March 19

/

Women peacemakers born today

  • 1859 Ellen Gates Starr born Laona, IL (d. 1940). Socialist; labor organizer; social worker; artist. Organizer of women’s strikes. Co-founded Hull House with Jane Addams, 1889.

  • 1980 Linda N. Sarsour born Brooklyn, NY. Palestinian-American; co-chair Women’s March 2017; Executive Director Arab American Assn. of NY. 2011; arrested at Day Without a Woman protest 2017.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1563 The Peace of Amboise, negotiated by the Princess of Condé, was signed, ending the first French Wars of Religion.

  • 1911 The First International Women’s Day was celebrated across central Europe.

  • 1970 More than 100 women staged the Ladies' Home Journal Sit-In at the magazine's New York office, demanding editorial changes and fairer working conditions for female staffers.

  • 1973 Ginetta Sagan issued Amnesty International's first Urgent Action, an appeal to locate economics professor Luiz Rossi, detained by Brazilian military and police with no explanation.

  • 1980 WOZA women of Zimbabwe presented report “The Effects of Fighting Repression WITH LOVE.”

  • 1989 Cypriot organization Women Walk Home crossed the Green Line, in protest of the military border which divides Cyprus east-to-west.

  • 1994 Three women crashed the Steeplebush Gate at Menwith Hill base.

  • 2003 Diplomat Ann Wright resigned from her US State Department position in protest of Iraq War.

  • 2003 During bombing of Baghdad, Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness said, “I feel passionately prepared to insist that war is never an answer.”

  • 2011 Ten imprisoned Syrian women began hunger strike, Duma Jail, Damascus.

  • 2012 Barbara Dowling given 3-month jail sentence for defacing Dumbarton courthouse with political graffiti reading, "[T]his court does not uphold international law," in reference to the legal status of the Trident nuclear weapon system.

  • 2016 Marisa Franco, founder of Mijente, was arrested for anti-Trump protest in which she blocked the road by locking her neck to a car, Tucson. “The greatest act of love we can show is to shut down hate where it rears its head.”