March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Rat

March 13, 1830: the term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays fellow workers, first appears in print in the New York Daily Sentinel.  The newspaper was quoting a typesetter while reporting on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate. (see January 29, 1834)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestones

Uncle Sam

March 13, 1852: the first illustration of ‘Uncle Sam’ was published in a political cartoon by satirist Frank Bellew in the ‘New York Lantern’. (see May 16, 1966)

Encyclopedia Britannica

March 13, 2012: after 244 years of publication, Encyclopedia Britannica announced it would discontinue its print edition. (Guardian article) (see July 10, 2019)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Dien Bien Phu

March 13, 1954: a force of 40,000 Viet Minh with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu. French General Henri Navarre had positioned these forces 200 miles behind enemy lines in a remote area adjacent to the Laotian border. He hoped to draw the communists into a set-piece battle in which he hoped superior French firepower would destroy the enemy. He underestimated the enemy. (NPR story) (see Mar 20)

Campaign 275

March 13, 1975: Ban Me Thuot, capital of Darlac Province in the Central Highlands, fell to North Vietnamese troops. In late January 1975, just two years after the cease-fire established by the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese launched Campaign 275. (see Mar 24)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

March 13, 1944: Odell Lachney, a white bus driver employed by the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, shot and killed Private Edward Green, a 23-year-old Black soldier from New York, after he refused to sit in the segregated section of a city bus.

Green was stationed with an army field artillery unit at Camp Livingston, Louisiana. He boarded city bus no and took a seat near the front of the bus. As soon as Lachney saw  Green, Lachney shouted at him to move. When Green remained in his seat, Lachney stopped the bus, got up from the driver’s seat, and walked toward Green brandishing a club.

Lachney, who later claimed Green had reached into his pocket, then grabbed a pistol. A white passenger sitting directly behind the driver’s seat, cautioned Lachney: “Don’t shoot him on the bus.” Apparently heeding this advice, Lachney forced Green onto the street as he pleaded, “Don’t kill me, I’ll get off.” Despite the Black soldier’s words, Lachney shot Private Green, killing him with a bullet in the heart.

The coroner held an inquest the afternoon after Private Green was shot and killed. Though five white jurors returned a verdict that “Private Edward Green came to his death from gunshot wounds at the left breast by the hand of Odell Lachney,” no criminal charges were filed. Lachney was released from police custody and the local media did no subsequent reporting on Private Green’s death. [EJI article] (next BH, see Mar 26)

Clinton Melton murder

On December 3 Otis Kimball had killed Clinton Melton in cold blood. On March 13, 1956 an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Otis Kimbell, despite the weight of the testimonial and physical evidence contradicting Kimbell’s claim that he acted in self-defense. (nuweb article) (see March 22)

Freedom Rider

March 13, 1961:  the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] announced Freedom Ride. (BH, see Mar 29; Freedom Riders, see May 4)

Albany Movement

March 13, 1963: Blacks resumed a 16 month fight against segregation in Albany, GA, embittered by the realization that a seeming victory was only a legal maneuver. (next BH, see Apr 4;  see Albany for expanded post) 

March to Montgomery

March 13, 1965:  President Johnson met with Alabama’s Governor Wallace to decry the brutality surrounding the protests and ask him to mobilize the Alabama National Guard to protect demonstrators.  (next BH, see Mar 15; see MM for expanded chronology)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

The Beatles

Eight Days a Week

March 13 – 26, 1965: “Eight Days a Week” #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (see April 13)

Mary Poppins soundtrack

March 13 –19, 1965: the Mary Poppins soundtrack is the Billboard #1 album.

see John Lennon Meets Brandy Alexander for expanded story

March 13, 1974: when John Lennon arrived in LA in 1973, he looked up Nilsson, a prodigious drinker who also did cocaine.

According to May Pang, John…”loved his energy; he loved his writing. What he loved in Harry was the beauty of his friendship and relaxed personality. That’s what he saw. Harry drank, a lot. But Harry was the type of guy that if you go out drinking with him, he’d be sure at the end of the night that there would be a big brawl and that you are the one who’s in trouble, even though he started it. Harry would keep feeding John drinks until it was too late.”

On March 13 at the Troubadour during a show by the Smothers Brothers. Lennon, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, disrupted the comedians’ act with relentless heckling. Smothers’ manager Ken Fritz said, “I went over and asked Harry to try to shut up Lennon. Harry said, ‘I’m trying – don’t blame me!’ When Lennon continued, I told him to keep quiet. He swung and hit me in the jaw.” Lennon and Nilsson were hustled out of the Troubadour, knocking over a few tables in the process. “It was horrendous,” Tom Smothers recalled. (next Beatles, see Mar 28)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

Student Rights

March 13, 1988: after students, faculty, and the community at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. organized a week-long protest called “Deaf President Now” on campus demanding the selection of a deaf president for the university, the trustees of Gallaudet University, the nation’s only institution of higher learning for the hearing impaired,  picked I. King Jordan, Dean of the Gallaudet college of arts and sciences, to be the eighth president of the 2,200-student institution. The 124-year-old university had never before had a deaf president. (Gallaudet article) (ADA,  see Sept 13; SR, see September 1989)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

Valdez oil spill

March 13, 1991: the US Dept of Justice announced that Exxon had agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. (see June 13, 1994)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

March 13, 2000: Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray began filing a series of final reports that detail the office’s six-year investigation of President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. (see Clinton for expanded story)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Marijuana

March 13, 2007: New Mexico’s Senate Bill 523 “The Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act” was approved by the House (36-31) and the Senate (32-3) on Mar. 13, 2007 and took effect on July 1, 2007. The act removed state-level criminal penalties on the use and possession of marijuana by patients “in a regulated system for alleviating symptoms caused by debilitating medical conditions and their medical treatments.” The New Mexico Department of Health was designated to administer the program and register patients, caregivers, and providers. (see, CC2 for expanded cannabis chronology) next Marijuana, see February 15, 2008)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Great Recession

March 13, 2009: a report by the Federal Reserve said that U.S. families lost a record 18% of their wealth in 2008.

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Kandahar massacre

March 13, 2012:  the soldier suspected in the Kandahar killings was moved to Kuwait. President Barack Obama said that the military would conduct a thorough investigation into the rampage. He said he has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States “takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” (see Mar 16)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Sgt. Rebekah Havrilla

March 13, 2013: former Army Sgt. Rebekah Havrilla, an Army rape victim, testified about how a military chaplain told her the alleged rape “was God’s will” and was intended to “get my attention so I would go back to church.”

Havrilla was a key witness at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing focusing on sexual assault in the military. She told the military personnel subcommittee that she delayed filing formal charges for an alleged rape by a fellow soldier in Afghanistan because she did not trust the system, and that after she finally reported it nothing happened. (NYT article) (see July 11)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Affordable Care Act

March 13, 2017: the House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would raise the number of people without health insurance by 24 million within a decade, but would trim $337 billion from the federal deficit over that time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.

Republicans had been bracing for what was almost certain to be a bleak accounting of the legislation’s projected effects. The American Health Care Act, as Republicans call their bill, was already facing widespread criticism from providers of health care, some conservatives, and a united Democratic Party. The numbers released Monday will only make it more difficult for Republicans to explain why their legislation would bring positive change to the country’s health care system. (see Mar 23)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Sanctuary Cities

March 13, 2018:  the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas’ ban on so-called sanctuary cities could take effect while legal challenges proceeded, concluding that opponents of the measure were not likely to succeed on the merits of their case.

In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel almost completely reversed an August ruling by a federal judge in San Antonio, who had temporarily blocked Texas officials from enforcing the ban.

The law in question — Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature in May 2017 — required police chiefs and sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and allowed the police to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest. It was passed in response to the proliferation of sanctuary cities, which restrict such cooperation and have gained national attention as President Trump pursues stricter immigration policies.

Trump’s Wall

March 13, 2018: President Trump reviewed eight prototypes  for the wall in San Diego during a visit to the border.

All of the designs were concrete, but only one included the see-through component Trump said was necessary. He also repeated the need for a tall wall, comparing some migrants to “professional mountain climbers.”

“We want to make it perfecto,” he said of the wall. (IH, see Mar 15; TW, see Dec 21)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

March 13, 2019: California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital punishment granting a temporary reprieve for the 737 inmates who wait on the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere.

The move was highly symbolic because legal challenges had already stalled executions in California; the last one was in 2006. But death penalty opponents hope that because of California’s size and political importance, the governor’s action would give new urgency to efforts to end executions in other states as popular support for the death penalty wanes.

Supporters of capital punishment said the move went against the will of the state’s residents. California voters had rejected an initiative to abolish the death penalty and in 2016, they approved Proposition 66 to help speed it up. (see Mar 28)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

US Labor History

Exclusion Act

March 12, 1888: six years after the Exclusion Act (May 6, 1882) the Chinese government agreed to its fundamental principles. Under pressure from the U.S., the Chinese signed a treaty agreeing not to allow any laborers to immigrate to America. Only in 1943, when China became a valuable ally in the war against Japan, did the U.S. finally abandon this policy. (text of act) (LH, see August 29, 1889; IH, see January 1, 1892)

Unaccompanied Minors Permitted

March 12, 2022: following a public health reassessment, the CDC Director terminated with respect to unaccompanied noncitizen children an Order under Title 42 that had suspended the right to introduce certain persons into the United States. In effect, this meant that unaccompanied noncitizen children would no longer be expelled from the United States under CDC’s order.

CDC initially temporarily excepted unaccompanied noncitizen children from expulsion in January 2021, and later formally excepted such children from subsequent orders.  On March 4, 2022, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction “enjoining and restraining” CDC from enforcing its orders to the extent that they except unaccompanied noncitizen children from the Title 42 procedures based solely on their status as unaccompanied children.  The court found that CDC had not adequately explained its decision to treat unaccompanied noncitizen children differently than other non citizens subject to the CDC orders.  [CDC announcement] (next IH, see Mar 24)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Feminism

March 12, 1912: the Lawrence, Mass., “Bread and Roses” textile strike ended when the American Woolen Co. agreed to most of the strikers’ demands, (DPLA article) (LH, see June 4; Feminism, see March 3, 1913)

Oregon Steel Mills, Inc.

March 12, 2004: steelworkers approved a settlement with Oregon Steel Mills, Inc and its CF & I Steel subsidiary, ending the longest labor dispute in the USWA’s history and resulting in more than $100 million in back pay for workers. (see Jul 15)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

March 12, 1947: in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asked for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War. (text of speech) (see Mar 21)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

School Desegregation

March 12, 1956: ninety-six U.S. congressmen from eleven southern states signed the “Southern Manifesto,” a pledge to resist the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional (May 17, 1954). Notably, three Southern Senate Democrats did not sign the Manifesto: Sen. Estes Kefauver (D–Tennessee); Sen. Albert Gore, Sr. (D–Tennessee), father of future Vice President Al Gore, Jr.; and most important, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D–Texas). Historians believe that Johnson’s refusal to sign was an indication of his ambitions to become president of the U.S. and his need to disavow segregation.  (PBS article) (BH, see Mar 13; SD, see February 20, 1958)

Albany Movement

March 12, 1963: in Albany, GA, five Black high school-age girls were turned away from two white theaters by the assistant manager of the chain. “We don’t want your business,” the manager told them. (see Albany for expanded story)

Malcolm X

March 12, 1964: though remaining a Muslim, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam. (BH, see Mar 20; Malcolm X, see Mar 26)

Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

March 12, 1998: many of the long-sealed records of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state segregationist spy agency, were opened after a federal judge’s order. The records showed that the commission infiltrated civil rights groups, smeared African Americans and, at times, cooperated with members of the Ku Klux Klan. (Mississippi Department of Archives and History article) (see May 28)

Medgar Evers

March 12, 2019: the home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers became a national monument. The federal government will take over the three-bedroom, ranch-style home from Tougaloo College, a historically black institution that has maintained the Evers home since 1993, when the property was donated to the school by the Evers family. The home was designated a national historic landmark in 2016 and is open by appointment for tours. (see ME for expanded Evers chronology)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

March 12 – April 15, 1966:  SSgt Barry Sadler’s  Ballad of the Green Beret  the Billboard #1 album. (see Mar 25)

Senator Eugene McCarthy

March 12, 1968: Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota), an outspoken critic of the Johnson administration’s policies in Vietnam, polled 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. President Lyndon B. Johnson got 48 percent. A Harris poll later showed that anti-Johnson, rather than antiwar, sentiment provided the basis for McCarthy’s surprisingly strong performance. (see Mar 14)

First Australian Task Force

March 12, 1972: the last remnants of the First Australian Task Force withdrew from Vietnam. The Australian government had first sent troops to Vietnam in 1964 with a small aviation detachment and an engineer civic action team. In May 1965, the Australians increased their commitment with the deployment of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (RAR). The formation of the First Australian Task Force in 1966 established an Australian base of operations near Ba Ria in Phuoc Tuy province. The task force included an additional infantry battalion, a medium tank squadron, and a helicopter squadron, as well as signal, engineer, and other support forces. By 1969, Australian forces in Vietnam totaled an estimated 6,600 personnel. (see Mar 30)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

March 12 Music et al

Velvet Underground

March 12, 1967: the Velvet Underground and Nico released first album.

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd

March 12, 1969:  the London drug squad raided George Harrison and Pattie Boyd’s home. Boyd immediately called Harrison who returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers “You needn’t have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything.”

Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the London street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him.

Harrison and Boyd were released on bail. A few weeks later, Harrison and Boyd were allowed to plead guilty. Despite the rather large amount of hash recovered from their home, the authorities were satisfied that it was all for their personal use. They were fined 250 pounds each, and even had a confiscated pipe returned to them. 

Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972. 

Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman

March 12, 1969: Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman at Marylebone Register Office. Harrison and Boyd missed the wedding. (see Mar 20)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Independence Day

Mauritius independent from United Kingdom (next ID, see Sept 6)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

The Capitol Crawl

March 12, 1990: hundreds of people with disabilities gathered at the foot of the Capitol building in Washington to protest the Americans with Disabilities Act bill’s slow movement through Congress. Dozens left behind their wheelchairs, got down on their hands and knees, and began pulling themselves slowly up the 83 steps toward the building’s west entrance, as if daring the politicians inside to continue ignoring all the barriers they faced. Among the climbers was Jennifer Keelan, an eight-year-old from Denver with cerebral palsy. “I’ll take all night if I have to!” she yelled while dragging herself higher and higher. (Mother Jones article) (see July 26)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Church of England

March 12, 1994: the Church of England ordained its first female priests. (next Feminism  see May 22)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

Muntader al-Zaidi

March 12, 2009:  Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in December 2008 was sentenced to three years in jail. Al-Zaidi, had pleaded not guilty, saying at a hearing that he was overcome by passion because of the suffering of the people of Iraq after the American-led invasion six years ago that toppled Saddam Hussein.  (2015 article) (see Apr 7)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Westboro Baptist Church

March 12, 2014:  U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr upheld a Missouri law requiring protesters to stay at least a 100 year away from funeral sites, beginning an hour before they start until an hour after the services end. The ruling capped a nearly eight-year legal fight over Missouri’s funeral protest restrictions that were prompted after members of a Kansas church opposed to homosexuality protested at the funeral of a Missouri solider who had been killed in Iraq. (see Mar 19)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Charles Manson

March 12, 2018: in a messy legal battle over Charles Manson’s remains and belongings, Judge Alisa R. Knight of the Bakersfield Division of the Superior Court of California ruled that Jason L. Freeman, the apparent grandson of Manson, was entitled to the remains.

Three other men who had also staked claims — a purported friend who said he filed Mr. Manson’s will in court; and two people, including a purported son, who filed a joint petition — could not refute Freeman’s assertion, the judge said. (see Mar 17)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

March 12, 2018: U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell III of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that federal law protected transgender students’ right to use the restroom and locker rooms in alignment with their gender identity.

In M.A.B. v. Board of Education of Talbot County, Talbot County Public Schools (MD) policy forced Max Brennan (M.A.B.), who is transgender, to use separate restrooms and locker rooms because he was transgender.

Russell was specific in his ruling: “M.A.B.’s claims come down to a boy asking his school to treat him just like any other boy. This court finds that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause provide M.A.B. grounds to do so.” (see Mar 23)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Deborah Samson

Deborah Samson had disguised herself as a man during the American Revolution and joined the Army where she served well, even wounded. Because she was a woman, Congress denied her a veteran pension. On February 20. 1805 Paul Revere had written Congress on her behalf to reconsider its refusal.

On March 11, 1805 Congress Washington obliged Revere’s letter and placed her on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll. This pension plan paid Deborah Samson four dollars a month. (see Samson for expanded story)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

March 11 Music et al

Bob Dylan

March 11, 1962: Dylan performed on NYC radio station WBAI-FM with Cynthia Gooding. Mentioned that he “stole” melody for Emmett Till tune from Len Chandler. ( see Mar 19)

Supremes

March 11 – 17, 1967: “Love is Here and Now You’re Gone” by the Supremes #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Cultural Milestone

March 11, 1969: Levi-Strauss started selling bell-bottomed jeans. (see June 2)

Paul McCartney

March 11, 1997: Queen Elizabeth II knighted Paul McCartney for his “services to music.” (see March 15, 1999)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

James J. Reeb

March 11, 1965: James J. Reeb died in a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama after White supremacists had beat him in Selma, AL following the second march from Selma on March 9.

Upset with the way the SCLC is handling things in Selma, James Forman and much of the SNCC staff move to Montgomery and begin a series of demonstrations. The group also asked for students from across the country to join them. Tuskegee Institute students come to Montgomery in an attempt to deliver a petition to Wallace. (2015 Washington Post article) (see MM for expanded March chronology)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

Live Free or Die

March 11, 1975: in the Maynards case, the single District Judge issued a temporary restraining order against further arrests and prosecutions of the Maynards. Because the appellees sought an injunction against a state statute on grounds of its unconstitutionality, a three-judge District Court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2281. Following a hearing on the merits, the District Court entered an order enjoining the State “from arresting and prosecuting [the Maynards] at any time in the future for covering over that portion of their license plates that contains the motto `Live Free or Die.'” The governor of New Hampshire chose to appeal to the United States Supreme Court, and it accepted the case. (FS, see June 21; see Maynards for expanded story)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Symbionese Liberation Army

March 11, 1976: though represented by well-known defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, a jury found Patty Hearst guilty of armed bank robbery. (see Sept 24)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

March 11, 1990:  Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. (see May 15)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

March 11, 1993: Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female U.S. Attorney General. (see Apr 28)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

Nuclear waste

March 11, 1997: an explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant exposed 35 workers to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan’s history. (WISE article) (see Apr 29)

Fukushima Daiichi power plant

March 11, 2011: a powerful tsunami generated by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake out at sea slammed into Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant damaging four of it six reactors.

A series of fires are set off, after cooling systems fail. Venting hydrogen gas from the reactors caused explosions forcing engineers to use seawater in an effort to cool overheating reactor cores. (worldnucler.org article) (see May 28)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

March 11, 1998: the grand jury spent the day listening to audio recordings, which sources say are tapes made by Linda Tripp of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky. (see Clinton for expanded story)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

California court stops same-sex marriages

March 11, 2004: the California Supreme Court issued a stay ordering San Francisco officials to cease issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (see May 17, 2004)

GetEQUAL

March 11, 2010: GetEQUAL formed. It is an American non-profit organization and advocacy group which advocates for LGBTQ social and political equality through confrontational but non-violent direct action. (see July 8).

Florida/Don’t Say Gay

March 11, 2024: under a settlement reached between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”, students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction,

The settlement clarified what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identify themselves as LGBTQ+ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms. [AP article] (next LGBTQ+, see Apr 19)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Hurricane Katrina

March 11, 2010: Katrina shootings and cover-up: Officer Jeffrey Lehrmann pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for failing to report the cover-up. (NOLA article) (see Katrina for expanded chronology)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Wisconsin

March 11, 2011: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a measure to eliminate most union rights for public employees, a proposal which had provoked three weeks of protests. (see January 17, 2012)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Kandahar massacre

March 11, 2012: a US Army sergeant killed sixteen civilians (nine children, four men, and three women) and wounded five in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. A US Army sergeant was taken into custody by U.S. military authorities as the primary suspect. (BBC article) (see Mar 13)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

March 11, 2014: police arrested Zachary Jordan Klundt, in connection with the All Families Healthcare break-in on March 4. Klundt faced charges of felony criminal mischief, attempted burglary, and theft. (Klundt sentencing article from Montana Public Radio)  (WH, see Mar 14; Terrorism, see May 15)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

Glenn Ford

March 11, 2014: it was announced that Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana in 1984, a man who had spent the last 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit following a trial filled with constitutional violations, would be set free. Once that happened he became one of the longest-serving death row inmates in modern American history to be exonerated and released.

Ford’s lawyers and parish prosecutors in Shreveport both filed motions late last week informing a state trial judge that the time has come now to vacate Ford’s murder conviction and death sentence. Why? Because prosecutors now say that they learned, late last year, of “credible evidence” that Ford “was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder” of the victim in his case, a man named Isadore Rozeman. (see April 28)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Student Rights

March 11, 2014: claiming the district’s policy was in violation of Plyler v Doe, a 30 year old US Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a free public education for all, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey sued the Butler school district for discrimination and won. The hearing only lasted a couple of minutes. Butler schools’ didn’t put up a fight. In fact at the very start, they agreed immediately to change their student enrollment policy.

Previously, Butler schools required photo ID from parents, among other proofs, before enrolling a child. But the ACLU calls this unconstitutional, arguing it singles out undocumented immigrants, because they don’t have access to state- or county-issued identification. (IH, see Nov 20; SR, see Sept 17)

Trump’s Wall

March 10, 2019: President Trump requested $8.6 billion in the annual budget proposal for a border wall. He also asked Congress for another $3.6 billion to replenish military construction funds he had diverted to begin work on the wall by declaring a national emergency, for a total of $12.2 billion. (see TW for expanded post on Wall)

March 11 Peace Love Art Activism