The United Steelworkers (USW) strikes came after decades of cordial
relations between the USW-affiliated unions and the national oil
companies. However, between the previous agreement between the USW and
employers in 2012 and February 2015, refiners’ shares more than doubled.
Meanwhile, workers’ wages and benefits remained stagnant.
In 1959, Columbia University announced plans for a new gymnasium for Columbia College students and residents of the Harlem community. The gym would be segregated, with residents of the Harlem community having to enter through the basement entrance, and having limited access to the facilities. The gym was also not open for use by students from Columbia’s graduate and professional schools, Barnard College, or Teacher’s College.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) coordinated cooperation and activities for the largest and most influential corporations in the world and governments. According to one self-definition, it “engages political, business, academic and other leaders of society in collaborative efforts to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” Each year, WEF held regional meetings of 1000+ attendees. These leaders dominated the setting of economic and social policy around the world and promoted free trade and deregulation, often referred to as a “neo-liberal” agenda.
In March 1960, a national wave of sit-in campaigns to desegregate lunch counters and public accommodations reached Miami. Miami was one of 11 Florida cities where activists organized sit-ins over the months of February and March 1960. On 4 March 1960, students from Florida Memorial College led a sit-in in in Miami, Florida. Participants included adult ministers.
By 2009, the global financial crisis created high unemployment rates
throughout Spain. For many homeowners who borrowed money, the inability
to pay their mortgages meant that they risked eviction while continuing
to pay back their loans, creating the combination of homelessness and
growing debt. Social movements of recent years had worked to secure
housing and employment for all citizens in the turbulent times, such as
the “V de Vivienda” (“H for Housing”) campaign. Out of that particular
campaign grew “Platforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca” (“Mortgage
Iranians turned out in large numbers to elect their President on 12 June
2009. The candidates included the incumbent and favorite of the
religious authorities, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as three
challengers: Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mohsen Rezaee, and Mehdi Karroubi.
Authorities announced results just two hours after polls had closed,
with Ahmadinejad receiving 62.63% of the vote, Mousavi 33.75%, Rezaee
1.73%, and Karroubi 0.85%.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Mexican-Americans struggled for equal
rights all across the Southwest in America. In Texas, campaigns for
racial equality were led primarily by organizations like La Raza (the
Resistance), MAYO (Mexican-American Youth Organization), PASSO
(Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations), and the Brown
Berets. These organizations struggled for equal rights and privileges
for Mexican-Americans in all facets of society.
On 20 December 2005, in the midst of the cold and busy holiday season, nearly 40,000 subway and bus operators from New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) went on strike, protesting the contract they found to have unfair economic terms. The strike, the first NYC transit strike in 25 years, completely shutdown the public transportation system, which nearly 8 million people, including 600,000 students relied on for their commutes.
In October 2013, Blaise Compaoré had ruled Burkina Faso for 27 years. However, the Constitution would have prevented him from running for President again in the 2015 elections. Compaoré had manipulated term limits in the past before, and he survived soldiers’ mutinies and popular protests calling for his resignation in 2011. In October 2014, he planned to change the Constitution to allow him to run for office again.
Since its founding in 1859, Cooper Union had operated as a tuition-free art, architecture, and engineering school. However, after years of financial troubles, the College announced on 24 April 2012 that it would begin charging graduate students tuition beginning in the fall of 2014. Large numbers of students, faculty, and alumni strongly opposed this announcement; many blamed the shortfall on poor management of the endowment, expensive building construction, and over-reliance on poorly performing hedge fund investments.
Tuba Group factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stood up against
exploitation in the summer of 2014. The company, in which five factories
made products for businesses like Walmart and H&M, had become
notorious in recent years for some of the lowest employee wages in the
world (about US $38 a month) and the 2012 “Tarzeen factory fire” that
killed 112 workers. Since February of 2014, Delwar Hossain, the owner of
the group, had been in jail for the workplace negligence that lead to
the tragedy. However, workers continued to face unfair treatment.
During the 1950’s and 60’s, as many countries advanced and became more
industrialized, doctors in organized medicine tried to push back against
the post-World War II trend of increased state involvement in medical
care. The worry was that state involvement would, over time, reduce
doctors’ income and self-governance. Belgium was a unitary state in the
1960’s and only became a constitutional federation in 1993. Belgium’s
social insurance system was private but also corporatist. At the time,
the system consisted of five health insurance funds called mutualités.
Starting with Ecuador’s founding as a republic in 1822, the country’s
economic policy oppressed Indigenous citizens through measures that led
to the concentration and destruction of Indigenous lands. In 1986,
Luis Macas founded the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador (CONAIE) to advocate for the underrepresented Indigenous
Ecuadorians. CONAIE focused particularly on protecting land and water
rights of Indigenous communities. CONAIE leaders of the 1990s emphasized
demands for a plurinational state, collective rights, and territorial
The French General Strikes in 2009 came during the first quarter of the country’s recession and was the first general strike in an industrialized nation since the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. Economic forecasts predicted that the economy would contract by 2 percent in 2009 and that unemployment would reach 10 percent by 2010. In response to these poor economic predictions, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a $34 billion stimulus plan in December, which included capital infusions to banks of more than $11 billion.
Student governments of Chilean universities assembled to be represented as the Confederation of Chilean Students Federations (CONFECH), the leading organization of the campaign. College students Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson took leadership of the protests and were both integral in creating the "Social Agreement for Chilean Education" (Acuerdo Social por la Educación Chilena), the proposal that was presented to the Chilean government. The students of CONFECH demanded the following:
Cuba had an ongoing political opposition since the establishment of a
communist government led by Fidel Castro on 1 January, 1959. The
Communist Party kept firm control over the political institutions and
suppressed open organizing and dissent by the opposition. Internal
activists and external groups of both exiles and anti-communist agents
of foreign governments, including the US, opposed the socialist
organization of society and limitations on political speech and debate.
Penalties for anti-government activities resulted in arrests of
During the 1960s, apartheid and political repression were near their height in South Africa. The National Party’s apartheid regime severely repressed political dissent and expression, sometimes with violence. Racial justice and democratic leftist movements suffered a severe setback in 1960 with the Sharpeville massacre, when hundreds of political protesters were injured and killed. Due to lack of public means of challenging the regime, The African Resistance Movement initiated an unsuccessful and unpopular bombing campaign in 1964.
In 1990, Fernando Collor de Mello became the first elected President after 29 years of military rule. He narrowly won his election as a center-right candidate and campaigned on fighting corruption, fighting inflation, and defending the poor. He tried various economic policies to reduce inflation and increase foreign investment but was unsuccessful in turning the economy around. His austerity measures created significant opposition.
Unlike the United States during the 1960s, the Netherlands did not have an atmosphere of racial strife or international conflict. The relative peace of the Netherlands was one potential reason why student protests for university reform first manifested as student unionism in support of democratization. Movements calling for similar university reforms occurred between 1967 and 1968 in Germany and France. The Dutch students’ protest influenced the restructuring of the Netherlands’ university system.
The New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) was established to build a community
that does not discriminate based on faith, ethnicity, class, and to end
injustices against immigrants regardless of their legal or illegal
status. They are a national movement of civil disobedience trying to
pressure President Obama to reform immigration laws. Their movement
goals include pushing Obama to end all deportations, regardless of
“origin, status, criminal convictions, sexual or gender identity,
socioeconomic status, marital status, or previous deportation order”
The government of Pakistan under Nawaz Sharif was widely mistrusted by
its people. Prior to the parliamentary election in May of 2013, Sharif
had already declared himself Prime Minister of Pakistan before citizens
had even voted. In 2014, former national cricket
player-turned-politician Imran Khan led a campaign that made six demands
in response to the widely shared notion that Sharif had rigged the 2013
elections in his favor. These demands included a “vote recount in four
National Assembly constituencies of Pakistan; establishment of an
ME Jallow founded the Gambia Workers’ Union (GWU) in 1956, and held the position of General Secretary until the mid 1980s. GWU’s base consisted of unskilled laborers, especially the growing number of workers in Bathurst. The union first began by supporting industrial workers who were taking action to protest low pay. In February 1960, the colonial government, pressured by an upcoming election, responded positively to a strike in Bathurst led by daily paid workers. Government officials formed a commission on wage rates and increased the minimum wage by 25 percent.
Cocoa was essential to the economy of the British colony in the Gold Coast, which is now Ghana. Cocoa accounted for over 60% of exports. However, the European-dominated trade and the exploitative patterns of trade they faced often frustrated the many Africans involved in the process. In attempts to achieve more equal relationships Africans held large “holdups” in the Gold Coast in 1924 and 1930-1931, during which they refused to sell their cocoa to European firms, but neither attempt succeeded.
Since 1885, housing was a major concern for residents of Glasgow, in particular those who relied on tenement housing for shelter. These residents were primarily men who worked in industrial labor and their families. Glasgow received an influx of roughly 70,000 new residents in the three years leading up to 1915. The city did not respond with enough new housing and in fact built fewer than two thousand tenements to meet this need, which created high demand for a small number of apartments. By this time, Glasgow had become the most overcrowded city in Britain.
