002. Letters of opposition or support

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.

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 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.

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.

United States Midwest farmers fought for agricultural policy reform that would ensure economic stability and sustainable financial support for small-scale farms. A number of rural grassroots organizations, including the Iowa Farm Unity Coalition (IFUC), Citizens Organizing Acting Together (COACT), and the United States Farmers’ Association (USFA) led the family farm crisis movement of the 1980s that demanded federal policy reforms to prevent unfair foreclosures and to secure economic stability for Midwest non-corporate farmers.

Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts institution located 30 minutes from Philadelphia, PA, is renowned for its academic rigor and commitment to cultural inclusivity. During the College’s 2013 "Spring of Discontent" (a term coined by the College’s President, Rebecca Chopp) , the college faced student protest against systemic administrative failures. Multiple student campaigns brought to light issues such as a lack of diversity among students and faculty, fossil fuel divestment, and, most notably, the need for Title IX reform.

In 1988, after being rejected by many landfill sites and governments across the United States and Caribbean, a ship carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia dumped half of its contents on a beach in Haiti. This sparked a twelve year campaign, led by the environmental advocacy organization of Greenpeace and a coalition that included multiple Haitian advocacy organizations.

The Marsden Power Station B was originally built on Marsden Point, Ruakākā, Northland, New Zealand in the 1970s as an oil-fired power station, but when construction concluded in the 1980s, oil prices had risen substantially, resulting in the plant not being commissioned. In October 2004, Mighty River Power, a New Zealand-based electric company, applied to the Northland Regional Council, which manages air, land, freshwater, and coastal resources in the Northland region, for resource consent to operate Marsden B power station using coal.

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.

Beginning in 2014, campaigns demanding divestment from fossil fuels appeared around the United Kingdom. University of Glasgow was the first university in the UK to commit to divestment in 2014. The University of Oxford, The University of Cambridge, and London School of Economics, among others, followed. By the end of 2016, 30 universities across the UK committed to divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

In October 1969, a German company known as Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF) made plans to invest in building a petrochemical plant on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The Lowcountry region, where Hilton Head Island is located, was already experiencing a public health crisis, predominantly in its black and low-income communities. Some residents perceived BASF’s announcement as a huge opportunity as it would provide jobs. Other residents resisted the petrochemical project.

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.

Swarthmore College, a liberal arts college located just 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has a history of fraternity and “Greek life” and college social organizations in the United States that involve members living together in designated houses and participating in various social and philanthropic events. Since the establishment of the two fraternity chapters, Phi Psi and Delta Upsilo

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.

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

On 1 December 1988, a group of women convened in Jerusalem for the first International Jewish Feminist Conference. On the last day of the conference, a group of 70 women went to pray at the holiest site for Jewish people, the Western Wall (Kotel). Women in the group read from the Torah, prayed out loud, and wore prayer shawls. These acts were all forbidden for women to do at the Western Wall by the Authority of the Western Wall and Holy Sites. The women’s prayer service was disrupted by ultra-Orthodox men and women who shouted and threatened the group.

On December 1, 1960, just after a rally in San Francisco, ten members of the Committee for Non-Violent Action marched out of the city, intent on marching across the country, all the way to Moscow in the Soviet Union. Their chances for success were slim. Despite the backing of the (admittedly small) CNVA, marching most of the way around the world is a monumental task. Even if the distance were not an issue, the Soviet Union was notoriously unsympathetic to peace groups or protest action in general. Breaching the Iron Curtain would not be easy.

In 2002 the provincial government of Chubut granted a gold mining concession to Meridian Gold, a Canadian mining company based out of Reno, Nevada, for a large open-pit gold mine just 7 kilometers from Esquel, Argentina. The local population was strongly opposed to this, due to the environmental impact that the mine would have, and decided to protest the action.

To South Africans and Australians alike, rugby is not just a sport, but a cultural symbol. In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was also a unifying force between apartheid South Africa and its “white neighbor by the sea”—Australia. At the time, Australia had in place many racist policies that discriminated against Aboriginal peoples and the Australian public was only beginning to gain an awareness of both the domestic and international issues of human rights at stake.

The anti-sweatshop movement was the largest student activism movement in the United States since the South African divestment movement over ten years before. Students all around the country pressured college and university administrators to adopt strict labor codes that guaranteed that merchandise bearing the college’s logo was not made by people working under unacceptable, “sweatshop-like” conditions.

The first attempt by an African American to enroll in Swarthmore College was 1905 when the admissions committee mistakenly admitted a light-skinned black student thinking he was white. Upon discovering his race the college withdrew its acceptance. The next attempt was not made until 1932 when a black student from Philadelphia High School applied to Swarthmore College. The admission’s committee decision was that, as a co-educational institution, Swarthmore College was not yet prepared to admit African American students.

Greenham Commons outside Newbury, England was purchased in 1939 by the Newbury District Council for the public use of Newbury inhabitants, including the collection of firewood. In 1941 this area was requisitioned by the Air Ministry for an airfield, which was later decommissioned. Despite the decommissioning of the airfield, public ownership of the land was not fully restored. Then in 1979 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization ) bought the land from the British government for the building of a military base that would house 96 Tomahawk Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCMs).

The 1977-1978 economic justice and human rights campaign in Bolivia stemmed from tensions that began with the 1952 Bolivian Revolution, which left the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement in power. This group implemented a nationalization of the tin mines, agrarian reforms, and universal franchises. These policies and reforms lasted until 1964, when a military coup led to the regime of General Barrientos. This regime clashed with miners and broke down worker power and cultivated the peasantry.