05/24/2026
To Honor the Veterans for Peace ~ thank you!
HotHouse Presents: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone? An Anti-War Memorial Day Streaming Project"
Sweet Honey in the Rock: "Study War No More"
https://youtu.be/yHxrYOG3E-E?si=ZNE9xZKtMHUNmZ6n
On May 26th, 1937, after failing to make a negotiation with Republic Steel for better working conditions, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) went on strike. Organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the strike also included workers at Inland Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube (known collectively with Republic as “Little Steel”), amounting to 67,000 total steel workers on strike.
On the morning of Memorial Day (May 30th), a crowd of striking workers and sympathizers gathered in the field in front of Republic Steel in Chicago. They were met by a large group of Chicago policemen, armed and prepared to break up any protests. After a few minutes, things escalated into a riot, with the police firing shots at the crowd, as well as throwing tear gas and beating strikers with their clubs. When the dust settled, four civilians were immediately dead, six more died of complications in the ensuing days, and at least 67 were wounded or suffered head injuries. This event would become known as the “Memorial Day Massacre“, and its show of violence was one of many the strikers would face in the next few months.
"May 26, 1937 Republic Steel Strike and Massacre"
https://youtu.be/5LVrfcJG8Fk?si=d1Sl4TRnkUmGpadn
“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Beyond Vietnam"
https://archive.org/details/BeyondVietnamATimeToBreakSilence4467
"Grand Illusion"
During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.
A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.
https://archive.org/details/grand-illusion_1937
"Winter Soldier" is a 1972 American documentary film chronicling the Winter Soldier Investigation, which took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31 to February 2, 1971. The film documents the accounts of American soldiers who returned from the War in Vietnam and participated in this war crimes hearing.
https://archive.org/details/MotionPicture0064
"Children of Hiroshima" (1952) is a seminal Japanese drama film directed by Kaneto Shindō that portrays the lingering trauma of the atomic bombing on survivors, particularly children. Based on witness accounts, the film highlights the loss, resilience, and aftermath for children four years after the 1945 attack.
https://archive.org/details/childrenOfHiroshima1952
Anti-war films are out numbered by war films but that doesn't mean that their few numbers are irrelevant in the analysis of the philosophy of human aggression....
