December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear and Chemical Weapons
United Nations
December 14, 1946: the United Nations adopted a disarmament resolution prohibiting the A-Bomb.(see October 1947)
Bomber distance record
December 14, 1960: a U.S. Boeing B-52 bomber set a 10,000-mile non-stop record without refueling. (see January 2, 1961)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
McCarthyism
December 14, 1947: major Hollywood producers announced that they would not employ (that is, “blacklist”) writers, directors and actors who were Communist Party members or who had been found in contempt of Congress for not answering questions about their political beliefs and associations. the ACLU criticized the decision. In a letter to the Motion Pictures Producers Association on this day the ACLU declared that there was no evidence that “American films have been influenced in any way by Communists or subversive employees.” (see Dec 30; list, see January 9, 1948)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
17 Falsely Arrested
December 14, 1948: local police found two 12-year-old white girls alone in the area of University Park, Maryland. The girls told police officers that they had been “attacked” by a Black man “with a big knife” who had tried to tear their clothes off. This barebones accusation sent 60 Maryland state and D.C. police to the University Park area, where officers wrongly arrested and detained 17 Black men for questioning.
Hours later, the girls confessed that they fabricated the entire story. Soon after the hoax was revealed, police announced that no charges would be filed against the two white girls, despite their serious false report resulting in the wrongful arrest of 17 innocent Black men—and creating the potential for much worse. The police also issued no apology for the way their overreach and unlawful detainment had targeted these Black men without any evidence. [EJI article] (next BH, see Dec 18)
Church Burning
December 14, 1962: the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., which served as headquarters for the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, was bombed a third time for continuing to play an active role in the civil rights movement. Following the bombing. Birmingham police told The Birmingham News the bombing was likely the work of thrill-seekers and was not racially motivated as “the church has not been active in the integration movement for at least two years.”
The first bombing had come on Christmas 1956. In 2005, it was declared a historic landmark. (BH, see January 14, 1963; CB, see September 15, 1963)
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
1) Heart of Atlanta Motel v US: the Supreme Court held that Congress could use the power granted to it by the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to force private businesses to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Katzenbach v. McClung
2) Katzenbach v McClung: in a 9 – 0 ruling, the Supreme Court held that Congress acted within its power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in forbidding racial discrimination in restaurants as this was a burden to interstate commerce. (see Dec 18)
Laquan McDonald
December 14, 2018: NBC News reported that Judge Vincent Gaughan refused to grant a new trial to Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago police officer convicted of murdering teenager Laquan McDonald.
Dyke wore a jail-issued jumpsuit and Department of Corrections windbreaker in court as his lawyers asked Gaughan to set aside a jury’s guilty verdicts for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery, which is one for every bullet fired.
Gaughan denied requests for both a new trial and for the verdicts to be thrown out. (B & S, see January 7, 2019)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Feminism
December 14, 1961: President’s Commission on the Status of Women established by Executive Order 10980. Eleanor Roosevelt headed the Commission, whose work resulted in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 [enacted on June 10, 1963]. (see February 19, 1963)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
December 14 Music et al
Bob Dylan
December 14, 1962: Columbia Records released Bob Dylan’s first single: Mixed Up Confusion. It flopped. (see “In January 1963″)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
December 14, 1968 – January 21, 1969 – “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (see Motown Grapevines for more)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Feminism/Native Americans
December 14, 1985: Wilma P Mankiller sworn in as tribal chief of the Cherokee nation. She was the first woman to hold this post.(Feminism, see March 9, 1986; NA, see February 25, 1987)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
Colorado
December 14, 1993: Colorado Judge Jeffrey Bayless struck down as unconstitutional the state’s voter-approved ban on gay rights laws. Bayless rejected the argument and ruled that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. “If one wished to promote family values,” he wrote, “action would be taken that is pro-family rather than anti some other group.” [NYT article] (see Dec 21)
December 14, 2006: Civil unions become legal in New Jersey. [CNN article] March 2, 2007)
Alabama blocked
December 14, 2015: the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an Alabama judicial ruling that refused to recognize a gay woman’s parental rights over three children she adopted with her lesbian partner and raised from birth. In an unsigned order, the court said the case would be put on hold while the woman, named in court papers as V.L., files a formal appeal of the September ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court.
Lawyers for the woman say the Alabama ruling “effectively stripped V.L. of parental rights over the children she had raised since they were born.” The National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represents V.L., said she will now have visitation rights, having not seen the children since April. [WP article] (LGBTQ, see January 6, 2016; Alabama, see March 7, 2016)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Dissolution of Yugoslavia
December 14, 1995: the Dayton Agreement signed in Paris; established a general framework for ending the Bosnian War between Bosnia and Herzegovina. (see Dec 20)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Iraq War II
December 14, 2008: Muntadhar al-Zeidi, an Iraqi journalist, threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad; Bush was not hit. (IW II,see March 9, 2009: al-Zeidi, see March 12, 2009)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Military accommodation
December 14, 2015: the US Army announced that the previous week it had, for the first time in decades, temporarily granted a religious accommodation for a beard to an active-duty combat soldier — Captain Simratpal Singh. (see April 5, 2016)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Women’s Health
December 14, 2016: the Obama administration issued a final rule barring states from withholding federal family-planning funds from Planned Parenthood affiliates and other health clinics that provide abortions. (NYT article) (see January 27, 2017)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
December 14, 2017: the National Labor Relations Board overturned a key Obama-era precedent that had given workers significant leverage in challenging companies like fast-food and hotel chains over labor practices.
The ruling changed the standard for holding a company responsible for labor law violations that occur at another company, like a contractor or franchisee, with which it has a relationship.
The doctrine also governed whether such a corporation would have to bargain with workers at a franchise if they unionized, or whether only the owners of the franchise would have to do so.
The board’s 3-to-2 vote, along party lines, restored the pre-2015 standard, which deemed a fast-food corporation a joint employer only if it exercised direct and immediate control over workers at the franchise, and in a way that was not limited. [NYT article] (see February 22, 2018)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Affordable Care Act
December 14, 2018: the NY Times reported that federal Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court in Fort Worth struck down the entire Affordable Care Act on the grounds that its mandate requiring people to buy health insurance was unconstitutional and the rest of the law cannot stand without it.
The ruling was over a lawsuit filed in 2018 by a group of Republican governors and state attorneys general. A group of intervening states led by Democrats promised to appeal the decision, which would most likely not have any immediate effect. But it will almost certainly make its way to the Supreme Court, threatening the survival of the landmark health law and, with it, health coverage for millions of Americans, protections for people with pre-existing conditions and much more.
In his ruling, O’Connor said that the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power.” (see March 25, 2019)
December 14 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
December 14, 2021: a temperature of 38°C (100.4°F) in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June 2020 has been recognized as a new Arctic temperature record by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The temperature, more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic, was measured at a meteorological observing station during an exceptional and prolonged Siberian heatwave. Average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10 °C (50oF) above normal for much of 2020 summer, fuelling devastating fires, driving massive sea ice loss and playing a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record.
“This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate. In 2020, there was also a new temperature record (18.3°C) for the Antarctic continent,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas. [WMO article] (next EI, see February 28, 2022)
Space
Touching the Sun
December 14, 2021: Leah Crane of the New Scientist reported that scientists announced that NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to “touch” the sun this past April when it reached the sun’s upper atmosphere, known as the corona.
“Parker Solar Probe ‘touching the sun’ is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a press release. “Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun’s evolution and it’s impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe.”
Scientists announced the feat at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union and published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters. [Smithsonian article] (next Space, see October 11, 2022)