022. Protest disrobings

Argentina and Uruguay have a history of friendly diplomatic relations, with their countries sharing similar heritages, mutual alliances and significant cultural and political ties. However, following the 2005 announcement of the construction of two paper mills on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River (which serves as a boundary between the two countries), Argentina and Uruguay experienced their first significant diplomatic tensions since the 1970s.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) emerged in England in the late 1640's among those who challenged the standard doctrine of the Church of England. Quakerism began as a sect whose members believed that there was a piece of God within every person and that everyone could communicate with God directly. This was a radical view for the time. Out of this belief, Quakers developed a strong sense of equality and believed that every person could be a minister.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the political atmosphere in Kenya was characterized by brutal government repression and terror.  Under the single-party rule of President Daniel arap Moi, any form of political dissension was swiftly met with government interrogation, detention, and torture.  Many students, journalists, lawyers, and human rights advocates were among those imprisoned for perceived anti-government statements, ideas, and actions.

In February of 1999, members of the Progressive Activist Network (PAN) at Penn joined with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) chapters at other Ivy League universities in an anti-sweatshop campaign by sending a joint letter to their university presidents. The letter requested a response by March 8, 1999, from University President Judith Rodin and seven other Ivy League university presidents, (excluding Dartmouth’s,) to four demands regarding the possible use of sweatshops in school-insignia apparel production.

In 2000, students around the country protested sweatshop-manufactured college apparel. Students at Syracuse University (SU) protested using a variety of different tactics, including a naked bicycle ride through campus. In their yearlong campaign, Syracuse students wished to convince SU’s Chancellor, Kenneth A. Shaw, to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). Their ultimate goal, along with students nationwide, was better wages and better working conditions for workers who manufactured college apparel.

The students’ anti-sweatshop movement began to generate support in the mid 90s, but was most impactful by the end of the decade.  Universities and colleges nationwide began investigating where their college merchandise was made and inquiring about the manufacturers’ labor laws.  The main target for many universities, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was Nike because of their partnership with the athletic teams.  UNC signed a 7.1 million dollar contract with Nike during the summer of 1997, thus committing to Nike products for the duration of their con

At the turn of the century, student groups on college campuses across the country began campaigns to push university administrations to hold their apparel suppliers accountable to fair labor practices. Many students had realized that many of the licenses that their schools had with large clothing companies included those that relied on sweatshop labor for production.

In 2007, a group of New York University (NYU) students called Students Creating Radical Change decided to campaign for disclosure and transparency. They started forming the group Take Back NYU! (TBNYU) and started in October with an event called "What is NYU Hiding?" They followed it shortly with another event, called "What is NYU Hiding in Abu Dhabi?"

In 1958 the women farmers of the Kom and Kedjom areas of the Western Grassfields, now part of modern day Cameroon, were angered by a number of changes which they interpreted as systematically decreasing the power of women farmers.  These included the increasing frequency of the nomadic Fulani’s cows coming onto their fields and eating their crops, a law stating that they must switch to a new type of farming called contour cultivation, and rumors that that the KNC (the Kamerun National Congress, a political group that had aligned itself with Nigeria and in 1958 had secured nearly comple

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.

In 1956, Shell British Petroleum (now Royal Dutch Shell) discovered oil in what was then the British colony of Nigeria, and by 1958 commercial production had begun. Today, Nigeria has the tenth largest proven oil reserves in the world, is the tenth largest oil producer, and is the eighth largest oil exporter; yet nearly two-thirds of Nigerians live on less than $1.25 a day, 70% live below the national poverty line, and 83% live on less than $2 a day (each of those measurements place Nigeria in the bottom ten out of countries for which data is available).

The Irrawaddy river, the largest in Burma, begins at the confluence of the Mali Hka and N’Mai Hka rivers in the northern state of Kachin.

The Doukhobors are a group of Russian peasants who left the Orthodox Church following a schism and were named “douko-borets," meaning “spirit wrestlers.” Their Christian beliefs led them to adopt principles of pacifism, communal living and the sharing of the possessions, the rejection of church and state authorities, and vegetarianism.

In February of 2010, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand called for what he deemed a "cultural revolution" to change the way the Quebecois populace used public services, including a tuition fee hike for post-secondary education.  

The Dong Il Textile was one of the leading Korean companies whose products were exported to foreign countries during 1970s. At the time, the Korean economy was heavily dependent on the profits gained from exportation of low-industrial cheap products (mostly apparel and chemical products). Dong Il was deemed by the people to be one of those exemplary firms in this context, because it succeeded in “efficiently” producing cheap and mass textile products. Such “efficiency” was possible only because it exploited an abundant supply of cheap labor.

The Ogharefe people of Nigeria suffered from the effects of oil pollution and oil exploration. The Ogharefe community was afflicted with a number of health issues, ranging from skin rashes to stomach ailments, from the gas flares and release of "oil production water." Additional damage from oil production included heavy metals in the water, the eroding of iron roofs due to corrosive ash from gash flares, and the decline of productive fishing ponds and farming land.

In the fall of 2006, the University of California Berkeley administration began implementing plans to build a new sports training facility that would be adjacent to the current stadium.  The new building would provide more sophisticated gym equipment for visiting athletes, more weight rooms, and 911 parking spaces.  It would also “retrofit” the seismically unsafe Memorial Stadium (built on a dangerous fault line). All this would make up the new Student-Athlete High Performance Center

In 1942 the Canadian government used the War Measures Act to force eighteen Chippewa families from Stony Point First nation off their land. The land, which came to be camp Ipperwash, was used for military proposes, and the federal government agreed to return the land once they were done with it. This land is traditional burial grounds of the Chippewa Natives, but the Canadian government broke their promise and never returned the land.

On 1 January 2012, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan abruptly removed
the fuel subsidy provided to citizens by the government.  Finance
Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala championed the decision and the country’s
citizens received no prior warning.  The government argued that the
removal of the heavy subsidy would free up funds for other public
services, including health and infrastructure projects, and that the
liberalization of the fuel industry would benefit the economy.  They
also argued that the primary beneficiaries of the subsidy were the

In the state of Kentucky, specific breastfeeding laws exist in order to protect women while breastfeeding their babies. Section 211.755 mandates that “a mother may breastfeed her baby or express breast milk in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be.” Furthermore, women seen in the act of breastfeeding will not be considered for “indecent exposure, sexual conduct, lewd touching, or obscenity.”

Inspired by the protests in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, Bahrainis rose up against the monarchy in February and March of 2011. Initiated by activists and propelled by the “February 14th Revolution in Bahrain” Facebook group, the protests had clear goals: disband the Bahraini National Assembly, abrogate the current constitution, and form a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. They demanded the new constitution stipulate that an elected parliament hold legislative authority  and that an elected Prime Minister exercise executive authority.

“Pink-washing” refers to a practice used by entities or corporations to market themselves as LGBTQ friendly and supportive, while  simultaneously committing other ethical violations. BP was a British oil and gas company that came under fire in recent years for various environmental violations, in particular an oil spill, considered one of the most damaging in history. BP spilled approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The spill had extreme environmental and health concerns.