038. Marches

January of 2006 in France was tense time. Economic growth in 2005 had been unexpectedly poor and national unemployment was at nearly 10%, totaling more than 2.5 million people. Youth unemployment was particularly problematic, with the under-26 population suffering a joblessness rate of 22-23% nationwide and 40% or 50% in France’s poorest communities.  In fact, youth angst and dissatisfaction, significantly influenced by the high unemployment rate, was so high by the end of 2005 that urban riots forced France to declare a two month state of emergency.

In 1983, Pakistan’s infamous Hudood Ordinances made it possible for the state to punish Safia, a blind 15-year-old victim of rape. Her crime? She was raped, but could not bring four male Muslim witnesses to prove it. The judge convicted Safia for adultery, ordered public flogging and sentenced her to three years in prison. Women’s activists from across Pakistan took to the streets to protest this judgment and the Hudood Ordinances that made the conviction possible.

During the 1740s, early modern China was undergoing a profound transformation. After decades trying to recover from the turbulent transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty, a new era of stability was descending upon the empire, allowing for healthy growth of the economy and the expansion of the market economy.

The government began planning to build a hydroelectric dam on the Mun River (also called the Moon, Mul, and Mool River but referred to henceforth only as Mun) in the early 1980s.  In 1989, the government approved the plans.  In 1991, construction of the dam began and was completed four years later in January 1995.  Not only did the dam cost almost twice as much money as the Thai government originally predicted, but it also resulted in substantially more damage to the ecosystem than early studies suggested.

The Guatemalan people have endured numerous hardships throughout the years, but none more tragic than those perpetrated by the Guatemalan government and military during the country’s thirty-six year civil war. The Guatemalan civil war began in 1960, when a group of insurgents sought to depose the US-backed military government. The military had obtained complete authority in Guatemala by overthrowing the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1957.

On July 14, 2002, members of ADAPT (formerly Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit) blocked in five governors’ courtesy SUVs and harassed participants at the National Governors Association (NGA) Conference in downtown Boise, Idaho, in an attempt to gain support for the Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act, or MiCASSA. ADAPT developed MiCASSA with the intention to help people with disabilities on Medicaid choose whether to spend their support services money on nursing homes or on personal care attendants.

In 2001, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Howard Berman of California introduced a piece of proposed legislation named The DREAM, (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. Under the proposed Dream Act undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally under parental supervision, would have an opportunity to obtain conditional U.S. citizenship with the possibility of achieving full citizenship upon completion of the process and by finally completing either two years of college or two years in the military.

In July 1947, Costa Ricans related to the opposition political coalition launched a strike to protest the perceived partiality of the government in upcoming Presidential elections, and to call for the reversal of electoral and tax reform laws that had been enacted in 1946. Specifically, the strikers wanted assurances that measures would be taken to prevent electoral fraud.

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.

Attawapiskat First Nation is a small community located on James Bay approximately 220 kilometers north of Moosonee, Ontario.  Attawapiskat was home to a courageous and passionate young woman named Shannen Koostachin.  Shannen led a campaign of school children to fight for the right to “safe and comfy” schools and quality, culturally based education for First Nations children all across Canada.

In 1936, Anastasio Somoza was elected president of Nicaragua. He ran under the the Liberal Nationalist Party, or PLN. He was elected with broad support among liberals in Nicaragua, although, soon after his election, small numbers of Nicaraguans started to gather in opposition to his presidency. In 1937, a small group of university graduates formed a dicussion group that was highly critical of Somoza; the members of this unnamed group would go on to found the Independent Liberal Party, or PLI - the organization that led the campaign against Somoza in 1944.

During the 1970s, when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship, the proposal of building several hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River was first presented. These dams were suggested as a way to increase energy supply to Brazil. The location of these proposed dams, along the Xingu River, was within the Brazilian Amazon in the region of Para, Brazil. The proposal was eventually put on hold, due to controversy regarding the dams’ potential location on idigenous land.

During the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with the entire world watching, the Pivot Legal Society and the City Wide Housing Coalition held a nonviolent campaign. This campaign was an attempt to put pressure on the federal government to establish a National Social Housing Policy, to raise awareness of the magnitude of homelessness in Vancouver and to expose the government's failure to keep their promise of an Olympic housing legacy.

On February 23, 1991, a military group by the name of the NPKC, or National Peace Keeping Council, which was composed of Military academy graduates, sought to overthrow the current government in Thailand, which they believed to be a “parliamentary dictatorship”. NPKC quickly gained control over the government and formed the political party known as Samakki Tham.

The 1990s in Africa was a period of broad political movement towards the greater involvement of women in positions of power—this campaign is a part of that change.

In North America and Western Europe in the later half of the 19th century, women began to campaign in earnest for the right to vote. At this time women were second-class citizens. The 1870s were the start of the movement in Canada, but there were few Canadians that supported the women’s right to vote. Two of the groups that lead the way in Manitoba were the Icelandic feminists and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The Icelandic women had settled near Gimli. These women established the first suffragette associations.

The Mayday protest was a series of large-scale demonstrations against the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War.  It happened in 1971 in Washington, DC from May 1 to May 3 and diminished within several days. The goal was to shut down the federal government offices, because the Mayday Tribe (a largely young and more militant segment of the U.S. anti-war movement) had given an ultimatum to the Nixon Administration that this would happen if it did not end the war.

President Tiburcio Carías—founder of the National Party of Honduras—governed Honduras throughout the 1930s and 1940s (known as “decades of Dictators” in Central America as El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala were also under lasting rule of their respective, oppressive dictators). His presidency started on February 1, 1933, and lasted until January 1949. On November 16, 1943, Carías and the National Party rigged and swept the municipal elections. This victory gave him the opportunity to modify the Honduran Constitution to allow him to stay in office for an extended period of time.

Felix Houphouet-Boigny ruled Cote d'Ivoire for thirty-three years, following its independence in 1960 until his death in 1993. However, Houphouet-Boigny oversaw an important transition to a multiparty system in 1990, which led to the implementation of democratic elections. The transition to a multiparty system came after a large-scale nonviolent campaign by civil servants and students to demand a government that more accurately reflected the will of the people.

Incheon is a dense city of 3 million in the northern part of South Korea. One significant destination in the area is Gyeyang Mountain, which lies adjacent to the city and attracts 10,000 tourists daily. Gyeyang is largely undeveloped and is home to over 600 endangered species. Since 1989, there have been four attempts by corporations to develop the slopes of the mountain, but all plans have been rejected by the regional government. 

The First Nations people respect water and consider it a live giving force.

On February 4, 1976, a massive earthquake hit the highlands of Guatemala and displaced more than one million people. Indigenous groups from the departments of Sacatepequez, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and Quiche were hit the hardest and the weak response from the national government brought to light the racial inequalities affecting indigenous peoples.

One of the most prophetic activists and philosophers from the Western World was Danilo Dolci of Italy. To many he was known as the “Gandhi of Italy” and he devoted the majority of his life’s work to improve the conditions of the impoverished parts of Italy and especially the slums of Sicily. When he was 24 he renounced his middle class heritage, and moved to Western Sicily in order to begin a campaign to ease the poor conditions of southern Italy. He identified the problems that plagued Sicily as: severe unemployment, starvation, poverty, and Mafia influences.

The 1996-1997 protests in Serbia were an important step forward in the expressing the voice of the Serbian people and laid the groundwork for a broad, popular nonviolent movement that would eventually lead to the overthrow of longtime Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The campaign, which stretched from November 1996 to February 1997, was a public condemnation of Milosevic’s annulment of an opposition party victory in the November 1996 parliamentary elections.

The French Protectorate of Cambodia began in 1863, but it wasn't until 1906, with the coronation of King Sisowath that the French took significant control of governance and cultural life. Even so, this loss of self-determination was mostly felt by the elites in the capital. However, anti-French sentiment gradually grew into a revolutionary movement.