038. Marches

The Belene Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in northern Bulgaria was originally proposed in the mid-1980s. The project was cancelled in the 1992, after significant environmentalist campaigning, when it became clear that the seismic risk in the region was unacceptable. Indeed, 120 people had died in an earthquake only 14km from the project site in 1977. There was also concern that the project would not be economically viable.

In 2006, President Evo Morales passed the National Plan for Equality and Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The plan included legal measures to ensure equal access for people with disabilities in the areas of health, education, economic rights, personal and social capacity-building, and institutional and organizational development. It also guaranteed increased financial support totaling $6 million annually, but the money never made it to the people to whom increased subsidies were promised.

On 30 April 1999, at 2 am, Jessica Lal was shot dead at an unlicensed bar in New Delhi. Lal, a 34-year-old model at the time, had been working as a barmaid at a party filled with actors, politicians, and other socialites. A little after midnight, the bar had run out of alcohol. At 2 AM, Siddharth Vashisht, known as Manu Sharma, along with some of his friends, Alok Khanna, Amardeep Singh Gill, and Vikas Yadav, asked Lal for some alcohol. Sharma offered to pay Lal 1000 Rupees, but she refused. He then took out a .22 pistol and fired it twice, killing Lal with a bullet in the head. 

On 2 December 2011, tens of thousands of Belgian citizens took to the streets in the capital, Brussels, to protest the austerity measures taken by the then-incoming government. The new socialist prime minister was going to be sworn in the week after this protest to try and fix the financial crisis that had left Belgium without a government for 19 months. The government needed to save 11.3 billion euros in the year of 2012 to decrease its budget deficit below the EU limit of 3% of gross domestic product (GDP).

In July 2012, the Ruckus Society trained and organized several immigration rights activists, who began an action bus tour supporting migrant rights. The bus left Phoenix, Arizona, an immigration rights hot spot, in July with the intention of reaching Charlotte to bring the voices of undocumented immigrants to the Democratic National Convention. Aboard the bus were almost thirty people, several with family connections. About half the riders identified as queer. Farias Portugal and Sandra Castro led local artists and children in the Phoenix area in painting and decorating the bus.

On 1 March 2012, 60,000 healthcare industry workers in Kenya began an indefinite strike in order to improve working conditions and salaries. Due to the massive commitment from healthcare workers, workers were prepared to suspend operations in hospitals throughout Kenya. 

In 1963, nearly
ten years after the Brown vs. Board of
Education court case declared school segregation illegal, de facto rather
than legal segregation remained prevalent in many northern cities of the United
States including Milwaukee.  Milwaukee
had begun “intact busing” of black children to predominately white schools in
1957, where black children were taught in classrooms separate from white
children and were not served in the cafeterias.

In June of 1973, workers at the Brookside coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky voted 113-55 to replace their membership in the Southern Labor Union (SLU) and join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union.  The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. 

The owners of the mine, Eastover Coal Company, a subsidiary of Duke Power Company, refused to sign the new contracts, which would have established a UMWA local in Brookside.  

Since the signing of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that formed the European Union, Danish employers used the treaty’s requirements as a justification to cut social services and reduce wages. Over the several years prior to 1998, the Danes’ unemployment had surged and real wages had dropped. Nevertheless, Denmark’s economy had experienced a boom and employers’ profits had more than doubled over the preceding five years. 

In January 1997, the Colombian government under President Ernesto Samper declared a state of economic crisis. They planned to cut spending, increase taxes, and reduce wage increases in order to reduce the budget deficit, which had reached $4.4 billion in 1996. They developed additional plans to privatize industry, including selling state-owned mining and electrical companies. President Samper had previously supported social welfare programs and labor unions but said that the austerity measures were necessary because there was simply no money available. 

Following an industrial boom during World War II, Chester, Pennsylvania began an economic decline.  In 1990, the census reported that about 60% of residents were African American, 25% were living below the poverty line, and 20% were unemployed.  

On 28 February 2012, two Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike. Bilala Diab and Thaer Halahleh, both accused by Israel’s government of working with Islamic Jihad (a group responsible for firing rockets into Israel from Gaza), were in Israeli prisons. Israel was holding Diab and Halahleh under administrative detention, meaning that they were imprisoned without being charged. The maximum period for administrative detainment was six months, but a military judge could renew such detainment indefinitely.

On 14 June 2010, the High Court of Israel ruled to abolish state grants given to students at Jewish seminaries, or yeshivas. Prior to this decision married yeshiva students with children had received these grants to support their studies, but for nearly ten years secular students of higher education had not. The Knesset had passed a bill in 2000 ceasing stipends of secular students.  Soon after this, Ornan Yekutieli, a Jerusalem councilman and activist, petitioned the Knesset to end the support of yeshiva students as well.

In May 2010, Alto Arizona, an immigrants’ rights organization, began assembling different grassroots groups to come together for the “Human Rights Summer.”. Inspired by the Freedom Summer of the Civil Rights Movement, the goal of the Human Rights Summer was to force Arizona to overturn the controversial immigration law SB1070, which stated that all adult foreigners in the United States for more than thirty days must register with the US government and keep their registration documents with them at all times. Violation would be considered a federal misdemeanor and could lead to arrest.

In 1974, workers at seven textile plants in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina owned by the J. P. Stevens company voted to be represented by the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA). However, the company refused to sign a contract with the new union. In 1976, the TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) to form the American Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (ACTWU). The new union immediately launched a campaign to pressure J. P. Stevens to sign a union contract.

The constitution of Honduras, established in 1982, did not provide structures for popular democratic participation. In June 2009, President Manuel Zelaya called for a referendum on whether a constituent assembly should look to rewrite the constitution or not. He had been elected in 2005 as a cattle-rancher conservative but moved to the left and allied himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He maintained that he wanted to guarantee wider and fairer representation to all Hondurans.

Tahir-ul Qadri is a Pakistani law professor, politician, and Sufi scholar.  After serving as an elected Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, Qadri resigned in 2004, claiming disappointment and frustration with regard to corruption and lack of accountability in President Pervez Musharraf's government.  In the next year, Qadri engaged in a self-imposed exile to Toronto, Canada, where he continued to practice as an Islamic scholar. 

On 16 December 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed HR4437, a bill increasing restrictions on immigration and undocumented immigrants.  This was the first bill regarding undocumented immigration to pass through Congress.

The Empire Zinc Company owned a company town and zinc mines in Silver City, New Mexico, a part of Grant County.  On 17 October 1950, the area's Local 890 chapter of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers decided to strike, demanding an end to discriminatory working conditions and the dual wage system of two-tiered pay, different for Mexican and Mexican American workers as compared to white workers. 

In Crystal City, Texas, 87 percent of high school students in 1968 were Chicano, or Mexican American, and nearly half of these were children of migrant farm workers. But the high school principal, five of the seven school board members, and 75 percent of the teachers were white. During the summers, local government and school officials, all white, selected candidates for the fall elections. In doing so, the minority population maintained a majority white school board with just one or two Chicanos they believed to align with their views.

Peabody Energy Corporation is an international coal company based in St. Louis, Missouri (MO).  In 2007, they created a spinoff company Patriot Coal Corp., also based in St. Louis, MO.  Following the spinoff, Peabody Energy has gradually transferred responsibilities for many of its retirees over to the new company.

The Arab Awakening came to the Middle Eastern country of Oman with a peaceful protest in the capital Muscat on 17 January, 2011. This campaign consisted of several groups that worked towards both individual and collective goals. The campaigners had many demands including: government reforms, an increased minimum wage, lower unemployment rates, and higher education rates.

21 March 2013 Chicago Public School officials announced a plan to close 54 schools with the goals of reconciling a $1 billion dollar deficit, making better use of resources, and improving education. District CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that the plan addressed the underutilized and under-resourced schools in order to raise the quality of education in the remaining schools. The plan was expected to affect 30,000 students in the Chicago Metropolitan area and cost 300 teachers their jobs.

In March of 2012, Polish beekeepers and allies stormed the streets of Warsaw to protest the use of genetically modified (GM) maize and potatoes. The protest served as a call to action to mobilize the Polish Ministry of Agriculture to ban genetically modified organisms (GMOs) definitively. The campaign was a partial success as it helped mobilize Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to impose farming bans on certain GM crops months later. 

The economic crisis which began in 2008 hit Spain harder than any other country in the European Union. They set eurozone records in 2011 with 21.3% unemployment and 43.5% youth unemployment. In an attempt to put a stop to the rapid collapse of the Spanish economy, the government passed sweeping employment changes in 2010. These changes made it easier for employers to hire and fire workers and increased the retirement age from 65 to 67.