159. The fast (fast of moral pressure, hunger strike, satyagrahic fast)

Las Abejas is a Christian pacifist group of about 6,000 Tzotzil Maya indigenous people who live in Chiapas.  Las Abejas means "The Bees" in Spanish, reportedly indicating the value of collective work and life that shares the honey with those who need it. Forty-five members of the group were killed on 22 December 1997 when caught in a cross-fire between the Mexican army and the rebel Zapatistas, the Acteal Massacre.

In
the 2000s a large number of Iran's educated and political activists fled Iran
due to social restrictions, political pressures and economic issues to seek
asylum in European countries in hopes of a better life. This emigration spiked
after the Iranian presidential election of 2009, which threatened political
activists working for democracy. The majority of Iranian refugees, like other
asylum seekers who fled from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, chose Greece because
its borders were accessible. In the past, Iranian refugees had been able to

The Grassy Narrows or Asubpeeschoseewagon First Nation is an indigenous community in Canada. The reservation was established by treaty with the Canadian government and British Crown in 1871 and is located 80 kilometers north of Kenora in northern Ontario. 

The traditional territory of the Asubpeeschoseewagon people includes the land, waters, and natural resources used, occupied, and owned by the First Nation. Corporate development has long compromised the health and sovereignty of the people.

In early May and June of 1960, students from Howard University, a historically black college, joined the ongoing civil rights movement by picketing the White House in D.C. and conducting sit-ins and pickets at segregated Woolworth chain stores in the D.C. area. These early actions led by Paul Dietrich, Stokely Carmichael, John Moody, Jan Triggs, Dion Diamond, Gwendolyn Green, Joan Trumpauer, and others spread interest for a more organized form of action by Howard students. 

In 2007, the University of California Board of Regents managed the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, two of the largest of the United States government’s nuclear weapons facilities at the time.  The Board had managed these facilities since their creation in 1942 and 1952 respectively, and was the government’s largest nuclear contractor for over six decades.

Students, faculty, and staff at the University of Virginia began the first of a series of campaigns to improve the wages and working conditions of the University’s lowest paid employees in 1997. In 2006, students and faculty who identified themselves as members of the Living Wage Campaign conducted a year-long nonviolent struggle to raise the wages of the lowest paid University workers, which culminated with 17 students staging a sit-in in the President of the University’s office for four days before being arrested.

Beginning in 2008, the Obama Administration of the United States government accelerated the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States, deporting roughly twice as many immigrants as the most recent previous presidential administrations.  

Student governments of Chilean universities assembled to be represented as the Confederation of Chilean Students Federations (CONFECH), the leading organization of the campaign. College students Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson took leadership of the protests and were both integral in creating the "Social Agreement for Chilean Education" (Acuerdo Social por la Educación Chilena), the proposal that was presented to the Chilean government. The students of CONFECH  demanded the following:

Cuba had an ongoing political opposition since the establishment of a
communist government led by Fidel Castro on 1 January, 1959. The
Communist Party kept firm control over the political institutions and
suppressed open organizing and dissent by the opposition. Internal
activists and external groups of both exiles and anti-communist agents
of foreign governments, including the US, opposed the socialist
organization of society and limitations on political speech and debate.
Penalties for anti-government activities resulted in arrests of

Tuba Group factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stood up against
exploitation in the summer of 2014. The company, in which five factories
made products for businesses like Walmart and H&M, had become
notorious in recent years for some of the lowest employee wages in the
world (about US $38 a month) and the 2012 “Tarzeen factory fire” that
killed 112 workers. Since February of 2014, Delwar Hossain, the owner of
the group, had been in jail for the workplace negligence that lead to
the tragedy. However, workers continued to face unfair treatment.

By 2009, the global financial crisis created high unemployment rates
throughout Spain. For many homeowners who borrowed money, the inability
to pay their mortgages meant that they risked eviction while continuing
to pay back their loans, creating the combination of homelessness and
growing debt. Social movements of recent years had worked to secure
housing and employment for all citizens in the turbulent times, such as
the “V de Vivienda” (“H for Housing”) campaign. Out of that particular
campaign grew “Platforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca” (“Mortgage

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On 11 September 1973, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinoche came to power and during the 1970s, he privatized Chile’s education system. The central government gave money to some private schools, while the public schools remained grossly underfunded. This commercialization of education began a legacy of educational attainment disparity along socioeconomic class lines—the poor received poor quality education, received jobs that paid meager wages, and remained poor, while the wealthy received high quality education, went on to university, and obtained well-paying jobs that increased their wealth.

The May 1959 opening of French government internment camps for Algerians suspected of being subversive agents of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) came towards the end of the Algerian War (11/1954-03/1962). The war, which ended with Algeria winning its independence from France, featured a wide variety of tactics, including torture by both sides. This torture led to the original conferences and protests of l’Action civique non-violente, a group dedicated to the right to resist oppression.

The Earth Quaker Action Team’s first campaign, BLAM! (Bank Like Appalachia Matters!) began on 18 February 2010. Ingrid Lakey, Board Member of EQAT, sent a letter to PNC Vice President Jean Caulfield, which described the health and environmental dangers of mountaintop mining and requested a meeting. Shortly after Lakey wrote her letter, three EQAT members met with J. William Mills (the president of the Philadelphia Regional PNC banks) and relayed their expectations of PNC Bank to him. Less than a week later, PNC Bank sponsored a flower show on 9 March 2010.

The Portland Cement Company plant at PERUS opened in 1925. Located on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city, the plant served as the main source of raw building materials for the city. In 1951, prominent Brazilian businessman, José João Abdalla, took over the plant, making it one of the thirty subsidiaries under his control. J.J. Abdalla showed serious disregard to the needs of the workers, neglecting to provide the proper maintenance and development of facilities, which hugely impacted production and quality and safety of working conditions.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected President of Iran on 12 June 2009 The next day, hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protested the results, chanting “Where is my vote?,” because they believed that the election was fraudulent. Most of the protesters joined the Green Movement, a nonviolent pro-democracy group opposed to Ahmadinejad’s leadership and was led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and his spouse, Zahra Rahnavard. The Ahmadinejad regime responded violently to the protesters with its Revolutionary Guards, Basij paramilitary units, and Lebas Shakhsi forces. Many were beaten and arrested.

Oil is a central feature of the economy in Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central Asia. In 2010, Kazakhstan was among the top 20 global oil producers, with the oil sector comprising over 11% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Three of the most prominent oil companies in the country included (1) Ersai Caspian Contractor LLC, an oil service contractor, (2) KarazhanbasMunai JSC and (3) OzenMunaiGas, both owned by the parent company KazMunaiGas Exploration Production (KMG EP).

Russian politics have long consisted of a close relationship between the state and United Russia, the dominant political party in Russian politics since 2000.  United Russia is a centrist party that political elites created to support their favored candidate, Vladimir Putin, who held the post of President from 2000-2008, Prime Minister from 200-2012 and won re-election  for the 2012-2018 Presidential term.

In November 2003, tens of thousands of Georgians took to the streets to protest against the contested results of a parliamentary election. This campaign ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze, a hold-over from the former Soviet leadership, and put in place a pro-Western party, the United National Movement (ENM), headed by Mikhail Saakashvili. After the demonstrations concluded, altogether known as the Rose Revolution, Saakashvili’s newly elected administration implemented a zero tolerance approach to petty crimes.

On 7 June 2013, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) announced the firing of more than 3,700 employees, as a result of cuts in the school district’s budget. Of the employees laid off, 1,202 were noontime aides, who helped ensure the safety of students: they formed relationships with students and intervened and defused conflict when necessary.

In 2011, over 12,000 prisoners of California’s corrections system participated in a hunger strike to protest their inhumane conditions of confinement.

The Norillag was a gulag labor camp, located in Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, a town in the Taimyr Peninsula on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, close to the mouth of the Enisei River. Inmates of the Norillag worked 12-hour days, in temperatures as low as negative 50 degrees Celsius during the winter. They worked in mines, brickyards, cement plants, and in the base camps, as well as on road and railroad construction.