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On Saturday, February 27, 1943, the Gestapo in Nazi Germany began the “Final Roundup of Berlin Jews,” arresting all Jews in the city of Berlin. Many of these Jews were in intermarriages with non-Jewish spouses or were the children of such intermarriages.  When these intermarried Jews (mostly men) did not return home after the arrest action, the non-Jewish spouses later found out that their husbands had been imprisoned in the Rosenstrasse, a Jewish community center.

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On February 27, 2010 a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile and was soon followed by a tsunami. In total, there were as many as 800 deaths and $30 billion in damage because of the earthquake. Following the earthquake, much of Chile was ravaged and thousands of people were left unemployed. In response the Chilean government began instituting employment programs in the Bio Bio, Maule, and O’Higgins regions, where unemployment rates were particularly high. The programs paid residents to help rebuild their communities and to clear rubble from the towns.

When the San Francisco Bay based Lucky Sewing Co. filed for bankruptcy in May of 1992, they laid off twelve Chinese immigrant women whom they owed $15,000 in back wages. The company’s attorney claimed that they had few assets and there was no money to pay the seamstresses.  Lucky Sewing Co. and other garment contractors imposed terrible conditions on workers who were often paid less than the $4.25 minimum wage.

Greenham Commons outside Newbury, England was purchased in 1939 by the Newbury District Council for the public use of Newbury inhabitants, including the collection of firewood. In 1941 this area was requisitioned by the Air Ministry for an airfield, which was later decommissioned. Despite the decommissioning of the airfield, public ownership of the land was not fully restored. Then in 1979 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization ) bought the land from the British government for the building of a military base that would house 96 Tomahawk Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCMs).

Tajikistan is a small country in Asia that borders Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and China with a population of approximately 8 million.  Once a republic under the Soviet Union, the country experienced a civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1997, which damaged the country’s already weakening economy.  Tajikistan currently has one of the lowest GDPs among the former Soviet republics, but has started to improve due to foreign aid.

By November 1929, Igbo women in southeastern Nigeria had had enough. From the perspective of the British colonizers, the women became loud, angry, and disruptive. They marched through cities and towns and demanded political leaders to step down. The women took their British rulers completely by surprise. The British were ignorant of the discontent among women that had been building for years, and that had recently bubbled over the surface. They mistook the women’s organized action for spontaneous, ‘crazy’ outbursts.

Prior to Iran’s revolution in 1979, women gained many rights that were retracted after the revolution concluded.  Campaigns for women’s rights since the revolution have not sought additional rights, but wished to maintain the rights women had already earned.  One such campaign was the One Million Signatures campaign, which aimed to persuade the Majles (parliament) to reform gender-discriminatory laws.  The campaign also looked to educate citizens, and particularly women, about the negative impact of these laws on the lives of women and society as a whole.

The political atmosphere in Japan in the 1950s was anything but calm. Still reeling from the Second World War, citizens were coming to terms with their newly democratic leaders—politicians who, before the war, had been ardently fascist. A growing nationalist movement was forming, as well as strong leftist political factions. These two movements opposed Japan’s strong ties with the United States, and disagreed with the American military presence in their country.

Pilson, Chicago is home to a large community of Mexican immigrants, and is one of many low-income neighborhoods in Chicago with underfunded schools. In 2011, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) faced a deficit of around $712 million in funding for education, creating what seemed like a void in the resources available for many public schools. At the beginning of the new millennium, Whittier Elementary School was one of more than 150 public schools that lacked basic resources such as an adequate cafeteria, safe and maintained buildings, and a proper library.