036. Performances of plays and music

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.

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.

In 2019 in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island territory of the United States, tensions were rising between the citizens and their governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares. When news outlets leaked hundreds of pages of profane online chat messages between Rosselló and eleven of his close advisors, Puerto Rican citizens began protesting for his resignation by the hundreds of thousands. After two weeks of protests, Rosselló agreed to step down, and Secretary Wanda Vázquez assumed the role of Governor of Puerto Rico. 

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.

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. 

On 6 September 2017, the Catalan parliament voted in favor of holding a referendum on Catalan independence. Fifty two (out of a total of 135) members of Catalan parliament walked out in protest of the vote. Spanish government officials warned that the decision to hold a referendum was a violation of the Spanish constitution. The deputy prime minister of Spain declared the Spanish government’s intention to “defend freedom, democracy and coexistence.” “Let no one doubt that we know what we have to do and that we will do it,” she added.

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).

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.

The citizens of the Dominican Republic first elected Danilo Medina President of the Dominican Republic (DR) in May 2012. Despite the Constitution prohibiting second terms, consistently high polling during Medina’s first term compelled Congress to pass an amendment in 2015 allowing for his 2016 re-election. As the 2020 elections approached, it became clear that Medina hoped to stay in office for yet another four years.

In 2007, a 46-year-old African American transwoman, Charlene Arcila, was told that she could not use her SEPTA commuter pass to board the bus she regularly used to get to her job in Philadelphia.  

In 1940, at the brink of World War II, Denmark found itself declaring neutrality and cutting its troops in half. Despite this, the German war machine was not to be stopped. The German army invaded Denmark offering an ultimatum demanding submission. To minimize Danish casualties at the hand of a superior German army, the Danish King Christian submitted. Although it was occupied by German troops, Denmark had not surrendered and remained a sovereign state.

In 1972, Matthew Coon Come, a young Cree student, happened upon a newspaper article that proclaimed Quebec’s ‘hydroelectric project of the century’. Looking at a map attached to the article, Matthew realized that his community’s lands in northern Quebec were to be submerged by the proposed dam. It was in this way that the Cree learned of the upcoming assault to their land that had been commissioned by the Quebecois government. The Cree are an aboriginal people that reside in northern Quebec, around the mouth of James Bay.

Russia first occupied Lithuania and introduced a program of “Russification,” an attempt to eliminate Lithuanian language and culture in favor of Russian culture, in the mid-19th century. After 22 years of independence from Russia, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 reintroduced the Soviet Union’s dominance over Lithuania—as well as the other Baltic states: Estonia and Latvia. The Soviet Union publicly stated that Lithuania had joined the USSR willingly, although secret protocols of the pact disputed this. Following World War II, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania.

In 1921 the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) came to power and soon aligned the country with the USSR. Until this democracy campaign in 1989, the MPRP ruled Mongolia through a constitutionally-sanctioned single-party government. By the mid-1980’s, pro-reform sentiments and movements were spreading in Eastern Europe, especially at the universities. However, Mongolians remained isolated from all of this except for the few students who could afford to study abroad in Eastern Europe.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Regarding the First Intifada as "nonviolent" is controversial because of the violence that accompanied the campaign. Aden Tedla's narrative does not try to hide the violent dimension. Three considerations lead us to include the case in this database. First, a significant part of the campaign leadership worked very hard to keep the campaign nonviolent. Second, the masses participated in the nonviolent methods, not in the violence. Third, other scholars in the field of nonviolent action include the Intifada, although acknowledging its ambiguities.

The Pashtuns are a Muslim group that occupied the North-West Frontier of British India, the area near present day Afghanistan. This area was occupied by the British in 1848 and divided into two areas. In one area, districts were established and made under British control. The other area was a tribal area where the people lived semi-independent lives without much influence from the British. In 1902, both the settled districts and the tribal region were consolidated into the “North-West Frontier Province” by the British Empire.

During his first seven years as president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic led the country into several wars with Croatia and Bosnia and isolated it internationally. While he spent money on the country’s secret police and military, unemployment reached as high as 50 percent before 1996. Citizens led several anti-war and pro-democracy campaigns in the early ‘90s, but failed due to lack of outside support. Opposition groups continued both violent and non-violent struggles against the regime, but neither was having any success.

“If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”
That was the central slogan of the Mayday campaign.

The Anti-Vietnam War movement included striking examples of nonviolent direct action. Many of the protests against the Vietnam War took place in the mid-1960s, when the war was still in its early stages, but demonstrations grew in numbers toward the end of the decade. One of the more dramatic efforts to end the war took place in 1971, when the war was rapidly losing public support among American citizens.

In February of 1999, members of the Progressive Activist Network (PAN) at Penn joined with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) chapters at other Ivy League universities in an anti-sweatshop campaign by sending a joint letter to their university presidents. The letter requested a response by March 8, 1999, from University President Judith Rodin and seven other Ivy League university presidents, (excluding Dartmouth’s,) to four demands regarding the possible use of sweatshops in school-insignia apparel production.

Venezuelen President Hugo Chávez has often played a controversial role in Latin American politics, sometimes by testing the limits of freedom of expression.

Located inside the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, the Alta River runs through the reindeer herding grounds of the indigenous Saami people. In 1970, the Norwegian Water Resources and Electricity Board proposed a hydroelectric dam on the river. The proposed dam, which would have completely submerged the Saami village of Masi and interrupted reindeer migration routes, was only the latest affront in a long history of Norway’s marginalization of its indigenous peoples.

The Bologna Process, a European agreement signed by Germany in 1999, made degree programs comparable throughout Europe.  In Germany this meant that programs originally designed to last five or six years were compressed into three or four, creating a degree program quite similar to the United States’.  This substantially increased the course load for students.  Decreased funding for universities also meant a poorer standard of education, larger classes, and the implementation of tuition fees.  Between February and December 2009, thousands of German students protested thes

In 2000, students around the country protested sweatshop-manufactured college apparel. Students at Syracuse University (SU) protested using a variety of different tactics, including a naked bicycle ride through campus. In their yearlong campaign, Syracuse students wished to convince SU’s Chancellor, Kenneth A. Shaw, to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). Their ultimate goal, along with students nationwide, was better wages and better working conditions for workers who manufactured college apparel.