038. Marches

On 6 August 1996, Argentinean General Fuel Company, also known as Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC), signed a contract with the Ministry of Energy and Mines in Ecuador without consultation of Kichwa natives of Sarayaku. The contract allowed CGC to exploit and explore 200,000 hectares of Block 23. 

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) wanted to situate Yugoslavia in a balance between the Soviet dominated Eastern Europe and US dominated West.  In order to ensure this global placement, Yugoslavians exercised an economic reform program during 1964-65.  LCY utilized market mechanisms to overcome stagnation and stimulate economic growth, but employment and a growth in wage disparity ensued instead.   Members of the Yugoslavian Student League as well as professors and editors of dissonant magazines established spaces for critique and set the stage for nonviolent

In the early 1900s livestock, often the currency of exchange, formed the foundation of the Kenyan Kamba tribe’s economy.  A family’s herd size determined its wealth.  As Britain colonized Kenya, this localized provisioning enabled the Kamba to remain relatively self-sufficient.  

On 1 June 1961, Isaac Coggs, the only African American Member of the Wisconsin legislature, introduced a Humans Rights bill with two civil rights provisions: a fair housing law and a plan to reorganize the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Though Governor Gaylord Nelson supported the bill, it was met with resistance in committee, facing amendments to kill or cripple it. Opponents of the bill argued that real estate
brokers and home sellers should have the right to decide to whom they should sell homes.

In the early 1970s logging companies increased in Northern India. Forests in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh quickly declined due to the expansion of the industry and private investment of entrepreneurs interested in the newly accessible resource. 

Subsistence farmers, whose livelihoods were dependent on the forests, faced the consequences: massive erosion and landslides, reduced fertility of the soil, reduced access to firewood, degradation of fresh water supply and increased flooding. 

Retired Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez won the 2002 presidential elections in Ecuador after emerging as a popular ally of the poor during the years following a 2000 coup d’etat.  A series of decisions followed his becoming president that increased the country’s International Monetary Fund debt and approved exploitation of oil on indigenous land.

During the fall of 1968, Ayub Khan celebrated his tenth year as president of Pakistan. In honor of this anniversary, he declared his reign as the “Decade of Development,” an action that sparked an outbreak of protests against the state. 

Much of Pakistan was already discontent with the Ayub regime. Following the 1965 war with India, Pakistan experienced a huge economic gap. The working classes faced the burden of this disparity. 

Rural Ecuador had functioned under the huasipungo land-tenure system since the 16th century. The tenant farmers, called huasipungueros, were mainly of indigenous descent and worked 3 to 6 days a week on hacienda estates in the highlands, owned by absentee elite white families.  In exchange for their labor, the laborers received a small plot of land for subsistence, access to pasture land for cattle, and a small cash wage. The indigenous farmers were highly attached to their land although their plots were still owned by the hacienda.

On 19 March 2006, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko won his third term in office. The citizens of Belarus, however, did not meet the announcement of Lukashenko’s 82.6% majority win with cheers. Rather, immediately after the Sunday election, oppositional forces organized by presidential candidates Alaksandar Kozulin and Alaksandar Milinkievič claimed that the Belarusian government had rigged the vote. Citizens came to a mass rally in October Square in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Following World War II, the Soviet Union set up a government, the PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party), in Poland that did not permit workers at state-owned factories and businesses to represent their interests in labor unions independently from Party commands. After a series of strikes in 1970, workers abandoned their hopes of forming independent labor unions in exchange for prospects of economic growth promised by First Party Secretary Gierek. 

On 17 September 2000, the Ukrainian government under President Leonid Kuchma kidnapped a journalist, Georgiy Gongadze. Gongadze was known for speaking out openly against the government, using his popular radio show and website to expose the widespread corruption in Kuchma’s cabinet. His decapitated body was found two weeks later. In November, Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz released recordings of conversations between members of Kuchma’s party planning the execution.

In March of 2004, six of the largest catalogers in North America were put on notice for their consumption of endangered forests. Since then, ForestEthics, a nonprofit environmental group committed to protecting North America's forests, has been in detailed discussion with all of these companies and others who are competing to address these environmental issues.

In 2001, Thaksin
Shinawatra was elected the Prime Minister of Thailand and was the first one to
serve a full term in that role. In March 2005, Thaksin was reelected in a
landslide victory, with more than 60% of the popular vote. As the leader of the
Thai Rak Thai (TRT, Thais love Thais) party, Thaksin’s neo-liberalist, populist
policies made him very popular with the majority of Thais, especially the rural
poor. However, his autocratic style, numerous human rights violations and favor
towards privatization created opposition from urban elites, NGOs, and royalist

Reforms to the Canadian Criminal Code legalized abortion in 1969. Under the direction of Pierre Trudeau’s government, a constitutional amendment was made to Section 251 of the Code. The alteration limited legal abortions to be performed only when the mother’s health was at risk. In addition, abortions could only be performed in credible hospitals with licensed physicians and needed to be approved by a panel of doctors called Therapeutic Abortion Committees, which often consisted of all males.

The Frontenac Ventures Development Corporation received from the Ontario government in Canada a permit to begin exploratory drilling for uranium on 30,000 acres of Canadian Crown land in its eastern region of Sharbot Lake. In June 2007, the company began surveying.  The company planned to dig trenches, log the forest, and remove core mineral samples. 

On 16 May 1996, Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania signed Senate Bill 1441 into law. This bill contained a series of welfare reforms, including cuts to medical assistance, a requirement that childless people between ages 21 and 58 work 100 hours a month to receive medical assistance benefits, and a condition that anyone making more than $5100 a year did not qualify for medical assistance. When implemented this legislation would cut 250,000 people off of medical assistance.

Towards the end of the reign of Gaius Caligula, a proclamation was sent out for a statue of the Roman Emperor to be built within the Temple walls in Jerusalem. This command broke the Jewish law of idolatry and was therefore rejected and strongly opposed by Jews in Palestine, most notably the large peasant population.

 In 1986, the national governments of South Africa and Lesotho jointly launched the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP).  The Project would involve the construction of several large dams, tunnels, bridges, and power lines, in an effort to transport water from Lesotho to South Africa and to produce electricity. 

In 1990, Earth First! activists began organizing a radical non-violent campaign called the “Redwood Summer” in response to Louisiana Pacific Lumber Mill’s decision to double the rate of logging. Earth First! hoped to expose the logging of old growth forests by Louisian Pacific and Maxxam, Inc., which had depleted 95% of  Northern California’s forests. Earth First!, an organization of activists working against logging was led by Judi Bari and her colleagues. They began work in the spring, when they drove to various college campuses to raise awareness.

In 1960 South Africa was under the rule of the National Party, which was imposing harsh, demeaning laws on black South Africans. The party was made up entirely of white people, mostly the descendants of Dutch immigrants. The party was devoted to apartheid and white supremacy, maintained through a collection of policies, including the pass laws. 

During the late 1960s, students around the world were visibly protesting and speaking out against injustices.  The Vietnam War made an especially large impact on young people.  Many students in the United States of America aggressively protested their own government's military intervention in Vietnam.  

In 1992, Joseph E Estrada ran for Vice President on the National People’s Coalition ticket.  Although the party’s presidential candidate, Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr., lost the election to Fidel Ramos, Estrada won the vice presidential contest.  He served as Vice President for 6 years leading the Anti-Crime Commission and was also responsible for a number of high-profile crime arrests in the Philippines.  

Mexico’s political atmosphere has long dealt with corruption. For over 70 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) retained strict control over the government, manipulating elections in its favor. In 2000, Vincente Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN), gained presidential office. This election shocked the nation, as it broke the PRI’s uninterrupted rule. To Mexico, the 2000 elections marked a change in the government; Fox’s victory represented free and fair democratic elections.

During the Great Depression, Detroit, Michigan, and its auto-industry suffered an exceptional amount. After the stock market crash of 1929, around 80 percent of the industry was no longer producing and by 1932 large numbers of Detroit's citizens were dying of starvation. The Ford Motor Company, one of the richest employers, had laid off two-thirds of its employees. The Unemployed Councils, United Auto Workers, and communist union-organizing groups decided to organize a march against the Ford Motor Company and its employment policies.

The Great Hawai'i' Sugar Strike was launched against the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association and the “Big Five” companies in 1946. The “Big Five” were made up of a handful of corporate elite companies: Alexander & Baldwin, American Factors, Castle & Cooke, C. Brewer, and Theo. Davies. They exercised complete control over Hawai'i's sugar plantation workers and the majority of the island’s multi-ethnic workforces.