In 2006 Richard Gillman gained control of Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Illinois, as he assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer. The company produced windows and doors for building homes and offices. Soon after, there were a series of layoffs and Gillman reduced the number of workers in the factory from 500 to nearly 240.
On 1 June 2009, the global environmental advocacy organization Greenpeace released the findings of a 3-year undercover investigation of the Brazilian cattle industry. The report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” traced the convoluted supply chain of leather and beef products from cattle ranches to the recent and illegal deforestation in the state of Pará at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
In March of 1988, U.S. Ecology, a national dump operating company, decided upon Ward Valley, California as the most desired location for building a new nuclear waste dump. Because this was federal land in the state, the government of California needed to buy Ward Valley land from the Bureau of Land Management in order to give U.S. Ecology the rights to build the dump. The Valley, however, is located in the Mojave Desert, an area home to an endangered species of desert tortoise considered sacred to a number of Native American tribes.
In the early 2000s Citigroup was the world's largest project finance bank, with customers in over 100 countries and territories. Citigroup provided the finances for thousands of projects; some of these projects were deeply damaging to the environment. Citigroup was indirectly related to the Camisea pipeline in Peru as a financial advisor, as well as the Chad-Cameroon pipeline under construction by Exxon, Chevron and numerous central African oil companies.
In the early 1970s, the state of Pennsylvania proposed a plan for building a nuclear power plant in Limerick, PA, to provide power to residents in Montgomery County, PA. Around that time, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) must conduct a study to determine the impact a nuclear power plant would have in the town of Limerick, and the surrounding county.
Indonesia's people, orangutans, and rainforest are threatened by the widespread planting of trees that produce palm oil for making processed food by giant corporations such as General Foods.
In the fall of 2006, the University of California Berkeley administration began implementing plans to build a new sports training facility that would be adjacent to the current stadium. The new building would provide more sophisticated gym equipment for visiting athletes, more weight rooms, and 911 parking spaces. It would also “retrofit” the seismically unsafe Memorial Stadium (built on a dangerous fault line). All this would make up the new Student-Athlete High Performance Center
In the early twentieth century, Kansas was the third largest coal producing state in the United States, with more than 8,000 unionized miners concentrated in the two southwestern counties of Crawford and Cherokee. In January 1920, the Kansas legislature had established a board of compulsory arbitration, known as the Kansas Industrial Court, which banned strikes against unfair labor practices and working conditions.
The U.S. Armed Forces had been stationed in South Korea since the end of Korean War in 1954. More than 26,000 soldiers resided in six camps. Heavily dependent on the U.S. military support, the Korean army had an symmetrical relationship with the U.S. The two countries agreed that the U.S. military would assume the Wartime Operational Control (WOC) until 2015. Moreover, the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) validated extraterritorial jurisdiction for the U.S. soldiers stationed in Korea.
Teresa Sullivan took the position of President of the University of Virginia prior to the 2010-2011 school year. The Rector of the Board of Visitors (BOV), Helen Dragas, began in October 2011 to carry out a plan to remove Sullivan from office.
In November of 2009, a student-organized group at the University of Maryland, College Park, known as STARE (Students Taking Action to Reclaim our Education) formed to act against the cutting of student services at the University. The group, along with other students at the University, feared that the school was “quietly retreating” from its commitment to and stance on racial and cultural diversity at the University.
On January 11, 2012, Indiana Representative Cindy Noe introduced HB 1367 in the Indiana General Assembly, a bill that would transfer outreach services for deaf children, currently provided by the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD), to a newly established center with the state’s budget agency making recommendations on oversight of the center. The Indiana deaf community, led by members of the Indiana Association of the Deaf, quickly formed the Indiana Deaf Education Coalition (IDEC) in opposition to the bill.
After 10 months of negotiations with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education, the Chicago Teachers Union declared a strike on Sunday night, September 9, 2012, that would go into effect that Monday morning. Chicago was home to the third largest public school system in the United States, teaching 350,000 students.
In the 1950s the Eisenhower administration enacted the Relocation and Termination programs in regard to American Indian federal policy. The first part meant that Native Americans were to relocate from their respective reservations into big cities. In doing this, Native Americans would lose the unity of the immediate communities as they individually integrated as citizens into separate cities. Meanwhile, the reservation lands would be liquidated into the hands of the federal government. The second part, termination, was a broader result of the relocation.
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is a private company that receives government funding to run prison and detention centers for-profit. The CCA’s immigrant detention centers are notorious for particularly bad living conditions.
After the 2008 home mortgage crisis, and particularly after the 2010-2011 recession, home foreclosure rates skyrocketed. Very few cases received much media attention. Dirma Rodgriguez’s situation is almost unique in that it was featured in local and syndicated newspapers. Due to high-profile actions and support from the Occupy Fights Foreclosure sub-committee within the larger group of Occupy Los Angeles, Dirma’s case reached the level of mainstream consciousness throughout the campaign.
Following an industrial boom during World War II, Chester, Pennsylvania began an economic decline. In 1990, the census reported that about 60% of residents were African American, 25% were living below the poverty line, and 20% were unemployed.
On Valentine's Day 2011 Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker proposed his Budget Repair Bill. This bill would eliminate the ability for several labor unions to collectively bargain with the state.
The bill would also limit groups allowed to bargain to be able to negotiate only base wages for their members. Additionally, this bill forced state employees to increase the percentage they would pay for health insurance from 6% to 12%, and retirement pension from less than 1% to 5.8%.
In the spring and early summer of 2009, the Rochester City School District faced serious budget cuts to its schools. Among the schools to be affected was the magnet School of the Arts (SOTA), one of the highest performing schools in the district, which placed a special emphasis on the inclusion of arts in the student curriculum.
There was a scheduled School Board Meeting to be held regarding the budget cuts on June 10, at which time a vote on whether they were to pass was to take place.
In March of 2004, six of the largest catalogers in North America were put on notice for their consumption of endangered forests. Since then, ForestEthics, a nonprofit environmental group committed to protecting North America's forests, has been in detailed discussion with all of these companies and others who are competing to address these environmental issues.
When Oregonians received notice in 1968 that the Portland General Electric Company (PGE) planned to install a nuclear power plant in Rainier Oregon, concerned citizens began to work within the political structure to prevent the plant from entering the community. Based on the anti-nuclear sentiment in the US at the time, many Oregonians were wary of the environmental repercussions of a nuclear power plant. Many also considered the construction and upkeep of the plant an unwise allocation of state money.
A 2002 study found that 68% of the 2,100 hourly Tennessee public higher education employees were being paid less than a living wage of $9.50 per hour with benefits. Earning less than a living wage could force an employee to rely on public subsidies for food, healthcare, or housing. Inspired by this and similar statistics, United Campus Workers (UCW), which recently merged with the Communication Workers Association, launched its “UT Workers Need a Raise” campaign in October 2004, with the goal of a $1,200 across-the-board pay raise for all University of Tennessee employees.
In Fall 2007, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) ordered the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to spray an experimental pheromone-based pesticide over counties on the Central Coast of California. In doing so, the USDA aimed to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM), a pest deemed highly destructive by the USDA. In order to conduct the test sprays, the USDA added $90 million to the CDFA budget.
In 2003, the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) began the process of creating a Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the University. The LRDP, which was revised in 2005, would destroy 120 acres of redwood forest in the University’s upper campus and add 4,500 students to the school. Many students, faculty, staff, and Santa Cruz community members were outraged over the plan, seeing the destruction of the forest to be more than a development project; the area is home to endangered species such as the Burrowing Owl and the Red-Legged Frog. Additionally, the increase
Formed in 1995, the WTO serves as an organization that facilitates trade amongst 123 nations. The first major protest against the WTO occurred in 1999 in Seattle, Washington. United States citizens were protesting the WTO’s ministerial conference because they claimed that the WTO was breaking down nation states’ sovereignty. Specifically they were concerned with workers’ rights and the concept of the “race to the bottom”, in which countries companies compete to pay their employees the lowest wages, resulting in massive employee exploitation.
