Browse Cases

Following the explosion and
sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP, millions of gallons
of crude oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. The Unified Command, a team
comprised of BP, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several U.S. federal departments,
was officially placed in command of the response to the spill. As the Unified
Command deployed emergency measures in the north of the Gulf - including the
use of oil booms, chemical dispersants and the shutting down of fisheries-
Floridians living on the coast worried that the Loop Current could bring oil

Boycotts were a popular method of nonviolent action during the 1960s and 1970s, highlighted by the Montgomery bus boycotts during the mid 1950s and the California grape boycott in 1965, that stood in solidarity with Filipino farm workers. Most boycotts in the 1970s worked to affect institutional or policy change, and such was the nature of the LGBT movement’s orange juice boycott of 1977, which targeted Anita Bryant and the Florida Citrus Commission. 

Following the financial crisis of 2008, landlords evicted many residents in Chicago who could not pay their rent, and banks repossessed homes with overdue mortgages.  Northpoint is one such entity, which manage the residences of Section 8 housing in the Rogers Park area of north Chicago.  To live in these houses, tenants pay a fixed portion of their income as rent.

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.

In the fall of 2009, the University of California Board of Regents met at UCLA to discuss and vote for a tuition hike necessary for them to deal with shrinking budget and spending cuts across the board. The Universities’ budget deficits were associated with those troubling the state of California. The proposed increase in tuition of 32% would force annual tuition costs above $10,000 for the first time in history.

The land on the Big Mountain reservation has been disputed by the U.S. Government and the Navajo and Hopi tribes since 1882. This area in Black Mesa, Arizona, which was extremely rich in sulfur coal deposit, attracted mining companies and the government due to the potential profit. Mining began on the Navajo and Hopi land and started to increase greatly by the 1970s. Congress signed a relocation act in 1974, which would allow one company, Peabody Coal, to mine this area uninhibited. The reservation lands of Black Mesa were then to be used as strip mining sites for private U.S.

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 August 1967, New Mexico governor David Cargo appointed J.E. Baker a reform-minded and rehabilitation-focused administrator, as the Penitentiary of New Mexico's warden.  Through his time as warden, Baker implemented a number of changes in the prison's operating power structure, building direct ties and internal structure with inmates while diminishing the authoritarian power of correctional officers (COs).  During this time, Baker also allowed the growth of inmate programs to improve educational and social skills.

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.

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 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.  

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.

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Swarthmore College
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After U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the battle for health care reform truly began to build in the United States of America. In fall of 2009, Mobilization for Health Care for All began a campaign for a single-payer health care system, soon known as “Patients Not Profits.” 

In 2004, Western Michigan University outsourced its custodial labor to a private company called Commercial Sanitation Management. The contract cut costs for the university by $1.1 million dollars a year and eliminated 58 positions. Commercial Sanitation Management did not pay what the national living wage movement deemed a living wage: $9.50 an hour with health insurance or $10.50 without health insurance. 

On 20 June 2010 Greenpeace kicked off
their campaign targeting Costco wholesale super market’s seafood policies by
floating a blimp with the words “Costco: Wholesale Ocean Destruction” over the company’s
corporate headquarters in Issaquah, Washington. 
According to Greenpeace, Costco was selling 15 out of 22 “red-listed”
seafood species, including critically threatened orange roughy and Chilean sea
bass.  Greenpeace demanded that Costco:
immediately stop selling these two fish; implement a policy refusing to sell

On 4 April 2004, Casey Sheehan, an American soldier, was killed in the Iraq War. Upon hearing the news, his mother Cindy Sheehan was completely devastated and questioned the value of the war. 

Following the rise of global food prices in 2007-2008, international investors began buying or leasing large tracts of land in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.  In these deals, called the “Great Land Grab,” local governments and private landholders sold over 203 million hectares of land.  Organizations, such as the Oakland Institute, have brought these exchanges to public attention through studies and media coverage.

Hawaiian workers attempting to organize unions in the 1920s and 1930s faced enormous difficulties.  They met stern opposition from an alliance of plantation owners and large companies, including the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company.  Hawaiian workers were also divided into various ethnic groups, which made it easy for the companies to use a policy of divide-and-rule.  

The Ohio State penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio, houses approximately 450 prisoners, with all of them under maximum security or administrative maximum security. Most inmates attend the penitentiary for the most severe sentences, for they have committed the most severe crimes. Yet, these prisoners have had a history of campaigning for basic human rights and for improving living conditions.

Starting in the late 1950’s commercial fishing fleets began catching tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean (ETPO) using circular purse seine nets. These nets prohibit fish from swimming downwards to escape capture.

In February 2012, Greenpeace launched an initiative to stop Royal Dutch Shell’s oil drilling project in the Arctic Ocean. They claimed that Shell was not prepared for a spill, with the nearest port to their drilling location over a thousand nautical miles away. Greenpeace also protested drilling in the Arctic because the region is only accessible as a result of climate change, produced by greenhouse gas emissions that are enabled by Shell and the oil industry.