The Morrill Majority

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 On this day in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, declaring that the right to vote cannot be denied because of the race or previous condition of servitude, granting African-American men the right to vote.

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will speak at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology.  

Thaddeus Stevens, for whom the school was named, was the most ardent leader of the abolition movement in Congress.  In fact, he was so outspoken in his opposition to slavery that the Confederate Northern Army of Virginia went out its way to target his property and burned it to the ground during the Gettysburg campaign.

Stevens is widely credited as the father of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.  His original version of the Fourteenth Amendment granted all citizens, including women, full civil rights.  After the Civil War, he proposed giving African-Americans the right to vote immediately and offered reparations of 40 acres and a mule to all former slaves.

Stevens, a Radical Republican, also led the battle against bankers over control of the issuance of money.  Stevens believed that government, not the banks, should control the currency.

Stevens was born in Vermont to a poor father who died when he was 12.  He was raised by his mother Sarah (Morrill) Stevens who worked hard to provide him an education, which she believed was the only way to escape poverty.

Stevens believed that a more egalitarian world was not just a utopian dream.  His own life showed that hard work and a good education could bring people out of poverty.  But he also believed that diversity was something to be celebrated.

His will bestowed $50,000 to establish what is now called Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology for homeless and poor orphans. "They shall be carefully educated in the various branches of English education and all industrial trades and pursuits. No preference shall be shown on account of race or color in their admission or treatment. Neither poor Germans, Irish or Mahometan, nor any others on account their race or religion of their parents, shall be excluded. They shall be fed at the same table."

According to the Stevens website "The College continually strives to provide underprivileged individuals with opportunities and to create an environment in which individual differences are valued and nurtured."  It continues to operate in the spirit of Thaddeus Stevens, as reflected in its core values of accountability, diversity, integrity, learning, growth, respect and teamwork.

For more information on Stevens, go to the online version of "Thaddeus Stevens, Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian" by Hans L. Trefousse, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=97209778

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The War Resisters League (WRL) was formed on this day in 1923 by men and women who had opposed World War I. It is a section of the London-based War Resisters' International.

Many of the founders had been jailed during World War I for refusing military service. From the Fellowship of Reconciliation many Jews, suffragists, socialists, and anarchists separated to form this more secular organization. It has historically been linked to the Socialist Party of America, with many of its leading members also in the SP. (Many of its members are still in the Socialist Party USA.)

During World War II, many members were imprisoned. In the 1950s, WRL members worked in the US civil rights movement and organized protests against nuclear weapons testing and so-called civil defense drills. In the 1960s, WRL was the first pacifist organization to call for an end to the Vietnam War. The organization's opposition to nuclear weapons was extended to include nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s. WRL has also been active in feminist and anti-racist causes and works with other organizations to reduce the level of violence in modern culture.

Today, the War Resisters League is actively organizing against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the impact of war at home. Much of its organizing is focused on challenging military recruiters and ending corporate profit from war. It publishes an annual peace calendar, the quarterly magazine WIN: Through Revolutionary Nonviolence, and other materials and is involved in a number of national peace and justice coalitions, including United for Peace and Justice and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Since 1958, WRL has awarded almost annually the War Resisters League Peace Award to a person or organization whose work represents the League's radical nonviolent program of action.

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 In 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partially melted down in the worst nuclear accident in United States history.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commissionissued a report that revealed that TMI was within a half hour of an irreversible meltdown.  The accident at TMI is still dismissed by the power industry and many in the Bush Administration as a minor incident that proves the safety of nuclear power since the safety measures prevented a full meltdown.

The truth is very different, however. as described in The China Syndrome. Ninety percent of the reactor core was damaged and 52% melted down, which is why the site is contaminated for up to tens of thousands of years.

U.S.istrict Judge Sylvia Rambo dismissed more than 2,000 damage claims saying there was not enough scientific proof.  Rambo threw out alomst all of the scientific eveidence that was presented by the plaintiffs and then refused to consider the pending National Institutes of Health study of Dr. Steven Wing.  

According to Wing, "The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported. If you say that there was no high radiation, then you are left with higher cancer rates downwind of the plume that are otherwise unexplainable...Several hundred people at the time of the accident reported nausea, vomiting, hair loss and skin rashes, and a number said their pets died or had symptoms of radiation exposure.  We figured that if that were possible, we ought to look at it again. After adjusting for pre-accident cancer incidence, we found a striking increase in cancers downwind from Three Mile Island."

According to Three Mile Island Alert, almost 30 years after the accident, "TMI Unit-2 periodically releases small amounts of radiation to the Susquehanna River. It is uncertain how much uranium and other radioisotopes remain inside."

for more information go to www.tmia.com
 

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Mordechai Vanunu is jailed on this day in 1988.  Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who exposed Israel's secret nuclear weapons program to the the UK's Sunday Times in 1986. He was kidnapped in Rome by the Mossad and smuggled to Israel. He then spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, under state arrest, with severe restrictions on his speech and movement. He has been jailed repeatedly for violating those restrictions, including a 2007 sentence to six months in prison for speaking to the media. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. Amnesty International "considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release." The court hearing has been postponed to May 13 2008.

'I AM YOUR SPY'

-Ashkelon Prison, 1987

I am the clerk, the technician,
the mechanic, the driver.
They said, Do this, do that, don't look left or right,
don't read the text. Don't look at the whole machine. You
are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp.
This is your only concern. Don't bother with what is above you.
Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

So they thought, the big ones, the smart ones, the futurologists.
There is nothing to fear. Not to worry.
Everything's ticking just fine.
Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He's a simple mechanic.
He's a little man.
Little men's ears don't hear, their eyes don't see.
We have heads, they don't.

Answer them, said he to himself, said the little man,
the man with a head of his own. Who is in charge? Who knows
where this train is going?
Where is their head?
I too have a head.
Why do I see the whole engine,
Why do I see the precipice--
is there a driver on this train?    

The clerk driver technician mechanic looked up.
He stepped back and saw -- what a monster.
Can't believe it. Rubbed his eyes and -- yes,
it's there all right. I'm all right. I do see
the monster. I'm part of the system.

This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How
did I fail to see, and how do the others go on
fitting bolts. Who else knows?
Who has seen? Who has heard? --
The emperor really is naked.
I see him. Why me? It's not for me. It's too big.

Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people.
You can.
I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? -- Yes, you.
You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the nation.
Agent-spy, tell us what you've seen.
Tell us what the insiders, the clever ones, have hidden from us.
Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe.

I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people,
but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience
and there's nowhere to hide.
The world is small, small for Big Brother.
I'm on your mission. I'm doing my duty.
Take it from me.

Come and see for yourselves. Lighten my burden. Stop the train.
Get off the train.
The next stop -- nuclear disaster.
The next book, the next machine.
No. There is no such thing.

Campaign to Free Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Middle East

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On this day in 1872 the Toronto Printers Strike began.  The strike began as apart of a campaign for the 9 hour day.  The publishers used Canadian conspiracy laws to try to break the strike, getting 13 union leaders arrested.

Public support for the strikers resulted in changes in the conspiracy laws, and in the legalization of unions in Canada.

Another result of the strike was the creation of the Canadian Labour Union, the first nationwide labor organization.  The CLU lasted only a few years, but the stage was set for nationwide solidarity across provincial and national borders and across trades.  In the United States, the American Federation of Labor was not founded until  1886 

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Matilda Joslyn Gage, feminist and abolitionist was born on this date in 1826. Gage was a major force in the liberation of women and in the abolition of slavery, arguing that all people deserved freedom as natural rights.  Gage was one of the founders of the National Woman  Suffrage Association.

Although our country makes great professions in regard to general liberty, yet the right to particular liberty, natural equality, and personal independence, of two great portions of this country, is treated, from custom, with the greatest contempt; and color in the one instance, and sex in the other, are brought as reasons why they should be so derided; and the mere mention of such, natural rights is frowned upon, as tending to promote sedition and anarchy…

We need not expect the concessions demanded by women will be peaceably granted; there will be a long moral warfare, before the citadel yields; in the meantime, let us take possession of the outposts.  The public must be aroused to a full sense of the justice of our claims.  Beside the duty of educating our children, so as to make the path of right, easy to their feet, is that of discussion, newspaper articles, petitions: all great reforms are gradual.  Fear not any attempt to frown down the revolution already commenced; nothing is a more fertile aid of reform, than an attempt to check it; work on.

“Work sows the seed:

Even the rock may yield its flower:
No lot so hard, but human power,
Exerted to one end and aim,
May conquer fate, and capture fame!
Press on!

Pause not in fear:
Preach no desponding, servile view---
What ever thou will’st thy WILL may do.

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On this day is 1972, Congress sent the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution to the states for ratification. It failed, falling short of the three-fourths (38 states) approval needed.  The ERA would have given all Americans equal standing, regardless of gender.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to equal rights for men and women.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
Article--
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This article shall take effect 2 years after the date of ratification.

The ERA is not dead.  It has been introduced in both chambers of Congress.  For more information, go to:

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Welcome to my new blog.  I intend to have this site to be a little different from most blogs.  I'll have the usual combination of opinion and news.  But I'll be adding some history to the mix.  We too often forget that our struggle is historical.  It has existed as long as one person has wanted to dominate another, as long as one group of people has subjugated another.  A little historical perspective can help us to realize that our issues are not new, that working people have fought even greater powers and prevailed. 

I'm looking forward to reading your responses.  Together we can create the ideas that will bring us to victory.

Si se puede! 

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