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Las Abejas is a Christian pacifist group of about 6,000 Tzotzil Maya indigenous people who live in Chiapas.  Las Abejas means "The Bees" in Spanish, reportedly indicating the value of collective work and life that shares the honey with those who need it. Forty-five members of the group were killed on 22 December 1997 when caught in a cross-fire between the Mexican army and the rebel Zapatistas, the Acteal Massacre.

On 16 December 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed HR4437, a bill increasing restrictions on immigration and undocumented immigrants.  This was the first bill regarding undocumented immigration to pass through Congress.

The Empire Zinc Company owned a company town and zinc mines in Silver City, New Mexico, a part of Grant County.  On 17 October 1950, the area's Local 890 chapter of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers decided to strike, demanding an end to discriminatory working conditions and the dual wage system of two-tiered pay, different for Mexican and Mexican American workers as compared to white workers. 

The Republic of the Maldives is a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka.  The country is threatened by becoming completely covered by the sea because of climate change.  

In 1963, nearly
ten years after the Brown vs. Board of
Education court case declared school segregation illegal, de facto rather
than legal segregation remained prevalent in many northern cities of the United
States including Milwaukee.  Milwaukee
had begun “intact busing” of black children to predominately white schools in
1957, where black children were taught in classrooms separate from white
children and were not served in the cafeterias.

On 1 March 2012, 60,000 healthcare industry workers in Kenya began an indefinite strike in order to improve working conditions and salaries. Due to the massive commitment from healthcare workers, workers were prepared to suspend operations in hospitals throughout Kenya. 

After almost ten years of guerrilla warfare, Zimbabwe achieved independence from Britain in 1980. The Lancaster House Agreement included a constitution for Zimbabwe that described a multi-party democracy.

On 30 April 1999, at 2 am, Jessica Lal was shot dead at an unlicensed bar in New Delhi. Lal, a 34-year-old model at the time, had been working as a barmaid at a party filled with actors, politicians, and other socialites. A little after midnight, the bar had run out of alcohol. At 2 AM, Siddharth Vashisht, known as Manu Sharma, along with some of his friends, Alok Khanna, Amardeep Singh Gill, and Vikas Yadav, asked Lal for some alcohol. Sharma offered to pay Lal 1000 Rupees, but she refused. He then took out a .22 pistol and fired it twice, killing Lal with a bullet in the head. 

In 2006, President Evo Morales passed the National Plan for Equality and Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The plan included legal measures to ensure equal access for people with disabilities in the areas of health, education, economic rights, personal and social capacity-building, and institutional and organizational development. It also guaranteed increased financial support totaling $6 million annually, but the money never made it to the people to whom increased subsidies were promised.

From 1961 to 1996 Guatemalans endured a bloody civil war.  During this conflict the military-controlled government fought the leftist guerillas or the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG).  These groups fought each other for political control.  The extreme violence pushed many indigenous Guatemalans high into the country’s highlands or displaced them as refugees into other countries.

After achieving independence from French colonial rule in 1960, the Central African Republic was controlled by a series of military coups.  On 20 September 1981 General Anre Kolingba overthrew the authority of President Dacko.  

On 12 January 2009 the health workers in Gabon’s public hospitals in Libreville went on strike. Following a prominent and successful strike in the education sector, health workers were inspired to begin their own campaign. They demanded that the government provide higher wages and better working conditions and recommit to its agreement from a previous strike in 2003. Workers also sought more modern equipment for their hospitals so that they could provide care comparable to that of the high-tech private hospitals with which the public hospital competed. 

Starting in 1968, Salvadoran President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez began focusing his presidency on accomplishing three major reforms, in education, administration, and agriculture. The education reform he put in place upset Salvadoran teachers for three main reasons.  First, teachers were required to pass every student to the next grade, when before they had “held-back” failing students.  Second, the new mathematics curriculum taught concepts that Salvadoran teachers had never taught before and considered pointless.

The Walk to Work was a campaign that happened in Uganda led by the leader of The Forum for Democratic Change, Kizza Besigye. Its main goal was to curb the high cost of living as result of high food and fuel prices.  

This campaign started after the general election in February 2011 and ended in June 2011. Though the leader of opposition lost the election in Uganda, this campaign propelled his “cause to the top of the agenda and won him far greater popularity than during the general election. 

In 2012, Colombian coffee prices fell 35% on the international market while the Colombian peso appreciated 10%. A combination of crop disease, bad weather, and unfavorable currency rates forced growers in Colombia to sell their coffee at a loss. Many coffee growers then found themselves spending more on fertilizers and supplies than what they were making for their coffee.

By spring 1967 some of the legal barriers to racial equality in the U.S. had been struck down. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities and women, in workplaces and in facilities that serve the general public.  The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited discrimination in voting.  

In the early 2000s, many residents of rural India did not own the land on which they lived and worked.  Without land rights, peasant farmers were often economically insecure.  

The Great Hawai'i' Sugar Strike was launched against the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association and the “Big Five” companies in 1946. The “Big Five” were made up of a handful of corporate elite companies: Alexander & Baldwin, American Factors, Castle & Cooke, C. Brewer, and Theo. Davies. They exercised complete control over Hawai'i's sugar plantation workers and the majority of the island’s multi-ethnic workforces. 

In 1960 South Africa was under the rule of the National Party, which was imposing harsh, demeaning laws on black South Africans. The party was made up entirely of white people, mostly the descendants of Dutch immigrants. The party was devoted to apartheid and white supremacy, maintained through a collection of policies, including the pass laws. 

Retired Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez won the 2002 presidential elections in Ecuador after emerging as a popular ally of the poor during the years following a 2000 coup d’etat.  A series of decisions followed his becoming president that increased the country’s International Monetary Fund debt and approved exploitation of oil on indigenous land.

On 1 June 1961, Isaac Coggs, the only African American Member of the Wisconsin legislature, introduced a Humans Rights bill with two civil rights provisions: a fair housing law and a plan to reorganize the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Though Governor Gaylord Nelson supported the bill, it was met with resistance in committee, facing amendments to kill or cripple it. Opponents of the bill argued that real estate
brokers and home sellers should have the right to decide to whom they should sell homes.

Along the Whanganui River, which flows through the North Island of New Zealand, lies a contested piece of land that indigenous Māori call Pakaitore. The government calls this same land Moutoa Gardens, a public park they created in memorial to those who died in the Battle of Moutoa Island in 1864. 

In April of 2006 Chilean high school students had many complaints against the government and the way it ran the public school system.  Chief among their concerns included bus fares and university exam fees.  Over the previous few years, there had been isolated protests throughout the city, but none had gathered very much momentum.  In 2006, however, in the first major social movement since “Chileans overthrow Pinochet regime,” the students took the general public by surprise.  

On 1 January 2008, Mexico repealed all tariffs on corn, beans, milk, and sugar imported from north of the border as part of a 14-year phase out provision agreed to under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexican farmers quickly mobilized to voice their opposition, and tried to pressure the government to renegotiate the agricultural provisions of NAFTA, a free trade agreement passed in 1994 that removed most trade barriers between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. 

The Republic of Senegal is a key exporter of petroleum products to the rest of the world but gasoline can be very expensive within the country. Most Senegalese people do not own their own motor vehicles and instead rely on public transportation like buses and taxis to travel, especially in high traffic cities like Dakar, the capital. Bus drivers and taxi operators are often obliged to rent their vehicles from companies that require them to pay for repairs and maintenance on their cars in addition to rental fees. As a result, these jobs are often hard and expensive to maintain.