193. Overloading of administrative systems

“If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”
That was the central slogan of the Mayday campaign.

The Anti-Vietnam War movement included striking examples of nonviolent direct action. Many of the protests against the Vietnam War took place in the mid-1960s, when the war was still in its early stages, but demonstrations grew in numbers toward the end of the decade. One of the more dramatic efforts to end the war took place in 1971, when the war was rapidly losing public support among American citizens.

In 1980, the government of Guam employed over 9,000 workers, or 27% of all jobs on the island. Approximately half of these public workers were teachers. 2,400 teachers were members of the Guam Federation of Teachers (GFT), the largest union on the island. As teachers’ pay consistently lagged behind the national average salary, the GFT organized a petition drive in 1980 to hold a referendum on whether government employees should receive a 30% cost-of living wage increase.

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.

Over the past several decades, high unemployment, high food prices, and widespread poverty have characterized much of Tunisia.  Government corruption and a paucity of political freedoms have also painted its landscape, making it exceedingly difficult for Tunisians to express dissent against the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party.  However, on 17 December 2010, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouazizi doused himself in paint thinner and set himself on fire in front of the Sidi Bouzid municipal office in response to the confiscation of his produce stand, his violent treatment a

Around the turn of the 20th century, employment agencies, or, as they were known to many workers, “job sharks” had a monopoly on casual laborer in the American West. Industries such as mining and agriculture would contract labor out to an agency, which would “buy out” job applicants and take a sizable cut of what would otherwise have been workers’ wages.

In May 1980 the Town City and Divisional Council of the Greater Cape Flats and neighboring areas informed residents, largely blacks and Indians, that their rents would increase in June. Government-supported apartheid had previously forced people of color to move from Cape Town to suburbs in the Cape Flats. The announced rent increase in the Cape Flats was unaffordable to the residents of the area, who were already burdened by unemployment, low wages, and an economic recession. The increased costs would force people of color in Cape Flats even farther from their previous homes.

On 6 June 2013, developers Carlos Beruff and Larry Lieberman asked
Florida’s Manatee County Commission for environmental exceptions and
zoning changes to Long Bar Pointe, a 523-acre area of land along
Sarasota Bay. In 2012, Lieberman, the land’s owner, as well as the
president and founder of Sarasota’s Barrington Group, partnered with
Beruff of Medallion Homes to complete the development project. Beruff
and Lieberman aimed to build a 300-room hotel, two retail centers, a
convention center, 1,086 single-family homes, 1,587 low-rise multi

The Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) campus, a satellite campus of the University of Delaware (UD) is located just half a mile from the primary campus in Newark, Delaware. During the efforts to fully develop the STAR campus, UD offered to lease 43 acres of the campus to The Data Center (TDC) to build a 900,000 square foot data center with an attached 279 megawatt natural gas power plant, an amount five times the energy demand of the city of Newark.

In a public announcement, students expressed that “Until the University of Kentucky stops denying students the right to food and housing, we will deny ourselves food […] We have tried rallies, phone zaps, and student assemblies. Nothing has worked. What we are facing is not just resistance to the Basic Needs Campaign. We face a University of Kentucky that puts profit over people. It is time for UK administrators to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem we face and act in proportion.”