December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

December 6, 1866: the 2 mile long, 5 foot diameter Chicago Lake Tunnel was completed. It was the first water supply tunnel for a U.S. city. (see May 10, 1869)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Colored National Labor Union

December 6, 1869: African-American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-White National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races. Isaac Myers was the CNLU’s founding president; Frederick Douglass became president in 1872. (Labor, see Sept 6; BH, see January 20, 1870)

Jeremiah Reeves

December 6, 1954: the local NAACP chapter became involved in Reeve’s case (see November 10, 1952) and attracted the attention of national leadership, including lawyer Thurgood Marshall. Marshall and other counsel won reversal of Jeremiah’s conviction on this date when the US Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge at Jeremiah’s first trial was wrong to prevent the jury from hearing evidence of how his confession was obtained. (more)

While winding its way through the courts, Jeremiah’s case also became a flash point for Montgomery’s nascent civil rights movement. Claudette Colvin, who was arrested at fifteen for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a Birmingham bus in March 1955, was inspired to take that protest action as a show of support for Jeremiah, her friend and schoolmate. Claudette later became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that led the Supreme Court to order buses desegregated in 1956. Rosa Parks also corresponded with Jeremiah and got his poetry published in the Birmingham World; she went on to repeat Colvin’s gesture in December 1955, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott.

In the second trial, in June 1955, Jeremiah was again convicted and sentenced to death. All appeals were unsuccessful. (BH, see January 7, 1955; Reeves, see March 28, 1958)

Frank Morris

December 6, 1964: Klansmen set fire to Frank Morris’s shoe shop in Ferriday, Louisiana. Morris, who lived in the back of the shop, died four days later from his injuries. No one was convicted. (see Dec 7)

Emmett Till

December 6, 2021:  the Justice Department officially closed its investigation into the killing of Emmett Till without federal charges for a second time

In 2017, professor Timothy Tyson had unearthed what appeared to be a key piece of evidence: a recantation from the woman at the center of the case who had accused Till of making sexual advances at her over 60 years ago.

Yet after an exhaustive investigation, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division concluded it cannot prove the woman lied to federal investigators about her story.

After CNN had reported the development in the case, the department subsequently made public a memo explaining the evidence investigators reviewed and its reasons for closing the matter without federal charges. [CNN article] (next BH, see Dec 23; next ET, see or see ET for expanded chronology )

BLACK & SHOT

CPD

December 6, 2015: U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that Justice Department would begin an investigation into Chicago Police Dept policing. (B & S and McDonald, see Dec 15)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

December 6, 1917: Finland independent from Russia. (see May 28, 1918)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

December 6, 1957: the AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters, along with Bakery Workers and Laundry Workers for corruption. That same year, Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters. He became a lightning rod for additional charges of mob influence and criminality.  (see June 17, 1958)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Immigration History

December 6, 1915: On March 2, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt had signed the Expatriation Act of 1907, which stripped American women of their citizenship when they married a non-citizen. Women who lost their U.S. citizenship could apply to be naturalized if their husbands later became American citizens — but since virtually all Asian immigrants were legally barred from becoming U.S. citizens at the time, an American woman who married an Asian man would lose her citizenship permanently. Similarly, women of Asian descent who were American citizens by birth had no means of regaining their U.S. citizenship if they lost it through marriage to a foreigner — even if the foreigner was white — because Asian men and women were ineligible for naturalization in all circumstances.

Meanwhile, American men who married foreign women were permitted to keep their citizenship.

Mackenzie v. Hare was an attempt to challenge the Expatriation Act and reached the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 6, 1915, the Court upheld the law, ruling that an involuntary revocation of citizenship would be unconstitutional, but stripping a woman of citizenship upon marriage to a foreign husband was permissible because such women voluntarily enter into such marriages, “with knowledge of the consequences.”

The Expatriation Act remained in full effect until 1922, when Congress amended the law to permit most women to retain their American citizenship after marriage to a non-U.S. citizen — but still stripped citizenship from American women married to Asian immigrants ineligible for citizenship until discriminatory immigration laws were reformed in the 1960s.

On May 14, 2014, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution expressing regret for the past revocation of American women’s citizenship under this law. (next F, see In April; next IH, February 5, 1917)

Voting Rights

December 6 – 9, 1917:  Conference of National Women’s Party officers and National Advisory Council in Washington, D.C., ended with mass meeting honoring NWP’s suffrage prisoners by presenting each with special commemorative “Jailed for Freedom” pin showing prison gate secured by heart-shaped lock. Sterling silver pin fashioned after Sylvia Pankhurst’s “Holloway Brooch”–given to British suffragettes incarcerated in London’s Holloway Prison.  (see January 9, 1918)

Breedlove v. Suttles

December 6, 1937: in Breedlove v. Suttles the  US States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of requiring the payment of a poll tax in order to vote in state elections. (see August 29, 1957)

Malala Yousafzai

December 6, 2013: Yousafzai was among the winners of the 2013 United Nations Human Rights Prize. The Prize, which is bestowed every five years, is an honorary award given to individuals and organisations in recognition of outstanding achievement in human rights. “The Prize is an opportunity not only to give public recognition to the achievements of the recipients themselves, but also to send a clear message to human rights defenders the world over that the international community is grateful for, and supports, their tireless efforts to promote all human rights for all,” a news release issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

The six winners announced were: Biram Dah Abeid of Mauritania, a son of freed slaves who works to eradicate the heinous practice; Hiljmnijeta Apuk of Kosovo, a campaigner for the rights of people with disproportional restricted growth (short stature); Liisa Kauppinen of Finland, President emeritus of the World Federation of the Deaf; Khadija Ryadi, Former President of the Morocco Association for Human Rights; Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (the Constitutional Court); and Malala Yousafzai. (see June 29, 2014)

“the silence breakers”

December 6, 2017: Time magazine named “the silence breakers” its 2017 person of the year, referring to those women, and the global conversation they had started.

The magazine’s editor in chief, Edward Felsenthal, said in an interview on the “Today” show that the #MeToo movement represented the “fastest-moving social change we’ve seen in decades, and it began with individual acts of courage by women and some men too.”

The runner-up for person of the year, Donald J. Trump, was accused during his presidential campaign by more than 10 women of sexual misconduct, from unwanted touching to sexual assault. (see March 15, 2018)

Women’s Health

December 6, 2017: according to a large study that followed 1.8 million Danish women for more than a decade, women who relied on birth control pills or contraceptive devices that release hormones face a small but significant increase in the risk for breast cancer.

The study upended the widely held assumptions about modern contraceptives for younger generations of women. Many women believed that newer hormonal contraceptives were much safer than those taken by their mothers or grandmothers, which had higher doses of estrogen.

The new paper estimated that for every 100,000 women, hormone contraceptive use causes an additional 13 breast cancer cases a year.

While a link had been established between birth control pills and breast cancer years ago, this study was the first to examine the risks associated with current formulations of birth control pills and devices in a large population. [NYT article] (see Dec 15)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

United States v. One Book Called Ulysses

December 6, 1933:  United States v. One Book Called Ulysses.  Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not pornographic—that nowhere in it was the “leer of the sensualist“. Acknowledging the “astonishing success” of Joyce’s use of the stream of consciousness technique, the Woolsey stated that the novel was serious and that its author was sincere and honest in showing how the minds of his characters operate and what they were thinking. Some of their thoughts, the judge said, were expressed in “old Saxon words” familiar to readers, and [i]n respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce’s] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring. “To have failed to honestly tell fully what his characters thought would have been “artistically inexcusable”, said the judge. (see One Book Called Ulysses for more)(see August 7, 1934)

George Maynard

December 6, 1974: George Maynard appeared in Lebanon District Court to answer the charge about defacing his license plate. After waiving his right to counsel, he entered a plea of not guilty and proceeded to explain his religious objections to the motto. The state trial judge expressed sympathy for Maynard’s situation, but considered himself bound by the authority of State v. Hoskin to hold Maynard guilty. A $25 fine was imposed, but was suspended during “good behavior.” (see George Maynard for expanded chronology)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

December 6, 1957: the United States’ much-hyped first attempt at launching a satellite into orbit failed miserably ending in an explosion. The Naval Research Laboratory’s Vanguard TV3 (Test Vehicle 3) was a small satellite designed to test the launch capabilities of the three-stage Vanguard rocket and study the effects of the environment on a satellite and its systems in Earth orbit. It was also to be used to obtain geodetic measurements through orbit analysis.

Unfortunately, at launch the rocket rose about 4 feet off the ground, then lost thrust and fell back to the launch pad at Florida’s Cape Canaveral. The fuel tanks then ruptured and exploded, destroying the rocket, severely damaging the launch pad, and throwing the 3 lb satellite and making it unusable. (see January 31, 1958)

December 6, 1958: a year later, Pioneer 3, an American unmanned satellite, failed to reach the moon, but discovers a second radiation belt around the Earth. (see Dec 18)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

see December 6 Music et al for more

Brian Epstein

December 6, 1961: The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Pete Best) meet with Brian Epstein for further discussions about his proposal to manage them. He wants 25 percent of their gross fees each week, in return for which he will be responsible for arranging their bookings. He promises that their bookings will be better organized, more prestigious, and will expand beyond the Liverpool area. He also promises that they will never again play for less than 15 pounds, except for Cavern lunchtime sessions, for which he will get their fee doubled to ten pounds. Most important of all, he promises to get them out of their recording contract with Bert Kaempfert in Germany, then use his influence to garner them a contract with a major British label. John Lennon, as leader of The Beatles, accepts on their behalf. There is no contract signing at this point, because the standard contracts are so exploitive that Epstein is disgusted by them; he promises The Beatles that he will prepare a fairer document. (see Dec 9)

1st Beatles Christmas record

December 6, 1963, The Beatles released their first Christmas recording: The Beatles Christmas Record. (see Dec 7)

Rubber Soul

December 6, 1965, US release of Rubber Soul.  The American version differed markedly from the UK release. Capitol removed the tracks “Drive My Car,” “Nowhere Man,” “What Goes On,” and “If I Needed Someone,” and replaced them with two from the UK Help! album, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “It’s Only Love.” The song sequence,  placing the Help! tracks at the beginning of each side, Rubber Soul appeared as a “folk rock” album to angle The Beatles into that emergent American genre during 1965. The changes angered the Beatles. (Beatles, see Dec 17; see Rubber Soul for more)

Beggars Banquet

December 6, 1968: The Rolling Stones released Beggars Banquet album.

Altamont Free Concert

December 6, 1969: (at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore) headlined and organized by The Rolling Stones, it also featured, in order of appearance: Santana, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with the Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act.

The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled appearance due to the concerns of  violence at the venue (see Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet).

Steam

December 6 – 19, 1969:  “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” by Steam #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Watergate Scandal

December 6, 1973: the House of Representatives voted 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President; he was sworn in the same day. (see Watergate expanded chronology)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

AIDS

AIDS report

December 6, 1983: a congressional subcommittee released The Federal Response to AIDS, a report criticizing the U.S. Government for failure to invest sufficient funding in AIDS surveillance and research. (see April 23, 1984)

Clinton hosts AIDS Conference

December 6, 1995: President Clinton hosted the first White House Conference on HIV/AIDS. (see In December 1985)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

December 6, 1998: President Clinton’s attorneys granted 30 hours over two days to make his defense case before the Judiciary Committee. (see Clinton for expanded chronology)

Sexual Abuse of Children

December 6, 2002:  Cardinal Law left for the Vatican, on the same day that he reportedly was ordered to appear before a grand jury investigating sex abuse allegations. (see Dec 12)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

December 6, 2004: Al-Qaida struck the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with explosives and machine guns, killing nine people. [Guardian article] (see Dec 21)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

December 6, 2006: the bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded that President George W. Bush’s war policies had failed in almost every regard, and said the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating.” (see Dec 30)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ & Alan Turing

December 6, 2011: a petition began that requested a full pardon for Alan Turing (LGBTQ, see January 26, 2012; Turing, see February 6, 2012)

December 6 Peace Love Art Activism

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Roberts v The City of Boston

December 4, 1849: the case of Roberts v The City of Boston began on behalf of Sarah Roberts, a Black five-year-old who was barred from school. The suit was heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the judge presiding was Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. The lawsuit was part of an organized effort by the African-American community to end racially segregated schools. A city ordinance passed in 1845 had said any child “unlawfully excluded from the public schools” could recover damages (which meant they could sue the city). Sarah had been forced to walk past five other schools to reach the “colored” school in Smith Court.

School authorities argued that special provisions had been made for “colored” students. Since Boston maintained racially segregated schools, that Sarah passed five White schools on her way to the black schools, the school board contended, was of no consequence. Roberts retained the talented attorney, abolitionist, and later United States Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner worked with Robert Morris, a young Black abolitionist and activist lawyer from Boston. This formidable legal team broke new ground in their argument before the court. Invoking “the great principle” embodied in the Constitution of Massachusetts, they asserted that all persons, regardless of race or color, stand as equals before the law. (see Sarah Roberts for expanded chronology) (SD, see In April, 1850)

Dred Scott

Late 1849 or early 1850: Irene Emerson left Missouri for Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1850 she married Dr. Calvin C. Chaffee, a Springfield physician with antislavery leanings who later became a Republican congressman. Although no longer in Missouri, Irene Emerson remained the defendant in Dred Scott’s freedom suit before the Missouri state courts. Her brother, a prosperous New York merchant with strong personal and professional ties to St. Louis, continued to act on her behalf in defending the case and would become the named defendant in the federal case. (see Dred Scott for expanded chronology)

December 4, 1915: the NAACP led protest demonstrations against the showing of the movie The Birth of a Nation. The racism that African Americans experienced in both the South and the North during the war years could be glimpsed in many arenas of American life, including the movies. It is not surprising, perhaps, that The Birth of a Nation, which appeared in March 1915, was both one of the landmarks in the history of American cinema and a landmark in American racism.

Historian Thomas Cripps has characterized The Birth of a Nation as “at once a major stride for cinema and a sacrifice of black humanity to the cause of racism.” Based on two historical novels, The Clansman, An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) and The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865 – ­1900 (1902), and a play, The Clansman (1906), written by a North Carolina lawyer turned preacher, Thomas Dixon Jr., The Birth of a Nation recounts the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction through the eyes and experiences of Southern whites who vehemently opposed the political and social progress made by newly freed African Americans after the Civil War. Much of the novel’s tone, which Cripps describes as “a nightmare of interracial brutality, rape and castigation,” found its way into The Birth of a Nation. (next BH, see Dec 8)

Winfred Lynn

December 4, 1942: Winfred Lynn, an African-American landscape gardener on Long Island, New York, challenged the racially segregated draft in World War II. Lynn’s challenge cited the 1940 Selective Service Act, which included a racial non-discrimination clause. Although rarely mentioned by historians, the clause in the Selective Service Act was arguably the first federal civil rights law of the twentieth century.

On September 27, 1940, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph had confronted President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House about his failure to implement the non-discrimination clause of the law, but without success.

The NAACP refused to take Lynn’s case, regarding it as too controversial in the midst of wartime. Arthur Garfield Hays, general counsel for the ACLU, agreed to handle the case. The Federal District Court in Brooklyn on this day denied Lynn’s writ of habeas corpus and dismissed the case. On February 3, 1944 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, upheld the lower court decision.  [ACLU story] (see June 20, 1943 for more; next BH, see Dec 8)

School desegregation–Clinton, Tennessee

December 4, 1956:  Clinton, Tennessee’s Rev. Paul Turner, the white minister of the First Baptist Church, was severely beaten after escorting the “Clinton 12” to school.

The twelve students were Jo Ann Allen (now Boyce), Bobby Cain, Theresser Caswell, Minnie Ann Dickey (now Jones), Gail Ann Epps (now Upton), Ronald Hayden, William Latham, Alvah J. McSwain (now Lambert), Maurice Soles, Robert Thacker, Regina Turner (now Smith), and Alfred Williams. A bronze statue of the “Clinton Twelve” is now displayed outside a newly-remodeled front entrance to the former Green McAdoo School, where the twelve students had attended elementary school. [Black Then article]  (SD, see May 17, 1957)

Louis Armstrong

In 1957: although the blues and folk music had often been associated with protest music,  jazz also had its contributors.

The usually low-key Louis Armstrong cancelled a State Department-sponsored tour of the USSR in 1957. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell. The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?”  [2007 NYY story] (see January 10, 1957)

Murders of Three Civil Rights Workers

December 4, 1964: FBI agents arrested 19 Mississippi men on federal conspiracy charges in connection with the slayings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in Mississippi. (next BH, see Dec 6; see Murders for expanded chronology)

Black Panthers assassinated

December 4, 1969: 14 police officers assassinated Black Panthers Fred Hampton, 21, and Mark Clark, 22, as they slept in their Chicago apartment. About a hundred bullets had been fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers’ side.

In addition, the “bullet holes” in the front door of the apartment, which police pointed to as evidence that the Panthers had been shooting from within the apartment, were actually nail holes created by police in an attempt to cover up the attack. Four other Black Panthers were wounded in the raid, as well as two police officers.(contemporary NYT article) (next BH & BP, see Dec 8)

Johnnie Mae Chappell

December 4, 2002: nearly four decades after a Johnnie Mae Chappell was slain [March 23, 1964], President George W. Bush requested the Justice Department review the killing and police investigation which followed.

Former Jacksonville police detective Lee Cody, who, along with his partner, was fired by the department for investigating the killing of Johnnie Mae Chappell without authorization, had written to Bush and asked for assistance.

Cody received a letter from the White House which said it had sent his “inquiry to the Department of Justice, which will review your correspondence.”

“I can prove what I’m saying,” Cody said. (BH, see January 6, 2003; Chappell, see March 26, 2003)

James C. Anderson

December 4, 2012: William Montgomery, 23, pleaded guilty to hate crime charges in the killing of James Anderson (see June 26, 2011).  Three others had already pleaded guilty and awaited sentencing.  Montgomery did not participate in running over Anderson. Another suspect, Jonathan Gaskamp, 20, also pleaded guilty to hate crimes charges in assaults against other blacks. (see January 17, 2103)

Laquan McDonald

December 4, 2018:  Cook County Judge Domenica Stephenson denied defense requests for directed acquittals in the trial of the three Chicago police officers charged with lying about the shooting of Laquan McDonald.

Stephenson rejected the defense contention that prosecutors failed to prove their case. Stephenson was hearing the case in a bench trial, without a jury. [CBS News article]

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Lucy Burns

December 4, 1916: Lucy Burns, along with four other women, took strategic positions in the front row of the visitors’ gallery during President Wilson’s formal address to Congress. They unfurled a banner that read, “Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?” (see January 8, 1917)

 Dianne Feinstein

December 4, 1978: Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco’s first woman mayor when she was named to replace George Moscone, who had been assassinated.  (see February 15, 1979)

Women’s Health

December 4, 2012: the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down two anti-abortion laws. In two separate opinions the Court ruled unconstitutional laws requiring women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound image placed in front of them while they hear a description of the fetus, and that ban off-label use of certain abortion-inducing drugs. (NYT article) (see January 6, 2013)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

December 4, 1947: President Harry Truman had ordered the creation of an Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations as part of his Federal Loyalty Program, which he established on March 21, 1947. The list was officially published in the Federal Register on this day. The list became a quasi-official blacklist, as members of listed organizations lost jobs or suffered other penalties because of their association with alleged left-wing organizations. Organizations had no way to protest or appeal being listed, and individuals were labeled subversive even though they had quit the organizations years before, or had only had a brief association in the first place.

The Attorney General’s List encouraged other lists that were used to label and blacklist people. (see Dec 14)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

December 4 Music et al

I Want To Hold Your Hand

December 4, 1963: Capitol Records issued a press release announcing that it will begin selling the Beatles’ first U.S. 45 rpm single, “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” on Monday, January 13th, 1964. (also see Busy Beatle December 1963) (next Beatles, see Dec 6)

Beatles for Sale

December 4, 1964, The Beatles: UK release, Beatles for Sale. (next Beatles, see Dec 15)

Future Woodstock Performers

December 4, 1965 the former Warlocks, played their first show as the Grateful Dead  in San Jose, CA at the second of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests. (Jerry Garcia, age 23; Phil Lesh, age 25; Pigpen, age 20; Bob Weir, age 18; Bill Kreutzmann, age 19). Owsley Bear Stanley participated for the first time. (FWP, see “In June Music”; LSD, see December 11; Dead, see Dec 10)

“Turn! Turn! Turn!”

December 4, 1965, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

December 4 – 18, 1965: American astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell fly Gemini 7 for fourteen days, setting an endurance record for that time. (next SR, see Dec 15 – 16)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

César E. Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the UFW

December 4, 1970, : Superior Court Judge Gorden Cambell sentenced Chávez to ten days in jail for violating an injunction prohibiting the lettuce boycott against growers who did not have contracts with his union. Coretta Scott King and Ethel Kennedy, visited Chavez in jail. [NYT article] (see Dec 24, 1970)

United Auto Workers

December 4, 2015: the United Auto Workers won a victory in Chattanooga, Tenn., as a group of skilled tradesmen successfully voted to create a collective bargaining unit at Volkswagen AG’s only U.S. plant. The vote pertains to a small group of skilled tradesmen but allows the UAW to set up a bargaining unit for them to negotiate for wages, benefits and work rules with the German auto maker, and will open the door to wider representation. The group includes a little more than 160 electricians, welders and other repair workers that maintain the assembly line. (see March 29, 2016)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

Charles Hegna

December 4, 1984: four armed men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger Charles Hegna. (see Dec 9)

Terry Anderson

December 4, 1991: militants in Lebanon released kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity. (see October 12, 2000)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Somalia

December 4, 1992: U.S. military forces land in Somalia. (see January 3, 1996)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

December 4, 1998: lawyers for President Bill Clinton asked the House Judiciary Committee for three to four days to make their defense presentation. (see Clinton for expanded chronology)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans & Environmental Issues

December 4, 2016: federal officials announced that they would not approve permits for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes said sat near sacred burial sites.

The decision was a victory for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters camped near the construction site who had opposed the project because they said would it threaten a water source and cultural sites. Federal officials had given the protesters until tomorrow to leave a campsite near the construction site.

In a statement, the Department of the Army’s assistant secretary for Civil Works, Jo-Ellen Darcy, said that the decision was based on a need to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing. “Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” Ms. Darcy said. “The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.” (NA, see  Dec 29; Env, see Dec 5)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Colin Kaepernick

December 4, 2017: Time magazine announced that Colin Kaepernick was a finalist for their Person of the Year award. (see Dec 5)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

December 4, 2018:  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration would begin the formal process to scrap the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty within 60 days unless Russia returns to compliance with the treaty’s terms. [NYT article]

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Sexual Abuse of Children

December 4, 2019: The Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Bishop Richard Malone. No reason was immediately given. All bishops are required to submit their resignation to the Pope when they turn 75. Malone was 73.

For more than a year, thousands of Catholics in Buffalo had pleaded, protested and prayed for his resignation. They had circulated petitions, held placards at prayer vigils, even tried to meet Malone’s plane at the airport.

Both the FBI and New York’s Attorney General were investigating clergy abuse and cover ups in the Buffalo diocese, according to the Buffalo News. The newspaper had also reported that more than 220 lawsuits have been filed against the diocese alleging clergy abuse. Already, Buffalo has paid abuse survivors more than $175 million through a victim’s compensation fund. [CNN article] (next SAoC, see February 18, 2020)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry/Public

December 4, 2019:  the House Judiciary Committee began assessing what action to take and what articles of impeachment to draft, if it decided to draft them.

Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., invited witnesses because he said the members of the Judiciary Committee needed to understand the historical and legal context for impeachment in deciding how to proceed.

Three professors of law—Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela Karlan of Stanford University, and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina—told the Judiciary Committee that they worried deeply about Trump’s actions in the Ukraine affair —and thought they appeared to justify the power of impeachment as enshrined in the Constitution by its framers.

A fourth witness–Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School—said he personally opposed Trump, differed with the three saying the factual case so far developed against Trump would cheapen impeachment and create a dangerous precedent both for Congress and the executive branch. [NYT article] (see TII/P for expanded chronology)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

December 4, 2020: in a 228 to 164 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, a bill to federally legalize marijuana.

The vote was mostly along party lines, five Republicans supported the reform and six Democrats opposed it.

Under MORE, cannabis would be federally descheduled and those with prior convictions would have their records expunged. The descheduling provisions would be retroactive, too.

Despite the unprecedented House victory for reformers, few believe the legislation stands a chance in the Republican-controlled Senate, at least before the end of the current Congress early next month. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (D-CA) was the lead sponsor of the Senate companion version of the bill. [MM article] (next Cannabis, see or see CCC for expanded chronology.

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

December 4, 2020: Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ordered the Trump administration to fully restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era program designed to shield young, undocumented immigrants from deportation, dealing what could be a final blow to President Trump’s long-fought effort to end the protections.

President Obama created DACA in 2012 and since then it protected more than 800,000 individuals, known as “dreamers,” who met a series of strict requirements for eligibility.

But those protections had been under legal and political siege from Republicans for years, leaving the immigrants who were enrolled in DACA uncertain whether the threat of deportation from the United States would quickly return with a single court order or presidential memorandum.

Garaufis directed the administration to allow newly eligible immigrants to file new applications for protection under the program, reversing a memorandum issued in the summer by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, which restricted the program to people who were already enrolled. As many as 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible, according to the lawyers who pushed for the reinstatement. [NYT story] (next IH, see January 12, 2021; next DACA, see January 20, 2021)

December 4 Peace Love Art Activism