This action consists of a representative delegation meeting with the party responsible for a grievance, in order to present grievances or to propose a new policy. Also see the similar method, 015.
In 2000, Liberia’s second civil war broke out. Liberian President Charles Taylor and his military forces, who had taken over Liberia in 1989 during the first civil war, experienced attacks from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). LURD consisted of various anti-Taylor militant groups led by warlords who were not given a role in Taylor's government.
The Moroccan economy plummeted sharply in the mid-1980s, leading to a program of austerity measures recommended and enforced by the International Monetary Fund. Although these reforms enhanced the prosperity of the country’s elite, most laborers only noticed decreases in food subsidies, rising prices, and an increase in unemployment. People under 21 suffered most—their unemployment rate was above 30%. Most people continued to support the ruler, King Hassan, to project a unified front in the ongoing war against guerilla forces in Western Sahara. As the government made
Luis Fortuño was elected Governor of Puerto Rico and sworn in on January 2, 2009. Two months into his term, Fortuño announced his plan to repair Puerto Rico’s struggling economy. He called for severe budget cuts, which some speculated would result in the laying off of over 30,000 government employees. Fortuño’s economic plan would be met with much resistance from workers, teachers, and students. In May, workers organized a march to San Juan in protest against the plans. In October, workers organized a general strike to protest these same budget cuts.
In October 2009, official estimates pointed to a budget deficit of 7.3 percent of GDP for the year in Romania, with the figure constantly climbing due to increasing unemployment and falling taxation revenues. In the second quarter of 2009, the Romanian economy had shrunk by 8.7 percent in comparison to the previous year, the worst rating for an economy in the region. The Romanian government had promised in 2008 that workers’ living standards would improve and their salaries would increase, but in 2009, the country saw a wage freeze or wage cuts for 85 percent of public service workers.
The Sudan has a history of popular uprisings to depose oppressive or disagreeable governments, prior to the 1985 insurrection. In 1964 the October Revolution consisted of a widespread general strike led by the National Front for Professionals. The organization joined forces with political leaders to create the United National Front (UNF) and, along with dissident military leaders, this coalition succeeded in dissolving the Abbud regime and transitioning to civilian rule.
The cargo division of Swiss Federal Railways (SFR) had repeatedly been suffering financial deficits for a few years and even changed top management. On March 6, 2008, SFR announced a major restructuring plan that involved shutting down its maintenance workshops; more than 400 jobs were to be cut as a consequence. 126 jobs were to be cut in the town of Bellinzona, Switzerland. These workers represented SEV (Transport Workers’ Union), UNIA (an active trade union in service industries), and Transfair (a Christian trade union).
Tahiti was first made into a French colony in 1880 and then, along with the rest of the Polynesian islands, became a French territory in 1946. Since then, Tahiti has been the economic center of French Polynesia.
In 1996, there were 204 reported attacks on prison staff in English prisons. Ten years later, the number of attacks soared to 1,050 attacks. After a 400% increase in attacks, prison officers were more than outraged with their apparently dangerous working conditions.
Many Turkish families know the horror of having a loved one simply disappear. From 1991 through 1994, more than one hundred Turkish citizens disappeared after being detained by police. Most, but not all, of the disappeared were Kurds from southeastern Turkey suspected of collaborating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an independence movement of the historically oppressed Kurds. When families of the missing sought information from police, they were mocked, beaten, and often imprisoned. Many victims were eventually found alongside highways or in unmarked graves
Although apartheid formally ended in 1994, repercussions from apartheid-era laws and policies have continued to impact the lives of South Africans, especially those in poor and industrial communities. An example of black Africans' plight is the community of South Durban, located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban is the third largest city in South Africa and one of the country's primary ports and industrial centers.
Ranked as the world’s fourth best brewer, Carlsberg Brewery held a 163-year-old tradition that its workers could enjoy free beer from refrigerators located around work sites throughout the day. Typical workers consumed three bottles of beer a day, excluding those consumed during lunch hours. The only restriction was “that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and every one to be responsible.”
Cecil B. Moore, the prominent African American civil rights activist and criminal defense attorney, ran for mayor of Philadelphia in 1967. As part of his campaign, Moore supported the demands of Philadelphia's African American students and parents who called for changes to school district policy. These changes included new courses in African American history and the allowance of African American students to wear traditional African clothing in school.
In June 1988, the Arlington Richmond Company (ARCO) acquired rights to explore and exploit petroleum resources in an area of Pastaza province, Ecuador, known as Block 10. Located in the Amazon rainforest in eastern Ecuador (“El Oriente”), Pastaza was barely developed at the time. No roads reached Block 10—the small villages in the area were only accessible via helicopter, small airplane, or a multi-day jungle trek. To the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza (OPIP), which represented 15,000 locals, mostly of the Quichua nation, ARCO’s acquisition seemed like a dan
In 1894, William T. Love started construction on a power canal in an area outside of Niagara Falls in upstate New York. Although the canal was never completed, the neighborhood of Love Canal was born and soon became a locus of major chemical companies. In 1942, Hooker Chemical Company began dumping chemical waste into the abandoned canal. Through 1953, Hooker Chemical dumped 21,000 tons of chemical waste, including sludge, fly ash, and chlorinated hydrocarbon residues.
During the time of British occupation of India, peasants of Champaran district of the Bihar state were highly exploited by the indigo cultivation. The lessees of Indigo and agricultural areas had been Indians until 1793, but as the British Empire began its rule in India, European planters began to take over and gained total control of the indigo and sugar cane cultivation.
Vieques is a fifty-two square-mile island located eight miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico. Home to 10,000 citizens, it is a part of Puerto Rico and therefore a non-sovereign territory of the United States. This status grants American citizenship to its residents and allows them to serve and be drafted into the armed forces, but does not give them political representation in the U.S. Senate or allow them to vote in presidential elections. Since 1938, the U.S.
Since 1938, the United States Navy has occupied a significant portion of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, a fifty-two square-mile island eight miles east of the mainland of Puerto Rico. By the end of the twentieth century, the U.S. Navy controlled over 70% of the island. Thousands of the island's 10,000 inhabitants had been forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to the center portion of the island, surrounded by training grounds, weapons depots, and bomb sites on both sides. According to the U.S.
After President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, concessions and rights were granted to numerous major forest companies in the Philippines. Certain islands saw more than 70% of their natural forests destroyed, including the Bukidnon province on Mindanao Island, which retained less than 20% of its natural forests by the 1980s. The environmental impact of major deforestation includes increased run-off and erosion, which can deplete local harvests and lead to greater flooding.
At the beginning of 1910, the Principality of Monaco was an
absolute monarchy, but by January of 1911 it had become a constitutional
government. In Monaco, the chief source of revenue was the gambling tables,
from which Prince Albert (monarch of Monaco) received a hefty sum. Discontent
over the money the Prince received and the immorality of the gambling tables,
the citizens of Monaco (or Monégasques) began a campaign in March 1910.
On February 12, 1968, sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, began a labor strike to protest unfair wages, unsafe working conditions, and the city’s refusal to recognize their sanitation workers union.
The 1941 March on Washington campaign, precursor of the 1963 March on Washington, was an important moment in the struggle for civil rights in the United States. The proposal for a nationwide mass demonstration for a greater black share in the defense effort had been put forth in January 1941, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1941 that A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), called for a march on Washington, D. C., to challenge the discrimination that African Americans were faced with in the national defense industry.
The strike against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) by approximately 1,500 train conductors, attendants, engineers, and signalmen, which lasted from March 15 to July 3, 1983, had been in the works for some months. On January 1, 1983, SEPTA, the region's largest public transit provider, assumed ownership of twelve suburban commuter rail lines from Conrail, a federal entity. These twelve lines served four counties surrounding Philadelphia and carried between 40,000 and 50,000 commuters to and from the city each weekday.
A union presence among the 17,000 wool and silk factory workers in and around Passaic, NJ in late 1925 and early 1926 was almost nonexistent. The United Textile Workers (UTW), an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), had tried to organize the workers in the past but had had no success. The management of the mills used the fact that the workers were largely immigrants from many different countries to their advantage and suppressed union support.
Approximately 700 male prisoners held in solitary confinement in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California, and approximately 300 male prisoners held in similar conditions at the Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, California staged a hunger strike in the first two weeks of July, 2001 to protest their living conditions.
Iraqi women and men waged a nonviolent pro-democracy campaign from 2003 to 2005. Led by the moderate Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani (a respected Iraqi theologian within the “Quietest Branch”), Iraqis used public protest, strikes, walkouts, sit-ins and boycotts to push for democracy.
