The Women's Peace Society was an organized movement that focused on demilitarization in the United States and iniquity of violence. The Women's Peace Society was an active organization for fourteen years, being founded in 1919 and evolving into a separate peace movement-Women's Peace Union of the Western Hemisphere- in 1933. [1] The Women's Peace Society was created on September 12, 1919, in the United States [2] when a group of women that included Fanny Garrison Villard, Elinor Byrns, Katherine Devereaux Blake, and Caroline Lexow Babcock resigned from the executive committee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom because they found "a fundamental lack of unity in the membership as a whole and in the executive committee". [3] The leader of the group, Fanny Garrison, Villard sought to bring importance to humanitarian issues and raise awareness for the importance of all lives after the deadly consequences of World War I.
The Women's Peace Society's main concern was abolishing all wars and future war efforts. The Women's Peace Society fought alongside other peace organizations such as the Women's Peace Union and the Fellowship of Reconciliation to raise awareness about the atrocities of war and the millions of deaths that could have been avoided if the United States withdrew from foreign affairs. The women that participated in these peace groups often spoke out to the public about these issues and through city council meetings and congressional hearings towards an antiwar amendment. Alongside other peace organization groups, the Women's Peace Society helped create the War Resisters League [4] in 1923 which continues to be an organization moving towards the abolishment of war after World War I and now against the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fanny Garrison Villard was known for her work as a Suffragist, activist for Anti-war movement, and avid Humanitarian. Helen Frances "Fanny" Garrison Villard was born December 16, 1844, in Massachusetts to William Lloyd Garrison and Helen Eliza (Benson) Garrison. [5] Fanny Garrison Villard married Henry Villard, a publisher for a newspaper, in January 1866. Henry and Fanny Villard had four children together: Henry Hillgard Villard; Oswald Garrison Villard; Helen Villard; and Harold Garrison Villard. Fanny died in July 1928 in New York.
Helen Frances "Fanny" Garrison Villard was most notable for founding the Women's Peace Society (1919), cofounding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), [6] and founding the Woman's Peace Party(1915). [7] [8] She was also well-known for being one of the members in founding Barnard and Radcliffe Colleges. Fanny's father, William Lloyd Garrison, was most notable for his Abolitionism work against slavery in the United States in during the mid to late nineteenth century. [9] Fanny grew up during at the climax of her father's anti-slavery campaign. Being a child of a famous abolitionist and American journalist would influence her in her adult years to use her voice and become an influential activist against many social issues such as inequalities that African American's faced in the United States. Due to Henry Villard's success with his business, the Edison General Electric, [10] Fanny was able to pursue her dream of being an activist and pursue her interest in Philanthropy. Fanny Garrison Villard was an active member of the Women's suffrage movement in 1906 and had begun to speak at debates and legislative hearings. This led to her involvement in the Peace movement in 1915 during World War I, joining the Women's Peace Party under founder Jane Addams. [11] Fanny made it her first priority to focus on the peace movement in the United States during and after World War I and in 1919 she founded the Women's Peace Society, an organization focused on total disarmament in foreign affairs.
The Women's Peace Society was one among the very few first antiwar and Pacifism organizations in the United States in the early twentieth century. Antiwar organizations such as the Women's Peace Society and the Women's Peace Party were the first Feminism organizations who brought forth their concerns of the European conflict and economic causes of war. The growing involvement of women's participation in activism for peace and women's suffrage fueled both the Women's Peace Society and Women's Peace Party organizations. Both men and women united in antiwar movements across the United States after its involvement in World War I. All American citizens were expected to embrace in the patriotic call to arms, but the small minority of pacifists and citizens involved in Civil libertarianism opposed Militarism in the United States in foreign countries. [12] American men and women in the early twentieth century were some of the first small group of citizens to speak out against militarism and were often threatened their own civil liberties and freedoms by participating in such movements against the patriotic association to war in America.
In the future, more and more American citizens would join such antiwar and peace movements; however the organization of the antiwar movement in 1914 was solely influenced by upper class businessmen and politicians. The emergence of World War II and the Vietnam war brought forth American citizens from the working class and lower class citizens. Increasing anger over wartime drafts, policies, and economic conditions led to a more Anarchism view and transformed many American citizens views of war involvement. [13]
The first antiwar movements and organizations in the early twentieth century fueled American's interest in future peace and antiwar movements. After World War I and World War II ended, the United States had accumulated over half a million military fatalities. After WWI and WWII, holidays such as Armistice Day and Veterans Day in the United States was made to honor peace and the many US citizens who had died in war. Holidays to commemorate peace and fallen US military members quickly transformed into honoring the military, glorifying war, and displaying militarism.
The most recent antiwar movements and oppositions are against the ongoing war in Afghanistan and several other countries in the Middle East. The United States military is currently active in Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. [14] Many antiwar and pro-peace organizations in the United States have emerged since the beginning of the United States involvement in foreign affairs, such as the Middle East. Organizations such as Women Against War, [15] Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, [16] United States Institute of Peace, [17] and many more call for Disarmament and end to United States involvement in Afghanistan and other foreign nations.
Libertarian perspectives on foreign intervention started as a reaction to the Cold War mentality of military interventionism promoted by American conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr., who supplanted Old Right non-interventionism.
The Preparedness Movement was a campaign led by former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, Leonard Wood, and former President Theodore Roosevelt to strengthen the U.S. military after the outbreak of World War I. Wood advocated a summer training school for reserve officers to be held in Plattsburgh, New York.
Oswald Garrison Villard was an American journalist and editor of the New York Evening Post. He was a civil rights activist, and along with his mother, Fanny Villard, a founding member of the NAACP. In 1913, he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson to protest his administration's racial segregation of federal offices in Washington, D.C., a change from previous integrated conditions. He was a leading liberal spokesman in the 1920s and 1930s, then turned to the right.
Mary White Ovington was an American socialist, suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began with demonstrations in 1965 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War. These demonstrations grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. This movement informed and helped shape the vigorous and polarizing debate, primarily in the United States, during the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s on how to end the Vietnam War.
Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.
The American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) was an American pacifist organization established in response to World War I. The organization attempted to keep the United States out of the European conflict through mass demonstrations, public lectures, and the printed word. Failing in that effort with American entry into the war in April 1917, the Union battled against conscription, action which subjected it to state repression, and military intervention. The organization was eventually dissolved after the war in 1922.
Women Strike for Peace was a women's peace activist group in the United States. Nearing the height of the Cold War in 1961, about 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's peace protest during the 20th century. Another group action was led by Dagmar Wilson, with about 1,500 women gathering at the foot of the Washington Monument while President John F. Kennedy watched from the White House. The protest helped push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later. Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the First-wave feminism and the Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests. However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".
Helen Frances “Fanny” Garrison Villard was an American women's suffrage campaigner, pacifist and a co-founder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was the daughter of prominent publisher and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the wife of railroad tycoon Henry Villard.
Opposition to World War I was widespread during the conflict and included socialists, anarchists, syndicalists and Marxists as well as Christian pacifists, anti-colonial nationalists, feminists, intellectuals, and the working class.
The International Alliance of Women is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's rights and gender equality. It was historically the main international organization that campaigned for women's suffrage. IAW stands for an inclusive, intersectional and progressive liberal feminism on the basis of human rights and liberal democracy, and has a liberal internationalist outlook. IAW's principles state that all genders are "born equally free [and are] equally entitled to the free exercise of their individual rights and liberty," that "women's rights are human rights" and that "human rights are universal, indivisible and interrelated."
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
The Woman's Peace Party (WPP) was an American pacifist and feminist organization formally established in January 1915 in response to World War I. The organization is remembered as the first American peace organization to make use of direct action tactics such as public demonstration. The Woman's Peace Party became the American section of an international organization known as the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace later in 1915, a group which later changed its name to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict. The term anti-war can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts, or to anti-war books, paintings, and other works of art. Some activists distinguish between anti-war movements and peace movements. Anti-war activists work through protest and other grassroots means to attempt to pressure a government to put an end to a particular war or conflict or to prevent it in advance.
Pacifism has manifested in the United States in a variety of forms, and in myriad contexts. In general, it exists in contrast to an acceptance of the necessity of war for national defense.
Alice Morgan Wright was an American sculptor, suffragist, and animal welfare activist. She was one of the first American artists to embrace Cubism and Futurism.
Fanny Weston Bixby Spencer, also referred to as Fanny Bixby was an American philanthropist and antiwar writer. She joined the fledgling Long Beach police force in January 1908, making her one of the country's earliest policewomen.
The Men's League, made up of groups known variously as the Men's Equal Suffrage League, Men's League for Woman Suffrage, or National Men's League for Woman Suffrage, was an American men's women's suffrage organization formed by several suffragists in New York. The group was based on the idea of the British Men's League for Woman Suffrage. In the early 1900s, Oswald Garrison Villard and Anna Howard Shaw were in contact with one another regarding the creation of a group of prominent men to support women's suffrage efforts. Villard recruited Max Eastman and Stephen S. Wise to help with the project. Later, James Lees Laidlaw became the president and helped spread the concept of the group around the United States. Some colleges, like Harvard University and Swarthmore College, also had their own Men's League groups.
The Pacific Counseling Service (PCS) was a G.I. counseling service organization created by antiwar activists during the Vietnam War. PCS saw itself as trying to make the U.S. Armed Forces "adhere more closely to regulations concerning conscientious objector discharges and G.I. rights." The Armed Forces Journal, on the other hand, said PCS was involved in "antimilitary activities", including "legal help and incitement to dissident GIs." PCS evolved out of a small GI Help office started by a freshly discharged Air Force Sergeant in San Francisco, California in January 1969. The idea rapidly caught on among antiwar forces and within a year PCS had offices in Monterey, Oakland, and San Diego in California, plus Tacoma, Washington. By 1971 it had spread around the Pacific with additional offices in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Okinawa, the Philippines, as well as Tokyo and Iwakuni in Japan. Each location was established near a major U.S. military base. At its peak, PCS was counseling hundreds of disgruntled soldiers a week, helping many with legal advice, conscientious objector discharges and more. As the war wound down, ending in 1975, the offices closed with the last office in San Francisco printing its final underground newspaper in 1976.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Benton Mackaye, writer and forestry expert of 145 West Twelfth Street, asked the police at 1 o'clock yesterday to search for his wife, Mrs. Jessie Hardy Stubbs Mackaye, President of the Milwaukee Women's Peace Society and ...