Browse Cases

On 8 August 2010, members of Roscommon Hospital Action Committee (HAC) held a sit-in at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) unit at Roscommon County Hospital. There were rumors that the government planned to shut down this unit at 8 PM that night, so 100 protestors blocked the doorway and announced that they were willing to stay there all night. Nurses made a banner out of torn sheets that read “Our Hands Can Save Lives but This Is Death at the Hands of Fine Gael and Labour.” Health service chiefs did not intervene, nor were there visible security forces.

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. 

After taking the Paraguayan presidency through a military coup, General Alfredo Stroessner served as president from 15 August 1954 to 3 February 1989. Shortly after taking power, he declared a state of siege, which enabled him to suspend civil liberties every ninety days until 1987. He has been accused of human rights violations for his actions during these years in office.

On 16 December 2012, six men raped and nearly beat a 23-year-old woman to death in New Delhi, the capital of the Republic of India. The woman had boarded a local bus with a male companion that night. Once the couple was on the bus, the six men began to taunt the couple. They gagged and beat the woman’s friend until he was unconscious. Then, the six men dragged the woman to the back of the bus, beat her with an iron rod, and gang-raped her. Following their attack, the men threw both the woman and her friend out onto the streets. 

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.

After achieving independence from French colonial rule in 1960, the Central African Republic was controlled by a series of military coups.  On 20 September 1981 General Anre Kolingba overthrew the authority of President Dacko.  

On 12 January 2009 the health workers in Gabon’s public hospitals in Libreville went on strike. Following a prominent and successful strike in the education sector, health workers were inspired to begin their own campaign. They demanded that the government provide higher wages and better working conditions and recommit to its agreement from a previous strike in 2003. Workers also sought more modern equipment for their hospitals so that they could provide care comparable to that of the high-tech private hospitals with which the public hospital competed. 

During the economic crisis in the Dominican Republic in 2003-2004, Dominicans protested due the peso dropping by half its value. In response to the depreciation, the government entered into a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund. In addition, the deterioration of the quality of life for most village people, the loss of purchasing power, and the loss of basic services such as health care, education, electric energy, telephones, and drinkable water, among other things, were all concerns brought into the campaign.

On 29 June 2003, the Israeli Ministry of Finance amended the Hok HaHasderim, a bill passed in 1985 in order to combat existing hyperinflation and aid in the creation and development of an austerity program. The late June amendment enormously decreased single mothers’ welfare allowances. Single mothers across the nation, who were already struggling to make ends meet, were both hurt and angered by the amendment. On 2 July 2003, one such woman, a 43-year-old single mother named Vicky Knafo, marched two-hundred and fifty kilometers from her home in Mitzpe Ramon to Jerusalem.

Starting in 1968, Salvadoran President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez began focusing his presidency on accomplishing three major reforms, in education, administration, and agriculture. The education reform he put in place upset Salvadoran teachers for three main reasons.  First, teachers were required to pass every student to the next grade, when before they had “held-back” failing students.  Second, the new mathematics curriculum taught concepts that Salvadoran teachers had never taught before and considered pointless.

On 18 July 2010, Icelandic pop-singer and cultural icon Bjork called for Iceland’s Parliament to review the sale of Iceland’s geo-thermal company HS Orka to Vancouver-based company Magma Energy Corporation in order to consider the environmental and political implications of such a sale. Bjork argued that the sale of Iceland’s natural resources, like geo-thermal energy, should be decisions made by all Icelanders, and not just those affiliated with the company.

The Walk to Work was a campaign that happened in Uganda led by the leader of The Forum for Democratic Change, Kizza Besigye. Its main goal was to curb the high cost of living as result of high food and fuel prices.  

This campaign started after the general election in February 2011 and ended in June 2011. Though the leader of opposition lost the election in Uganda, this campaign propelled his “cause to the top of the agenda and won him far greater popularity than during the general election. 

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.  

In 2012, Colombian coffee prices fell 35% on the international market while the Colombian peso appreciated 10%. A combination of crop disease, bad weather, and unfavorable currency rates forced growers in Colombia to sell their coffee at a loss. Many coffee growers then found themselves spending more on fertilizers and supplies than what they were making for their coffee.

In 1979 the United States of America (USA) supported a coup against Salvadoran General Humberto Romero in reaction to the deaths, disappearances, and torture that had reached international attention. The new Salvadoran government became a civilian-military “revolutionary junta” which used armed forces to suppress the Salvadoran population.  Opposition forces acted, using nonviolent and violent means, in order to prevent their suppression.  The government enforced a complete and violent repression against dissent. 

On 14 July 2011, Daphni Leef, a freelance filmmaker, began a campaign to be known as the “Tent Revolt” or “Tentifada.” Leef, like many middle-class citizens in Tel Aviv and in the nation of Israel, faced great financial hardships in an economy that statistically should have provided a level of comfort. Barely able to afford her home, Leef created a Facebook page, inviting those with similar grievances to pitch tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv Thursday of that week in order to convince the government to lower housing costs. 

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. 

By 26 January 1949, negotiations between the International Longshoreman’s Worker Union (ILWU) and the longshoreman employers had reached a standstill. Leaders Jack Hall, Harry Bridges, and Louis Goldblatt negotiated for pay raises for the Hawaii longshoremen. Workers were aware that longshoremen on the west coast of the U.S., who were employed by the same company and loading/unloading the same cargo, were being paid $1.82/hour whereas the Hawaii longshoremen were only being paid $1.40.

In April 2006, the United States and Peru signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which they planned to implement on 1 February 2009. The United States required that Peru make certain regulatory changes in law to allow access to the Amazon rainforest before implementing the FTA. In late 2006, President Alan García passed Law 840, known as the “Law of the Jungle,” which undermined the collective property rights of indigenous groups by giving land concessions to foreign investors.

Since its creation in 1971, the 96.4% state-owned Cameroon Airlines (CAMAIR) had faced periods of financial stress.  In 2004 the Cameroonian government replaced the head of Camair with Thomas Dakayi Kamga, but under new leadership Comair’s debt continued to grow.  

During the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned the South African team from participating in the Olympics in order to demonstrate the unified and international disapproval of South African apartheid. 

On Sunday 26 December Bolivia’s government abruptly ended a six-year freeze on fuel prices, raising the price of gasoline by 73% and diesel by 83%.  Vice president Alvaro Garcia said this change in policy was necessary because the subsidy cost US$380 million a year- 2% of Bolivia’s gross domestic national product and US$150 million of the gasoline was smuggled into other countries and sold at higher prices.  The cost of the subsidies was projected to increase to over US$1 billion in 2011.