039. Parades

 
Uganda in East Africa has a large rainforest area, the Mabira Forest, that has been protected since 1932. In 2007 Ugandan President Yoweli Kaguta Museveni announced a plan to hand over one-third of the Mabira rainforest to the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (SCOUL).  The plan was to turn the forest into land for growing sugarcane.

Early on in the Second World War, Bulgaria was a member of the Axis powers, having signed the Tripartite Pact on March 1, 1941. However, Bulgaria was not emotionally attached to the ideals of the major Axis powers. They simply signed on because they desired - and were guaranteed by Germany - the nearby territories of Thrace and Macedonia, which they had lost after their defeat in World War One. As a result, though Hitler was certainly a persuasive influence on Bulgaria’s foreign and domestic policy, he was not quite dictating every action taken by Bulgaria’s ruler, Tzar Boris III.

Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most African Americans in the southern United States were still unable to vote because of registration requirements such as literacy tests and slow registration processes. In Selma, Alabama the registration office was open only two days a month and could only process 15 registrations for each of these days. This was not nearly enough to register the 15,000 black citizens of voting age in the county.

Guadeloupe is generally a tourist-friendly French Caribbean island (a department of the French state, whose residents are citizens of the EU). The island's inhabitants rely mostly on imported goods sold in French-owned supermarkets at a significantly higher price than on the mainland, despite having a 23 percent rate of unemployment, more than twice that of France's.

From the late 19th century into the early 20th century, Ecuador’s labor movement was slowly growing. However, most workers’ organizations consisted of groups of artisans, rather than industrial workers. These mutual aid societies collected dues mainly to pay for funerals of members who passed away and to financially help the family of the deceased. Additionally, some started night schools and reading groups. They also received most of their funding from the government, which helped keep their actions and goals moderate.

In 1954, a young military officer, Alfredo Stroessner, organized a military coup and overthrew Paraguayan President Federico Chávez. A devoted anti-communist, Stroessner declared a state of siege and suspended constitutional freedoms for the entirety of his 35-year rule. Throughout Stroessner’s last two decades in power, indigenous people organized widely to oppose the negative effects that his massive development projects were having on their communities.

In the French Island of La Réunion located in the Indian Ocean, 52% of the inhabitants lived under the poverty line, 50% of the youth were underemployed and there was a 25% unemployment rate at the time of this campaign. This had been the situation for decades, but the recent increase in unemployment and inflation (which affected La Reunion in a greater way than it affected France) made life increasingly expensive in La Réunion.

In Martinique, a small Caribbean island and overseas department of France, 70,000 people live below the poverty line. Before this campaign, the people of Martinique had been experiencing a continuing increase in layoffs and precariousness in work while the purchasing power continued to decrease. Unemployment was at 23 percent, while most of the basic food items shipped in from France remained very expensive.

After only three years in office, the president of Suriname Jules Wijdenbosch became the target of harsh criticism and dissatisfaction because of his government’s management of the economy and domestic affairs. In 1998, the Dutch government had decided to stop aid to Suriname amid drug and financial mismanagement scandals, which increased the economic crisis. In May 1999, the struggling national economy reached a new low when its currency plummeted in value, from 800 guilders to the dollar to 2,000, and inflation was at 70%, inciting civil unrest and nationwide protests.

At the time of this campaign the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) was a community-based worker organization based in Immokalee, Florida. The CIW was comprised mostly of Latino, Haitian, and Mayan immigrants that worked low-wage jobs throughout Florida. The CIW fought for fair wages for workers, increased respect from employers and bosses, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws/punishments for those companies that violate workers’ rights, the right to organize without fear of retaliation, and an end to indentured servitude in the fields.

In most of United States history cloth was manufactured largely in the North while cotton and other fibers were grown largely in the South.  In the early twentieth century textile manufacturing workers formed unions to increase wages and safety, reduce working hours, and gain dignity.  As the labor unions grew in strength, textile mills moved to southern states to avoid the need for collective bargaining, along with factories where clothing apparel was made from the cloth.

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States gained momentum in the 1960’s with campaigns and demonstrations taking place throughout the country. Following the success of the 1963 campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, and the strong leadership of that struggle by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), ministers and other activists in Danville, Virginia, decided to start their own campaign. They formed the Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA).

The Ogoni region is a highly oil-rich area in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, populated by approximately 500,000 members of the Ogoni People.  Since the Shell Petroleum Development Company discovered oil in Ogoniland in 1958, the region has been plagued with serious environmental degradation resulting from the over 100 oil wells in the area.

In 1905, Korea was placed under the military rule of Japan and in 1910 it was officially annexed as part of Japan’s thirty-five year imperialist expansion.  In Korea, the period of Japanese rule (between 1910 and 1945) is generally referred to as a “Japanese forced occupation,” and there was widespread discontent within Korea over Japan’s management and strict control of the region.

In the fall of 1964, student activists at the University of California at Berkeley set up information tables on campus and solicited donations for civil rights causes.  However, according to existing rules at that time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.  On September 16, 1964, Dean of Students Katherine A.

The province of Kosovo enjoyed significant political autonomy (which had been accorded under the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution) and cultural rights until the 1980s, when tension began to build up between the Serbian minority and the Albanians in Kosovo. This tension soon translated into difficult relations between the Serbian regime and the province.

The Sudan has a history of popular uprisings to depose oppressive or disagreeable governments, prior to the 1985 insurrection. In 1964 the October Revolution consisted of a widespread general strike led by the National Front for Professionals. The organization joined forces with political leaders to create the United National Front (UNF) and, along with dissident military leaders, this coalition succeeded in dissolving the Abbud regime and transitioning to civilian rule.

The massive South Korean nonviolent campaign against the tradition of authoritarian regimes happened only seven years after the notorious Kwangju Massacre of 1980—governmental mass violence that was intended to shut down completely the movements for social justice.  

From 1980 to 1983 the government tried to “cleanse” the society of activists, purging or arresting thousands of public officials, politicians, professors, teachers, pastors, journalists, and students.  Activists not arrested went quiet or continued their activities in low profile or secretive ways.

The cargo division of Swiss Federal Railways (SFR) had repeatedly been suffering financial deficits for a few years and even changed top management. On March 6, 2008, SFR announced a major restructuring plan that involved shutting down its maintenance workshops; more than 400 jobs were to be cut as a consequence. 126 jobs were to be cut in the town of Bellinzona, Switzerland. These workers represented SEV (Transport Workers’ Union), UNIA (an active trade union in service industries), and Transfair (a Christian trade union).

Stephen Girard (1750 – 1831), the well known Philadelphia merchant and banker, bequeathed a large sum of money to be used in the founding of Girard College, a boarding school for orphaned youth between the ages of six and ten. The school was established in 1848 on forty acres of farmland north of Philadelphia. Stephen Girard stipulated in his will that the school would only be open to “fatherless” white boys.

The world voiced its opposition to the National Party’s apartheid government ruling in South Africa in a new way in 1964. International sports tours and matches had become a focal point of cultural identity for whites in South Africa. Victories, to them, demonstrated a kind of symbolic power of white South Africa. White elite South Africa was considered “sports mad.” Once this became apparent to other countries in objection to the political state of South Africa, they found a way to use the situation to send a message.

In 1965 Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announced its plans to build a new nuclear facility with six reactors and selected Diablo Canyon as the optimal site, even though the site included a sacred burial ground of the Chumash Native Americans and a large costal wilderness area as well as potential zones of seismic activity that could lead to earthquakes and a nuclear disaster.  Construction was projected to cost $162,270,000 and the plant was forecasted to be operational in May 1972.

On November 3, 2008, Chen Yunlin arrived from China on a visit to Taiwan to meet with President Ma Ying Jiao. His visit was met with protests led by the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), which resulted in violent clashes with the police. In reaction to the protests, police closed major highways, forbade citizens from publicly waving the national flag or saying “Taiwan does not belong to China,” hindered citizens filming around the hotel where Chen was staying, shut down a nearby music store, and executed a number of other repressive actions.

When Alice Paul emerged into the somewhat stagnant scene of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) campaign for the right to vote in 1912, the energy and momentum of the movement surged. Having just come from Britain where women were fighting a similar battle in which they were imprisoned, partaking in hunger strikes and smashing windows, NAWSA’s polite pleading over a cup of tea with political leaders and legislators was not only ineffective in the eyes of Paul and other emerging women leaders, it was a blow to the dignity of women to request basic human rights.

After the Indo-Chinese border conflict ended in 1963, access to the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a region encompassing eight different districts in the Himalayas, was greatly expanded.  The money for this expansion, including highway building, generally came from logging companies that wanted access to the vast timber forests in this area of the country.  Poor forest management led to increased erosion, depleted water resources, lower agricultural yields and greater flooding.