Sane Nuclear Policy…Sounds Nice

I apologize for disappearing for a bit, it has been a crazy and stressful couple weeks for me.  But, finally…I have a new job!  I’ll be starting next Monday, and I’m so excited.  Anyways…to the buttons!

 

As the May 12th deadline to recertify the Iran nuclear deal looms and Trump threatens to pull out of it completely, it seems like a good time to look at the history of the nuclear containment movement.

The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (more commonly known as SANE) was founded in 1957 by Norman Cousins and Clarence Pickett.  Cousins was the managing editor of the New York Evening Post (now the New York Post) and editor-in-chief of the Saturday Review of Literature (later renamed the Saturday Review.)  He was a prolific writer and researcher, and won many awards for his advocacy work for world peace.  He also said some pretty misogynistic things about women, particularly in the workforce, but we’re talking nuclear bombs so we’ll have to set that aside for the moment.  Pickett was executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, a professor, and a pastor.  The organization won a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their work towards peace and social justice around the world.

SANE joined with a lot of big names such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. and brought the issue to the public through newspaper ads and rallies.  Similar movements were occurring in other countries, and in October 1958, the U.S., Soviet, and British governments agreed to halt nuclear testing as negotiations of a treaty were underway.  When John F. Kennedy became president, he sent Norman Cousins into talks with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.  These discussions eventually led to the to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

In November 1965, SANE led a huge antiwar demonstration against the Vietnam War and sponsored the candidacy of Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to prevent President Johnson from seeking a second term.  Pressure from the group on the Nixon administration played a part on bring the war to an eventual end.

In 1979, a similar organization called the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (aka Freeze) was formed by Dr. Randy Forsberg.  This woman was, from what I can see, a total badass and very ahead of her time, so I’m just going to wrap up the history of this movement and then do a little spotlight of her later when I can really dig in.  So, Freeze hit the ground running, and on June 12, 1982, held the biggest political rally in American history to date, with almost one million in attendance.  In the fall of 1982, referenda appeared on ballets across the country calling for a freeze to testing, development, and deployment of nuclear weapons; overall, they passed with 60% of the votes.

This public pressure caused the Reagan administration to change it’s public position on the issue, and the President eventually admitted, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  SANE and Freeze also had an impact on Mikhail Gorbachev, who took time to meet with the groups upon becoming Soviet party secretary in 1985.  These efforts led to the INF Treaty of 1987 and opened the door for the end of the Cold War.

SANE and Freeze merged in 1987, and became Peace Action in 1993, which still exists today. They still focus on nuclear disarmament, and also use their resources to reduce military spending, stop U.S.-backed wars in Central America, and end apartheid in South Africa (but I have different buttons for those!)

According their website, “Today, Peace Action continues its important work to build a safer, saner, and more peaceful world,” which sounds like something we could desperately use since as I was writing this, Trump announced that he would be pulling America out of the Iran nuclear deal which is not safer, saner, or more peaceful for anyone.

(AFSC)(Encyclopedia)(Cousins)(Peace Action)(Arms Control)

Mother(Earth)’s Day

Grandma at an Earth Day protest, 4/21/2005

Since this week is book-ended by Earth Day (4/22) and Arbor Day (4/27,) I tried to find some appropriate buttons for the occasion.  There were a couple stickers — GreenPeace needs no introduction, and the other is made by the Peace Resource Project, which as far as I can tell just makes bumper stickers, magnets, etc. for various causes.

So, none of that is very exciting, but grandma is a big proponent of environmental issues, and it is one of the main concerns of the Raging Grannies.  Rather than summarize what GreenPeace does or how Earth Day came about, I’ll have them sing us out (I couldn’t find a good video so you’ll have to use your imagination):

Dear Old Mother Earth by the Raging Grannies (to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”)

You’ve been throwin’ all your garbage
In the city dump!
Don’t throw away the baby diapers,
’Cause they’ll sit there in a lump.
Our water’s getting real polluted,
There’s not enough to drink.
If we sit here doing nothing,
Our world will really stink!
CHORUS:
You know what to do, it’s really up to you!
Tell the polluters that they need to stop!
If we don’t follow through, by twenty-twenty-two,
Our dear old Earth will blow her top.

We keep building nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants,
But where, oh where, will all the waste go?
We can’t just stick it in our pants!
It’s seeping into all our water
And making us all sick!
Let’s convert to solar power.
We must do something quick!
CHORUS

Acid rain just keeps on falling on trees and lakes and streams,
We can’t keep burning fossil fuel
It’s much worse than it seems!
We’ve got to switch to solar power
Or windmills, they’re good too!
The future of our dear old Mother Earth
Is really up to you!
CHORUS

So Then, Why Was There?

Grandma has A LOT of pins and other political memorabilia related to the Equal Rights Amendment, so this is definitely not the only time we will be focusing on it.  But grandma and I talked about this button quite a bit during our visit on Sunday, as the ERA largely failed because there was a time limit for ratification.

Quick recap on amendments: First, an amendment is proposed, either by Congress (with two-thirds of both the House and the Senate approving) or by two-thirds of the states submitting an application to Congress, who then must call for a Constitutional Convention (the latter has never actually happened.)  Once they bang out the details, they send it to the states for ratification, either by the state legislatures or a state convention (whoever proposed the amendment gets to decide,) and it must be ratified by three-forths of the states.

The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the Senate on March 22, 1972, and sent to the states for ratification.  It reads:

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 amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Seems reasonable.  However, Congress put a time limit of seven years for ratification.  There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or law that requires time limits for ratification of amendments.  Technically, states still have the option to ratify an amendment that would prevent Congress from having “the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”  That would be a confusing contradiction of the 13th Amendment, but technically it could be ratified — it was passed by Congress and sent to the states with no time limit (it just happened to be like…one month before the Civil War broke out.)

So, why the time limit on the ERA?  It isn’t really clear, but I bet it has something to do with the face that there were only 13 women in the House and two women in the Senate.  There was also backlash by some conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly, who spread ideas such that women who wanted to be homemakers would be dragged out of the kitchen and drafted into military combat, women would no longer have the protection of rape/sexual assault laws (because equality means it’s suddenly okay for people to commit crimes against you?) and other ridiculous things that don’t even deserve mention.

In the first year, 22 states ratified the ERA, but as opposition became more organized, victories were few and further between.  A few more states ratified the amendment in the 1970s, but even with an extension of the deadline to 1982, Indiana was the last state to ratify in 1977.  Some states even tried to revoke their ratification, but the courts have not looked on this favorably.

(Permission to use with credit to http://www.equalrightsamendment.org)

Some states have recently ratified the ERA — the Illinois Senate just passed it on April 11.  Yeah, like, a week ago.  Things are happening.  The deadline might’ve passed 35 years ago, but this issue hasn’t died.  So the question becomes, can they do that?  If states keep ratifying, can it still become an amendment?  If Illinois’ House ratifies passes the bill, it will become the 37th state to ratify the ERA, and 38 states need to ratify for it to become a constitutional amendment.  Is there a time limit on equality?  We might be coming close to a point where these questions will need to be answered.

It feels appropriate to let the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg take us out:

“If I could choose an amendment to add to the Constitution, it would be the Equal Rights Amendment.  I think we have achieved that through legislation, but legislation can be repealed, it can be altered.

So I would like my granddaughters, when they pick up the Constitution, to see that notion — that women and men are persons of equal stature — I’d like them to see that is a basic principle of our society.”

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Uppity Women Unite!

Yesterday, I spent the day with my grandma looking at all of the buttons.  We brought some to lunch with us and had them spread out on the table at the restaurant, and the girl refilling coffee told us that she also collects political buttons!  She told us about this great company in Ann Arbor called The Pin Cause that creates buttons and donates part of the proceeds to the causes they support — they have great ones for gun violence and the science march right now, so definitely check out their website.

One of grandma’s favorite buttons was this one:

(She’s wearing it in the picture, but it’s hard to tell because it’s a little blurry.)  I can’t find information about the first time this button might’ve been used, and the pin itself doesn’t have any print information on it, but the phrase has been used in many feminist causes fighting the notion that women should “know their place.”  Due to the rusting on the back, grandma suspected that she acquired this button “when not enough women were uppity!”

The Spark that Lit the Flame

My grandma emailed me and shared the first time she became politically active. It’s obviously amazing, so I’ll let her tell you about it in her own words in a moment. But now that I’ve been writing this blog for like, a full ten days, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned (and I talked about it in therapy last night, so it’s nice and fresh.)

I always knew that my grandma was politically active, but I think I viewed it in the abstract. I would hear stories about it from time-to-time, but since we didn’t live right down the street like some of my other family members, I didn’t really ever see it first-hand. Sorting through all of these buttons made these stories seem more real to me.

I started this blog with the intention of looking into the history of the buttons, but I am realizing that the more interesting story is her story with the buttons. They aren’t all from campaigns or causes that she was involved with, but of the ones that were, I’d like to tell her story. We’ve got a date on Sunday to sit down and go through some of them.

The last thing I’ll say for now is this: researching these buttons, talking to my family and my grandma about her activism, and thinking about the way things are now has made me want to do something. Activism has changed a lot, it seems, and especially for millennials it has moved largely to the internet. I think I definitely fall into that category — I’ll happily defend any issue I believe in, as long as I don’t have to actually speak to anyone or put on real pants or leave my cats. And while it’s great to express your opinion on Facebook and Twitter, real change has always come from people who are willing to leave the house. So, I signed up to volunteer with Planned Parenthood yesterday (and shout-out to the wonderful staff at the Livonia location who might be reading this, we got pretty up close and personal today.)  It’s no march on Washington, but it’s something.

And now, without further ado, onto a great story from grandma:

“Wow! Your acquirement of my button collection, has sent me on a trip down Memory Lane! I’m delighted that you got it and are interested in learning more about the various buttons.

Is there a button for Flavin and Morris for the Ferndale School Board? That is the first campaign in which I became politically involved, and I don’t remember if we had a button or not.

The situation:

My son, Rob was in 3rd grade, and was not learning how to read. He was a very bright child; but he was just not catching on! Then the Ferndale School District introduced a FEDERALLY FUNDED reading program – and with that program, Rob was learning to read!

The Ferndale School District includes part of Royal Oak Township – a black -community. Grant, an elementary school in the township, was all black. The federal government told the Ferndale school board to desegregate Grant school or lose federal funding – including the reading program that was helping Rob. Our school board told the feds where they could go with that money!

Well! I spoke at that meeting urging the board to desegregate Grant. Instead, they voted to keep the status quo. The Feds subsequently cut off funding to the district which, at that time was about, I think, $250,000.00/year – a considerable amount of money!

After that meeting, I was invited to attend another meeting with a group of people who were looking to replace that school board which would sacrifice our kid’s education for their own racist reasons. That’s when I became politically involved.

It took years of campaigns to change the board (7 seats; with 2 up for election every year). We’d win two, then lose one, etc. etc., but eventually we got a majority – and then the whole board!

Rob learned to read through that federally funded program– and now, instead of being a drop-out, he is a physicist who works for the U.S. Army.

I thank God for allowing me to see the results of all that time and all that work.”

Morality…in the Eye of the Beholder?

The Moral Majority was a political organization in America founded in 1979 by televangelist/Baptist minister Jerry Falwell.  It was created as a response to changes in the 1960s and ’70s that many Christian fundamentalists worried undermined the moral values of the country, like the silly women burning their bras, black people marching every-which-way, or those gay people with the audacity to think that they have the right to exist (how much sarcasm is too much sarcasm?  Asking for a friend.)

The organization, aiming to advance conservative social values, expanded very quickly to include lobbyists, voter registration, and fundraising efforts.  They were even credited with helping Ronald Reagan win the presidential election of 1980.

These buttons were both issued in 1980.  The first was not only used by progressive groups opposing the Moral Majority, but also other members of the Christian right who opposed Jerry Falwell’s hard line beliefs.  The suggestion that the Moral Majority is neither “moral” nor the “majority” applied to both the Christian community, as well as America as a whole.

Progressives began to use the term “immoral minority” as a point of pride and opposition to the the Moral Majority.  An organization was formed in Washington under that name and attempted to counteract some of the Moral Majority’s propaganda through humor.

The Moral Majority remained a strong presence in American politics for most of the 1980s, but eventually dissolved in 1989 due to internal difficulties and scandal (to nobody’s surprise, I assume.)  Even though it does not officially exist anymore, it helped to firmly establish the religious right in American politics.

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Nixon Eats Lettuce

I thought this would be a fun one to start with, since it initially made me laugh but I ended up learning something new.  The Salinas Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in California, and in 1970, was producing most of America’s lettuce.  There’s a little back story involving grapes and teamsters, but since nobody is accusing Nixon of eating grapes, let’s focus on the lettuce.

In July/August 1970, the United Farm Workers (led by Cesar Chavez) were pretty pissed off that some of the lettuce growers had signed contracts with the teamsters.  They tried holding secret negotiations to avoid a strike, but eventually it collapsed and on August 23rd, the UFW called for the lettuce pickers, many of whom were underpaid, unskilled migrant workers, to strike.  About 10,000 of them did, in what became the largest farm worker strike in US history.  Almost overnight, the production of lettuce dropped by 70%, the price doubled, and shipments almost ceased nationwide.  The UFW also asked consumers to join the boycott by refusing to buy non-union lettuce.

Nixon, however, was having none of it.  He publicly opposed the boycott, openly criticized its leaders, and tried to find ways to undermine the movement.  He was definitely still eating lettuce, but he couldn’t choke down enough salads to beat the UFW.  The boycott officially lasted until 1978, but the big win came in 1975 with the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.