadrach-minkins-seized.html
Emma Goldman, a Woman in Revolt
FEBRUARY 16 IS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of the New York City premiere of the only (I think) play written by historian Howard Zinn, “Emma: A Play in Two Acts About Emma Goldman, American Anarchist.”
No one, I believe, would call it a really great play, but it’s a fine one, with a superb first act.
Zinn succeeds in bringing a totally believable, clever, daring, selfless and loving Emma Goldman to life on the page, or the stage. (I have only watched the video.)
Zinn puts lines like – “Everybody in this system has to sell something to stay alive'' – into Emma’s mouth that bring to life her radical vision of fighting for justice.
The opening, set in 1887, introduces four young clothing-factory workers, whose fear of being trapped in a fire, as has happened to others like them, leads them to protest and to organize, to build a labor union and, perhaps, a revolution.
In “Emma”, Howard Zinn shows a theatrical flair that is well worth reading and deserves to be brought to the stage again. You can watch a 2-minute trailer by Teaching for Change here: https://youtu.be/Bd5XToDIgBM?si=Q2j4420iTT5QZymM or the full 2-hour production here: https://youtu.be/lZMF-V9hWSk?si=5rNpVYagixYDTSOB
‘No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger’
FEBRUARY 17 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of world heavyweight champion boxer Muhammad Ali’s announcement that he would refuse to allow himself to be drafted into the U.S. Army because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. In so doing, he displayed his talent as a poet with one of his many catchy refrains:
Keep asking me no matter how long,On the war in Vietnam I sing this song,I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/-muhammad-ali-convicted-refusing-vietnam-draft/
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