Browse Cases

After the occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, and subsequent forcible removal of American Indians by the United States government, the movement for civil rights for Native Americans became increasingly determined, firm, and conflictual. The government responded to this shift with exceedingly vigorous and sometimes fatal tactics. By 1979, some researchers and scholars had deemed the period the “continuing Indian Wars”.

In 1975 and 1976, New York City instituted deep budget cuts that angered the local people and led to many sit-ins and occupations around the city. In the spring of 1975, fears from the recession and government budgets made the banks refuse to market city bonds. Under the urging of the state and national governments to regain access to the bond market, Mayor Abraham D. Bearne proposed austerity budgets that would cut spending on schools, libraries, firehouses, and would charge tuition for the City University of New York for the first time.

From its start in 1870, Mexican labor was essential to the Clifton-Morenci mine in Eastern Arizona.  Founding prospectors Clifton and Metcalf quickly sold the rights to the Longfellow Copper Mining Company.  The copper smelter was highly productive during its early decades, especially after multiple railroad lines intersected with the area, many of which were able to transport copper. The area quickly began acting as a magnet for Mexican and Chinese labor, which created political tension in the Arizona Territory and also some minor disputes among workers.  

In the wake of economic depression in 1893, George Pullman, Illinois businessman and inventor of the sleeping railway car, sought to cut costs in his company town outside of Chicago.  Mr. Pullman fired approximately one third of his workers, and reduced remaining wages by over 25 percent.  He refused to decrease housing and food prices in the town.

The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has historically struggled with meeting their students’ desire for ethnic studies, despite its liberal reputation. In 1981, the college’s student group Third World and Native American Student Coalition protested the college’s lack of an ethnic studies major with a hunger strike. Since then, the college has offered a number of courses and major options for those interested in ethnic studies.

Kimberley-Clark Corporation is the largest tissue-product manufacturer in the world, producer of well-known brands including Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle. It is no surprise that Kimberly-Clark is also arguably the leading consumer of wood-fiber.  However, before 2009, Kimberley-Clark continued to take 90% this wood-fiber from unsustainably managed forests, most notably the ancient Boreal Forest in Canada.

In 1978, Ward Transformer Company of Raleigh, North Carolina commissioned a few workers to dispose of 31,000 gallons of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), a known carcinogen.  They deposited the waste on state land, giving the state responsibility to relocate the waste.  Subsequently, the state bought private land in Warren County, a 90% impoverished and 66% African American community, to develop into a landfill for the PCB. Because this was a private transaction, Warren County residents did not realize the development until the U.S.

The 1980s saw a new consciousness of environmental awareness, particularly around the Earth’s rain forests. Scientists had discovered that, aside from their enormous biodiversity, rainforests also helped to keep carbon from being released into the atmosphere. 

Industrial forces, however, saw the rainforests as a means for profit. While environmental groups in Europe and Australia had been actively fighting deforestation on a grassroots level, the U.S. environmental movements had failed to evoke widespread activism on the subject. 

The problem of illegal mahogany logging was focused in the Brazilian state of Pará, especially in what is termed the “Middle Land”, a plot of Federal public land composed in large part of undisturbed rainforest. Known as “green gold”, mahogany is the most valuable natural resource in this region of the Brazilian Amazon. While there have always been legal avenues by which to utilize this resource, the Brazilian government estimated that as of 2001, 80% of all exported mahogany was being logged illegally.

In 1968, the Civil Rights movement was in full swing in the Southern and Eastern parts of the United States, but it was just beginning to reach Seattle, Washington. Buoyed by a series of speeches given by Stokely Carmichael, a group of black students from the University of Washington founded a Black Student Union (BSU), to advocate for the rights of black students at the university and area high schools.

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.

Maryland Route 200, also called the Intercounty Connector or simply the ICC by locals, is an 18.8-mile six-lane toll highway meant to provide an express road connection between the neighboring Maryland counties of Montgomery and Prince George’s, both of which are suburbs of Washington, DC. Initially conceived as a section of the proposed Outer Beltway that would fully encircle Washington, the ICC appeared on the master plans of both counties starting in 1950, at that time proposed as 32 miles.

In 1889, workers at the Carnegie Company’s Homestead Works on the Monongahela River southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania forced the company to pay workers according to a sliding scale corresponding to the price of steel. This set up a correlation between wages and the company’s profits. It also officially recognized the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, or AA, as the representative craft union for the plant and introduced the union as a powerful force in the operation of the plant.

In February of 1981, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) unanimously approved the construction of a $42 million dollar water pump. The proposal claimed the pipeline would bring much-needed water to Montgomery County and areas of Bucks County. Its other purpose would be to funnel half of the 95-million-gallon-a-day flow to cooling the Pennsylvania Electric Company’s new nuclear plant in nearby Limerick. The announcement sparked off a wave of complaints and organization among local citizens.

The Waste Technologies Industry, Inc. first proposed to build an incinerator in the floodplain of the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio in 1977. Throughout the 1980s, the company battled with the local government officials and other regulatory agencies in order to obtain the proper permits. By 1990, they had enough approval to begin construction and start test runs.

Seeking extra tax revenue to bolster a struggling state budget, the United States state of Pennsylvania passed a bill in 2004 authorizing casinos in the state. The bill, Act 71, legalized the construction of 15 new casinos in the state, two of which would be chosen from among five proposals in the city of Philadelphia. The location, size, management, and other details remained open-ended. As the permitting process began, Philadelphia community members voiced concern to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) about the intrusion of casinos into their neighborhoods.

Through the 1830s, the Cherokee owned incredibly rich, fertile land that was desired by their white neighbors. In 1828, gold was discovered in Cherokee nation, setting off the Georgia gold rush. Though the Cherokee had been resisting social forces trying to displace them, legal pressure began to mount to allow access to the land and to remove the Cherokee from it. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, forcing the Cherokee in Georgia and other areas east of the Mississippi River to relocate to other Indian lands in the West, primarily in Oklahoma.

During the first week of August 1944, employees of the Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) effectively shut down the city's transit system, defying both the federal government and their own union.  The strike, which lasted for six days and halted much of the city's war production, was in response to a PTC decision to promote eight African Americans to the position of trolley car driver.  Throughout the decade leading up to this "hate strike," African Americans had demanded that the PTC hire them as bus and trolley drivers, motormen and conductors, and station cashiers.

In October 2008 the Bureau of Land Management finalized three Resource Management Plans that would open new federal lands for oil and gas leasing in Southern Utah.  Some of the lands were adjacent to national parks and monuments, including Dinosaur National Monument.  A number of environmental groups mobilized and over 1,600 protests were submitted to the Bureau of Resource Management.  A coalition including the National Parks Conservation and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance filed a lawsuit on December 17, 2008, to halt what they saw as the illegal leasing of public lan

The state of New York was required by federal law to have a nuclear waste dump by January 1, 1993. In 1988, a special siting committee formed to determine where to put the dump. The siting commission considered five sites in rural Allegany County, New York, as potential spots to put the nuclear dump. The people of Allegany County linked arms in several acts of civil disobedience to prevent the construction of a nuclear waste facility in their backyard.

Shortly after World War II, the United States began nuclear testing, mainly in Nevada. In September 1957, the United States announced its plan to conduct atomic testing in the Marshall Islands, starting April 5, 1958. In response to the adverse effects of the Nevada nuclear tests, the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) launched a protest to stop the United States from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, first by petitioning and then sailing to the test site in protest.

In 2009, Hartmarx Corporation workers fought to maintain their company and prevent liquidation. Legal and financial actions were taken in this fight. The course of nonviolent action that Hartmarx employees carried out only took place over a month. Hartmarx sought to convince Wells Fargo Bank, the company’s main creditor, to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a suitable buyer that would keep the company in business.

In 2001, the state of Pennsylvania started a process that eventually led to a full state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia.  Governor Tom Ridge, followed by Governor Mark Schweiker, sought this takeover due to the dismal track record of the public schools in Philadelphia. With the takeover came the privatization of many of Philadelphia's lowest achieving schools. Edison Schools, Inc., a for-profit school management firm, eventually received a contract to run 20 schools in Philadelphia.

New York City is home to hundreds of community gardens spread throughout the city. Over the past 20 years, these gardens have served as green spaces in which community members can come together and share ideas, children can get to know the process of growing food and become familiar with the earth. However, in 1998, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani began allowing the demolition of community gardens around the city in favor of luxury apartment development.

Maxxam, a logging company run by CEO Charles Hurwitz, took over Pacific Lumber Company in 1986. Hurwitz doubled the rate of logging in Northern California forests, including Headwaters forest, an old-growth redwood forest in Humboldt County, California. Environmental activists were outraged and began to organize to protect the Headwaters forest. Several rabbis realized that Hurwitz was Jewish, and decided that they might be able to use Jewish theology to persuade him to change his mind and protect the forests.