021. Delivering symbolic objects

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).

In May of 1940, the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazi war machine. At that time, the Netherlands had a total area of 33,000 square kilometers, and only approximately nine million people living there. The country was also relatively flat, with little natural features that could contribute to an armed resistance against the Nazis. The Netherlands had a policy of neutrality and had no recent experience with outside invading forces. In addition, Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch royal family refused to accept the Nazi offer for protection under the Reich and instead fled to London.

The first wave of anti-sweatshop movements developed in the 1980s and focused on U.S. economic policy in South America. It was not until 1996 that the anti-sweatshop movement gained national media attention with the revelation that the actress Kathie Lee Gifford’s clothing line for Wal-Mart was sewn in Honduran sweatshops. The media coverage this received greatly increased awareness on U.S. outsourcing policies.

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.

In reaction to the continuing apartheid in South Africa, many colleges and universities in the United States divested from South Africa, meaning that they removed the holdings they had from companies which operated there. Apartheid separated blacks and whites; the whites, however, had a monopoly on power and had much higher living standards. Divestment was viewed as a way to put pressure on the South African government to end apartheid by hurting them economically.

The Rose Revolution in Georgia sought to overthrow President Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze was elected as president in 1995. A hold-over from the communist period, Shevardnadze was often seen as a puppet for the Soviet Union. In 2003, his actions would lead to the downfall of his regime and the institution of free elections in Georgia.

On July 5-18, 2002, between 11 and 22 members of Colorado ADAPT (Americans for Attendant Policies Today) held a constant vigil outside of the state Human Services Building in Denver in order to protest the state Health Care Policy Finance (HCPF) committee making any cuts, caps, or changes to the community long-term care policy in Colorado Medicaid. Their goal was to put pressure on HCPF in order to enforce the promises that HCPF had previously made to ADAPT about not cutting Medicaid funds and services.

On Saturday, October 20, 2001, five hundred ADAPT advocates gathered in San Francisco at the Ramada Plaza Hotel to get organized for their protest of the rebuilding of Laguna Honda, the largest nursing home in the nation, which demanded the majority of San Francisco’s Long Term Care Budget, causing community-based services to become neglected and under-funded.

In 1997, student activists formed an organization called United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). Entirely student run, the organization strives to "win victories that set precedents in the struggle for self-determination of working people everywhere, particularly campus workers and garment workers who make collegiate licensed apparel." In an effort to pursue these goals, USAS created another organization in 2000: the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC).

Since the late 1960’s, companies have been cutting down trees in the virgin forests of Malaysia, most notably in the state of Sarawak.  Environmentalists all over the world were concerned about the effects of deforestation on the native Penan people and the effects of logging on the rich biodiversity of the rainforests.  In particular, environmentalists in neighboring Australia wished to raise awareness about the issue and provide aid to the Penan people.  These environmentalists formed the Rainforest Action Groups (RAG), one in each of three Australian cities, Sydney, Melbou

University of North Carolina (UNC) Sierra Student Coalition members and students created the Coal-Free UNC movement in an effort to end the University’s use of coal and close the on-campus coal plant.  Its goal is to eliminate coal on campus by 2015.  Coal-Free UNC also wanted the University to adhere to its green initiative EXPLAIN.  The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal national campaign to end dependence on coal and its use on campus, while encouraging the use of renewable sources of energy inspired UNC’s campaign.  

Swaziland borders South Africa and has a population of about one million.  At the time of the campaign Swaziland had the world’s highest HIV infection rate and was both one of the poorest nations in the world and the home of Africa’s last absolute monarchy.   While King Mswati III was a largely popular figure in Swaziland, he angered Swazis with his lavish lifestyle and high number of wives.  Between 2000 and 2010, activists worked to promote a democratic government.

By 1989, Bulgaria’s Communist Party Leader Todor Zhivkov had ruled the country for 35 years through a constitutionally sanctioned single-party government.  Zhivkov and the communist Politburo had always quickly repressed any opposition and independent unions or organizations were illegal in the country.  In the late 1980s Zhivkov and his regime had also begun an assimilation program for Muslims and ethnic Turks, which had forced nearly 300,000 Turks to leave Bulgaria in 1989 to avoid persecution.  At the same time, however, reforms were sweeping through Eastern Europe as prot

Throughout the 90s, Bolivia came under increasing pressure from the World Bank to privatize public goods in order to fulfill loan conditionality. In September 1999, in response to this pressure, the Bolivian government auctioned off the municipal water system ‘SEMAPA’ of Cochabamba, a city of 800,000 residents. When the auction drew only one bidder, the government signed water resources over in a 40-year concession to Aguas del Tunari, a foreign-led consortium of private investors dominated by the Bechtel Corporation.

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.

Jeffrey Deitch, the director of Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) commissioned Blu, an Italian street artist, to paint a mural on the Geffen Contemporary building as part of the “Art in the Streets” exhibit about graffiti, which was planned to open April 17, 2011. While Blu painted the mural on December 8, 2010, Deitch decided to remove the mural within mere hours after he started painting it, and the mural was completely whitewashed by the next day, Thursday December 9.

Bolivia contains significant natural resources, but also has a long history of exploitation by foreign powers.  One of these resources is natural gas.  Just like the precious metals from Potosí, however, the gas was mostly exported (partially due to low demand within Bolivia) as a raw material, meaning very little wealth stayed in Bolivia, and the wealth that did remain was concentrated in a few, mostly white, hands.  In protest of this policy tens of thousands of Bolivian activists, who mostly came from indigenous backgrounds, worked toward the nationalization of the nation’

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.

The London Heathrow Airport was of the busiest airports in the world when the English government began to contemplate expansion in 2002. Considered to be one of the premier airports in the world, the English government wanted to preserve the airport’s place among the best airports by improving its efficiency through expansion, including a third runway.

The Waste Technologies Industry, Inc. first proposed to build an incinerator in the floodplain of the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio in 1977. Throughout the 1980s, the company battled with the local government officials and other regulatory agencies in order to obtain the proper permits. By 1990, they had enough approval to begin construction and start test runs.

“I have decided to quit as president.”- Indonesian President Suharto, 21st May 1998

These words echoed across Indonesia, as students who had been occupying parliament for the past three days fell to their knees; while others cheered around television sets watching their president, in power for the past thirty years, resign.

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.

Although Thailand has had a constitution since 1932, the stability of the country’s political structure is questionable.  For instance, the country has had 17 different constitutions over this time period with government forms ranging from dictatorship to democracy.  In addition, the country rarely has a prime minister who is able to serve a full term without being ousted, and corruption at the highest levels is a constant problem.

On April 20-22, 2001, officials from 34 countries met in Québec, Canada for the third Summit of the Americas, intended to further negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  While the proposed FTAA had received near-universal praise in the mainstream North American media, activists feared that the agreement would expand what they viewed as the worst aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—degradation of environmental regulations, weakened labor laws, and the subjugation of national laws to secretive, pro-corporate tribunals.  These fears were u

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.