One America Initiative

Examples of One America Initiative in the following topics:

• Clinton and Domestic Policy

  • Clinton's domestic policies included One America, reforms of the criminal justice system, and the implementation of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and DOMA.
  • President Bill Clinton announced One America in the 21st Century: the President's Initiative on Race.
  • The One America Initiative addressed race and diversity in schools; one of the model counties of diversity in schools was Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse school districts in the country.
  • One of the most noted sections was the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
  • One America in the 21st Century staff with President Clinton in June 1998

• Migration to North America

  • America was inhabited by humans long before the first European set foot on the continent.
  • The beginning of civilization in America occurred during the last Ice Age when the nomadic, ancestral peoples of the Americas—the Paleo-Indians—migrated into the current-day continental United States and Canada.
  • Some genetic research indicates secondary waves of migration occurred after the initial Paleo-Indian colonization but prior to modern Inuit, Inupiat, and Yupik expansions.
  • One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago.
  • The Clovis culture permeated much of North America and parts of South America.

• Disease in the New World

  • European exploration and invasion of the Americas brought with them many foreign diseases, causing widespread depopulation among indigenous cultures.
  • This death toll was initially overlooked or downplayed because once introduced, the diseases raced ahead of European invasion in many areas.
  • One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox; other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough).
  • While disease swept swiftly through the densely populated empires of Mesoamerica, the more scattered populations of North America saw a slower spread.
  • One of these factors was warfare.

• Central America

  • Declassified documents show that the Reagan administration supported para-military groups in Central America in multiple genocidal campaigns.
  • The School of the Americas has since been criticized concerning the human rights violations performed by a number of its graduates.
  • One of the primary goals of the United States was to undermine Nicaragua's successful independent development and democratic reforms as a key strategy in containing the spread of Soviet influence.
  • Official seal of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, also known as the School of the Americas
  • -based School of the Americas trained the Latin American Armed Forces in torture and assassination techniques to combat "radical populism".

• New Approaches to the Developing World

  • Kennedy administration in 1961–1963 saw both diplomatic and military initiatives in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and other regions amid considerable Cold War tensions.
  • Kennedy's most well known act regarding Latin America was the Alliance for Progress, which aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America.
  • Economic assistance to Latin America nearly tripled between fiscal years 1960 and 1961.
  • Between 1962 and 1967, the U.S. supplied $1.4 billion per year to Latin America.
  • Kennedy firmly believed in the U.S. commitment to Israeli security, and he recognized the ambitious Pan-Arabic initiatives of Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

• The Kellogg-Briand Pact

  • Senate did not add any reservation to the treaty, it did pass a measure interpreting the treaty that included the statement that the treaty must not infringe upon America's right of self defense and that the United States was not obliged to enforce the treaty by taking action against those who violated it.
  • The Pact was initially signed initially by fifteen nations, including France, the United States, and Germany.
  • One month following its conclusion, a similar agreement, General Act for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, was concluded in Geneva, which obliged its signatory parties to establish conciliation commissions in any case of dispute.
  • Moreover, the pact erased the legal distinction between war and peace since the signatories, having renounced the use of war began to wage wars without declaring them as evidenced by the United States intervention in Central America, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, and the German and Soviet Union invasions of Poland.
  • The interdiction of aggressive war was confirmed and broadened by the United Nations Charter, which provides in article 2, paragraph 4, that "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. " One legal consequence of this is that it is clearly unlawful to annex territory by force.

• The Last of the New Deal Reforms

  • During the final stage of the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration introduced far fewer initiatives than during FDR's first term but still passed some influential legislative initiatives.
  • While some identify the end of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's unprecedented reform agenda as early as the beginning of his second term (1936-37), others agree that while the number and scale of initiatives introduced during the second term pale in comparison with those passed during Roosevelt's first term, the New Deal eventually and gradually ended in 1938, when Republicans recovered from their 1936 devastating loss and recorded substantial gains in Congress in the aftermath of the 1938 midterm election.
  • Ickes warned that they would create "big-business Fascist America—an enslaved America."
  • One of the most influential pieces of legislation passed in the final stage of the New Deal was also the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

• Innovation and Limitation

  • The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America and their descendants.
  • One of the distinguishing features of this culture was the construction of complexes of large earthen mounds and grand plazas, continuing the mound building traditions of earlier cultures.
  • Over two-thirds of all types of food crops grown worldwide are native to the Americas.
  • This created the Pre-Columbian savannas of North America.
  • Evaluate the diverse cultures and inventions of pre-Columbus civilizations in the Americas.

• European Empires in North America

  • Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries.
  • Columbus' initial landing and first mainland explorations were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquests in the Caribbean and South America, where the first European settlements occurred in the New World.
  • England's forays into the New World began in 1497 (just a few years after Columbus' initial voyage) with John Cabot's journey to North America.
  • Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado.
  • Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I.

• Enduring Cultures

  • Indigenous peoples of the Americas continue to evolve after the pre-Columbian era.
  • Since they were not from the Valley of Mexico, they were initially seen as crude and unrefined in the ways of Nahua civilization.
  • By the first millennium, South America's vast rainforests, mountains, plains, and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people.
  • The Chibchas of Colombia, Valdivia of Ecuador, the Quechuas of Peru, and the Aymara of Bolivia were the four most important sedentary Amerindian groups in South America.
  • Simple map of subsistence methods in the Americas at 1000 BCE.