009. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books

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 Klamath was one of the largest and most important rivers in the American northwest, running through Oregon and California. It was home to four Native American tribes and many fishermen and provided irrigation water for nearby farmers. Between 1902 and 1962, energy producing PacifiCorp constructed five dams on the Klamath for hydropower purposes. Although PacifiCorp has turned a consistent profit since then, the environmental damage caused by the dams has been enormous.

At its height, the Quebec General Strike in the spring of 1972 was the largest strike in North America’s history. The strike, which involved over 250,000 public and private service workers, was a very important moment in Quebecers’ self-determination and struggle for rights. Planning of the strike had been in motion since 1970, when Quebec’s three main union federations held joint meetings to discuss ways in which they could work together to address common struggles. At the time, many of Quebec’s working class felt disenchanted with and ignored by the government.

In the fall of 1964, student activists at the University of California at Berkeley set up information tables on campus and solicited donations for civil rights causes.  However, according to existing rules at that time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.  On September 16, 1964, Dean of Students Katherine A.

Late seminal gay artist David Wojnarowicz created video work “A Fire in My Belly” as an expression of his outrage at the 1980’s AIDS epidemic, his own AIDS diagnosis, and the death of his lover and mentor, Peter Hujar. Curator Jonathon Katz included “A Fire in My Belly” in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery show, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, in Washington, DC.

Across much of the world during the mid-1980s, students on university campuses led boycott, divestment, and other solidarity campaigns targeting the apartheid government of South Africa. This solidarity movement played a fundamental role in the ultimate dismantling of the apartheid state, spawning institutional and governmental pressure beyond just educational institutions. This student-catalyzed movement emerged around 1985, and by 1990, with the release of Nelson Mandela, most of the groups' campaigns were successful.

The direct action campaign against nuclear testing in Amchitka Island began with an organization called the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (SPEC), which grew from a group of ecologists, journalists, and activists in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  When the United States announced an underground test of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb on Amchitka Island, Alaska, SPEC began their protests.

On February 7, 1986, Haiti's dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier fled the country for France after a non-violent campaign for his removal (see "Haitians overthrow regime, 1984-1986"). Before leaving, he set up the National Governing Council (CNG), under the leadership of Henri Namphy, to rule the country.

Between February and July of 1951, up to 22,000 waterfront workers (wharfies) in New Zealand struck for better pay and shorter workings hours.

In 1957, Haitian elections put Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in power as “president-for-life.” When he died in 1971, his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier took over. There were no elections during either regime, and both presidents used force to keep the populace subservient. Papa Doc was dependent on his secret police, the Ton-Ton Macoutes (Haitian Creole for Bogeymen), to use violence against the people. Although Baby Doc formally disbanded the Macoutes, the group continued throughout his regime as the Volunteers for National Security, and maintained the same violent presence.

In July 1977 Z.A Bhutto, the democratically elected president of Pakistan, was removed from power by the Pakistani military, which was at that point under the control of General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq.  General Zia promised to hold an election within ninety days of seizing power, yet upon taking office he suspended the constitution and dissolved many of the country’s legislative bodies.  Over the next years, Zia repeatedly postponed the promised national elections, leaving the country in the hands of a de-facto military dictatorship.

In late 1967 East Los Angeles housed a school system entrenched in racism. The Mexican American community had the highest high school dropout rate and lowest college attendance among any ethnic group. The poor facilities and constant underestimation of student capabilities by teachers created an atmosphere hostile to learning. The oppressive conditions coupled with the inability to make changes compelled students, activists, and teachers to meet and discuss the situation.

The strikes and demonstrations that deposed President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia were planned somewhat day to day and began as reactionary actions in response to Rojas’s attempts to hold power indefinitely.  The opposition to Rojas had a wide base, across social classes and political party lines, and varied spokesmen, from students to political leaders to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.  This was a result of the growing discontentment with the direction of the Rojas regime.

Through the 1830s, the Cherokee owned incredibly rich, fertile land that was desired by their white neighbors. In 1828, gold was discovered in Cherokee nation, setting off the Georgia gold rush. Though the Cherokee had been resisting social forces trying to displace them, legal pressure began to mount to allow access to the land and to remove the Cherokee from it. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, forcing the Cherokee in Georgia and other areas east of the Mississippi River to relocate to other Indian lands in the West, primarily in Oklahoma.

Seeking extra tax revenue to bolster a struggling state budget, the United States state of Pennsylvania passed a bill in 2004 authorizing casinos in the state. The bill, Act 71, legalized the construction of 15 new casinos in the state, two of which would be chosen from among five proposals in the city of Philadelphia. The location, size, management, and other details remained open-ended. As the permitting process began, Philadelphia community members voiced concern to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) about the intrusion of casinos into their neighborhoods.

On March 31, 1983, protesters took to the streets for the first time in the city of Abreu e Lima in the state of Pernambuco to show their support for the newly introduced Dante de Oliveira Constitutional Amendment, named after the Congressional representative who introduced it. The Amendment was proposed to change the electoral process by which Brazil elected its presidents. The current system involved indirect elections that continuously put up presidents from the armed forces through an electoral college in the Congress.

Post-WWI China was fraught with political turbulence and social unrest. The Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911 and the Republic of China was instated in its place, ending thousands of years of imperial rule in the country and generating a host of new streams of intellectual and political thought. However, warlords still ruled strong throughout many of the provinces, fueling a chaotic and backwards politics that an emerging intelligentsia sought to change.

In 2009, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) began to take action against Sodexo, a multinational food services corporation, with the intent of improving wages and other conditions for Sodexo employees. A year later, the SEIU began to reach out to students on college campuses across the United States. A campaign on the campus of Tulane University started to organize in March of 2010.

In 2003, the government of South Korea announced a ban on beef imported from the United States. Prior to the ban, South Korea had been the third largest purchaser of U.S. beef product. The decision to ban the product came after an animal in Washington was discovered to suffer from mad-cow disease. All together, more than fifty countries decided to ban U.S. beef imports after the incident, and consequently, the value of U.S. beef exports declined by $2.4 billion dollars over a three-year period.

By 1924, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) was administered and occupied by the British government as an official British protectorate. While the Colonial Office headed administration, a group of interconnected companies financed by Britain, South Africa, and the United States came to control what became the ‘Copperbelt’ in Northern Rhodesia. Copper was becoming more valuable due to increased demand for electrical components and motors and regional deposits were easy to extract and profitably attracted investors.

Beginning in 1981, Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for over twenty-nine years. Though he ran for
presidential reelection several times, elections were marked by widespread
fraud, and opposing politicians were legally prohibited from running against
Mubarak until 2005. Virtually all key officials in government were from
Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP). Mubarak constructed a vast security
apparatus to control public dissent; in the 1990s, citizens would only whisper
his name for fear of reprisal. For his entire tenure as president, Egypt was in

Since assuming the role of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev pushed for a program of economic openness and political restructuring, prompting resistance and suspicion from hard-line members of the Communist Party. Russia had declared its sovereignty in June 1990, beginning a period of constitutional reform. By the early 90’s, the Soviet Union, with Gorbachev as the first executive ‘President’, was in economic and political crisis. 

Before the start of the 20th century, there were about 62,000 Indians living in South Africa, including the British colonies of Natal and the Cape, and the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State (OFS). Most Indians were indentured laborers or newly freed laborers.

For the first eight months of 1968, the Czechoslovak Communist Party engaged in limited but significant reforms known as ‘Prague Spring,’ including declarations of freedom of expression and organization. The reform movement began in January, when moderate Alexander Dubcek replaced the Party’s hard-line First Secretary. 

Between 1992 and 2004, several NGOs built up around feminist ideologies, and a strive for women’s rights took over the leadership of a working group that campaigned for reforms of the Moudawana, or Personal Status Code, which severely restricted the rights of women in Morocco. The struggle to reform the Moudawana took place over decades, a movement that began with the inception of the law in the late 1950s.