001. Public speeches

The Massachusetts Bay Colony of the New World was a Puritan theocratic state in the early 1650s. Puritan leaders did not have much tolerance for people of other religions, and as a result, the Puritan government often persecuted and banished religious outsiders who tried to enter and live in their Puritan towns. A fear was embedded in the Puritan society that if they started to admit outsiders, they would lose their political and religious control of the colony.

The 13 English colonies in North America were established and grew during the 17th and 18th centuries. During most of this time, the colonists lived under what historians have termed “salutary neglect,” meaning that the English government mostly left them alone and the colonies prospered under these conditions.

In the summer of 1959, the French government announced plans for a test of the first French atomic bomb in the Sahara in Reggan, Algeria, to support its military and political powers. Also at the time, Algeria was engaged in a war of independence from France. African leaders and organizations protested almost unanimously against nuclear testing in the Sahara and became concerned with the dangers of nuclear fallout in their country as well as France’s colonialist attitude.

In September 2014, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, L.L.C. (TGP), a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P., proposed a 346-mile pipeline to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The proposal included two paths: a 220-mile “supply path” and a 126-mile “market path”. The Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline (NED) would supply natural gas from fracking fields in Pennsylvania to energy companies in New England. TGP was a well-known gas supplier, having operated in the New England region for over 60 years.

In December of 2013 at The University of Oregon, a group of students founded Divest UO, to persuade the University of Oregon Foundation (the Board of Trustees) to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Over the next two and a half years, Divest UO employed multiple tactics including a mock wedding, numerous sit-ins, and several teach-ins to achieve their goal.

In December of 2006, Eon, an energy company, submitted an application to the Medway council in Kent, England to build coal-fired generating units, the first to be built in England since 1974. The plant would emit more carbon dioxide than the world’s thirty lowest emitting countries combined. Within a few months, two other companies were proposing similar projects, with even more to follow. Eon planned to implement Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), as per the government’s request.

In 1957, in an effort to frustrate increasing black voter registration and the threat of losing a white voter majority, Alabama state senator Sam Engelhardt sponsored Act 140, which proposed to transform the Tuskegee City boundaries from a square into a twenty-eight sided shape resembling a “seahorse” that included every single one of the 600 white voters and excluded all but 5 of the 400 black voters.

On April 4, 1985, seven students at Columbia University, members of the Coalition for a Free South Africa (CFSA), chained closed the doors to Columbia’s administrative building, Hamilton Hall, and sat on the steps, blockading the entrance. They were there to protest the University’s investments in corporations that operated in Apartheid South Africa. Soon after, a march coordinated by other members of CFSA passed by Hamilton Hall. When the marchers saw the small blockade on the steps, they rushed to join in.

Agitation in Iran was visible by May 1977 in predominantly intellectual circles. A group of lawyers—upset by the government’s interference in the judiciary—drafted a strongly worded manifesto chronicling the legal abuses that had occurred under the Shah’s regime. Poets formed a Writers’ Association to call for an end to censorship and the activity of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. A National Organization of University Teachers began fighting for academic freedom while university and seminary students called for academic freedom in the schools.

Since the early 2000s, rent in California has increased faster than wages, forcing renters to spend more than half of their income on housing—higher than in most other states. Throughout the past two decades, the skyrocketing cost of living has significantly impacted residents, and importantly, this includes students, workers, and faculty at the University of California (UC), a leading public research university system that consists of ten campuses.

Swarthmore College is a small, private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. Originally founded as a Quaker school, it purports a deep commitment to social justice and equity. In the spring of 2013, however, the college experienced a period of protests and unrest in the student body over a number of overlapping issues. 

The Powder River Basin, a 20,000 square mile region stretching across Eastern Montana and Wyoming, was long the coal mining hub of North America. In 2022, the region produced over 250 million tons of coal, almost half of the total coal production in the United States that year. The five largest coal mines in the country are in the basin, and in 2009, Arch Coal introduced plans to build the largest coal mine in North America.

In 2003, the National Women’s Conference (ENM), a yearly feminist conference based in Argentina, held a workshop called “Strategies for Abortion Rights” in the nation’s province of Rosario. This workshop inspired the idea for launching a national campaign focused on the right to choose. In May of the following year, feminist groups organized another conference at the University of Buenos Aires to implement proposals from the 2003 ENM.

In January 2015, Alex Friedman, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, uploaded a picture of himself in his wheelchair with the caption “disabled, not half a person” to his Facebook account. The post called for Israel’s government to raise the monthly disability stipend for citizens from its value at the time which was 2,342 NIS ($660), which was roughly half of the monthly minimum wage in Israel at the time.

The Kellogg Company (Kellogg's) was an American multinational food manufacturer that massively profited from its lines of breakfast cereals. Kellogg's operated four major cereal plants in the United States: Battle Creek, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee. While Battle Creek, Michigan, has long been the center of Kellogg's cereal production and home to its headquarters, the company announced in June 2022 that it would relocate its headquarters to Chicago, Illinois.

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, has spent the last several centuries under the control of alternating powers. In 1942, Britain began its occupation of Hong Kong, following the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking. Japan occupied the island from 1941-1946, and then Britain gained control again after the Allied Powers won World War II. 

After long negotiations, twelve countries from around the Pacific Rim came together to endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The partnership would have been the largest regional trade accord in history, including countries that make up 40% of the global gross domestic product. The United States, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile were involved in this trade negotiation, which was seen as a collective defense against China’s economic, political and legal influence in the Pacific Rim.

Alberto Patishtán Gomez was an indigenous Tzotzil teacher of basic education from the town of El Bosque in the Chiapas state of Mexico. The Mexican federal police arrested Patishtán in 2000 for murders that he did not commit. He spent the next thirteen years in the Mexican justice system as he campaigned for the release of himself and other indigenous political prisoners being wrongfully held by the Mexican government.

Kurdistan is a geographic region that encompasses portions of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Türkiye (Turkey). This mountainous land is home to the Middle East’s fourth largest ethnic group – the Kurds. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1922, the victorious Allied powers drafted the Treaty of Sevres, partitioning what used to be the Ottoman Empire into new divisions . Signatories promised a referendum to determine what would become of Kurdish aspirations for an autonomous state.

Arizona, a southwestern U.S. state known for its diverse geography and iconic landmarks, had approximately 48,510 teachers in its public schools in 2018. For three decades, under state budget and education fund cuts, teachers' salaries were between $8,000 and $9,000 lower than teachers' salaries had been in 1990. According to the state's auditor general, Arizona teachers' wages averaged $48,372 per year in 2018, ranked among some of the lowest in the nation.

From 30 March 2018 to 26 December 2019, Gazans protested at the Israeli border every Friday for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land that they had been displaced from since 1948. This series of demonstrations is known now as the “Great March of Return.”

Santa Cruz, California, situated in the northern part of Monterey Bay, is home to the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Alexander Lukashenko first assumed office as the president of Belarus in 1994. In the years to follow, he consolidated his power through increasingly authoritarian rule. Although the government held presidential elections to re-appoint Lukashenko for each subsequent term, according to third-party analysts and the international community, the process was fraudulent and provided no genuine opportunity for opposition. It was not until the August 2020 presidential election that Belarusians voiced opposition on a massive, organized scale.

In March 2011, civilian protests against the ruling Assad regime resulted in violent government suppression and a Syrian civil war. Primarily, civilians suffered the fallout of conflict between the government and armed resistance groups, many of whom formed rivalries with one another.

In the summer of 2016, a small group of Israeli citizens began protesting at various traffic junctions throughout the country carrying signs calling for the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.