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The 2015 Ferguson, Missouri, protests were a series of public protests held in March and August of 2015 in objection to police treatment of African Americans in the St. Louis suburb and called for reforms of the predominantly white Ferguson Police Department. The August protests were held to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the controversial police shooting of African American teenager Michael Brown in 2014.

Provisions of the Bayard-Zhang Treaty of 1888 were instituted by the U.S. government despite widespread public protests in rural China and the Qing government’s refusal to agree to the treaty’s restrictive terms. As early as 1868, the United States and China had agreed upon unrestricted Chinese immigration. However, this agreement, formally termed the Burlingame Treaty, was not ratified in its entirety by representatives of both countries, but portions of the agreement were nonetheless implemented.

The anti-vaccination movement is the organized opposition to vaccines, and is considered the most extreme form of vaccine hesitancy. While reasons behind anti-vaccination sentiment can vary considerably, the two major categories of claims are that vaccines are dangerous and that forcing them upon people amounts to violations of personal liberty. Anti-vaccination advocates, sometimes known as "anti-vaxxers," often rely on false or misleading information to bolster their arguments. Public health experts have called the anti-vaccination movement a major threat to public health.

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an unaffiliated Baptist church headquartered in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded by Fred Phelps in 1955 and is best known for its inflammatory rhetoric against Jews and, especially, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This homophobic nature of the group is openly displayed on the church’s website. Prominent civil rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), have officially designated the WBC a hate group. Members regularly protest the funerals of military service members, LGBT people, and victims of high-profile public tragedies; the protests consist of members carrying picket signs stating messages such as "Pray for More Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for 9/11."

At the beginning of World War II, the American armed forces, reflecting larger patterns in American society, were almost completely segregated. Although African Americans had participated in every U.S. war, their numbers had been small, their roles had been limited, and their units had almost always been segregated. Few African American units engaged in combat in the Spanish-American War or in World War I. Their uneven levels of performance allowed many white Army officers to retain their prejudices, thus limiting African American troop deployment and obstructing the services’ willingness to desegregate. American successes in both those wars allowed for the maintenance of a racial status quo in the military.

By 1970, the nation of Chile had experienced a political history that made it unusual in relation to other Latin American nations. Chile had developed strong and stable political institutions and generally avoided the military coups, civil wars, and dictatorships that plagued much of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. The four decades preceding the presidential election of 1970 had witnessed a lively, competitive, pluralistic, multi-party democracy with political organizations ranging from the Marxist left to the far right. Elections revealed a tripartite political division into left, right, and centrist forces of roughly equal strength. Presidents nearly always took office after receiving a plurality, rather than a majority, of votes.

The career of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the significance of his ultimate fate can be understood and appreciated only within the broader context of Pakistan’s political history. The most decisive factor in this history is the country’s creation. Pakistan was born on August 14, 1947, when the British ended two centuries of imperial rule over the Indian subcontinent and transferred governing authority to two countries, India and Pakistan. India inherited a political tradition and a culture that were millennia old. Pakistan, in contrast, could lay claim to no prior existence as a separate country. It had come into being as the result of a separatist movement based on the common identity and sense of minority status of the South Asian Muslim community. India, which declared itself to be a secular state, contained a majority Hindu population as well as citizens of many other communities, including millions of Muslims. Pakistan, in contrast, was intended to be a homeland for Muslims, which meant that its social and political institutions were to be fashioned according to the dictates of Islam.

The child-abuse allegations that emerged against McMartin Preschool owners and teachers in 1983 led to one of the longest and costliest trials in American history and initiated public hysteria over child sex-abuse in schools. Located in Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles, California, the family-owned and operated preschool was a popular and acclaimed school with a long waiting list. The preschool’s strong reputation contributed to the magnitude of the shock and outrage felt by the Manhattan Beach community—and all of Southern California—when the scandal surfaced.

The Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989, proved to be the climactic event of the massive demonstrations carried out by Chinese involved in the democracy movement, a cause backed by hundreds of thousands of students and endorsed by millions of other Chinese. These voices were crying out for freedom of speech and better representation in their own affairs. A handbill proclaimed that the democracy movement’s “guiding principle is to propagate democratic ideas among the people. Our slogan is to oppose bureaucracy and authoritarianism, and strive for democracy and freedom. The time has come to awaken the democratic ideas that have long been suppressed.”

The Turkish conquest of Bulgaria in 1396 resulted in nearly five hundred years of virtually complete Ottoman domination of Bulgaria. However, some elements of the Bulgarian population, through the activity of the Eastern Orthodox Church and traditions of village culture, managed to keep alive the cultural life of the country. By the late eighteenth century, Turkish power was seriously weakening, and a movement of national revival and autonomy was growing among the Bulgarians.

Political cartoons are drawings that reflect political commentary on current events or personalities. They are editorials that use satire and exaggeration to challenge authority or focus on social ills and have done so throughout the centuries. Most political cartoonists use metaphors and caricatures to illuminate complicated political situations and summarize a current event with a humorous or emotional illustration. Over the centuries two distinct styles of political cartooning have emerged: a traditional style using visual metaphors like the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant, and a text-heavy style narrating a linear story in a comic strip like Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau. Famous political cartoonists of the past and present include Thomas Nast, the father of political cartoons, and his successor Joseph Keppler. More recent artists include James Albert Wales, Herbert Block, and Pat Oliphant. Political cartoons are most often found on the editorial page of newspapers, although a few can be found in the regular comics section.

Industrialist Howard Hughes began plans for The Outlaw in 1941, casting unknowns Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid and Jane Russell Russell, Jane as a Mexican woman, Rio. In midproduction, Hughes fired director Howard Hawks and began directing himself, using the camera to emphasize Russell’s ample bust. After negotiating with film censors, the film received the MPPDA’s Seal of Approval on May 23, 1941; local censors, however, cut it severely, and Hughes postponed the film’s release. Outlaw, The[Outlaw, The] Russell, Jane Outlaw, The[Outlaw, The] Hawks, Howard Hughes, Howard

In October 1992, O’Connor sang on an episode of the late-night comedy sketch program Saturday Night Live (SNL). In the midst of her performance she exclaimed: “Fight the real enemy!” and then tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II. Staunchly anti-Roman Catholic, O’Connor had previously protested the church’s stance on abortion. NBC aired the complete incident; however, when the network later rebroadcast the episode, it replaced O’Connor’s original segment with footage of her rehearsing for the broadcast. An NBC spokesperson stated that the network would never rebroadcast O’Connor’s original performance.

NOW was created by a group of educated, politically active American women to protest discrimination against women. Its organization has been largely federally oriented, with a national center in Washington, D.C., but much effective decision making reserved to local and state chapters. Over the years, NOW has focused on many issues, including equality in hiring and in the workplace, improving the media portrayal of women, increasing women’s political presence, passing the Equal Rights Amendment Equal Rights Amendment , guarding women’s reproductive rights, and antirape programs. Steinem, Gloria Chung, Mary National Organization for Women

The Nazi book burnings occurred in the early summer of 1933. The Nazi Party came to power after harsh sanctions that resulted from World War I caused a severe economic depression in Germany. The depression allowed a populist leader, Adolf Hitler, to rise to power. Hitler blamed the problems of the German people on Jews, Romanies, and others whom conservative Germans felt were inferior.

Resource mobilization theory argues that social movements succeed through the effective mobilization of resources and the development of political opportunities for members. This article will focus on resource mobilization theory and provide an analysis of the history, applications, and strengths and weaknesses of the theory. An overview of the origins and main principles of resource mobilization theory is included. The application of resource mobilization theory to social movement formation is discussed. The main criticisms of the resource mobilization theory are also explored.

Moral policing is the action by which groups—often religious—impose their moral codes on the rest of the population. Moral police groups may be informal and illicit, or sanctioned by society and the state. With the development of modern technology, moral policing has proliferated by way of the Internet, with very detrimental results. Many theories exist that help explain the dynamics of moral policing and propose ways to curve its worst excesses.

GENERAL INDUSTRY: Energy

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social activist movement and organization devoted to stopping violence and injustice against Black people. Though initially focused on the United States, it established a presence in other countries as well. The group was founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had been charged with murdering Black teen Trayvon Martin. Over the next few years, the Black Lives Matter movement swelled in popularity, particularly after several incidents of police brutality involving Black Americans made national news. Its protests against systemic racism became a prominent factor in the 2016 US presidential election campaign. The movement saw another surge in attention with mass protests in 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a police officer in Minnesota. However, the group's high profile has been accompanied by controversy, with some critics accusing it of being racist, anti-police, or accepting of violence.

The Kingdom of Thailand (Prathet Thai) is located in Southeast Asia, bordered by Laos on the north and east, Myanmar on the northwest and west, and Cambodia on the southeast. Thailand's southern peninsula connects the country to Malaysia and is flanked by the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea.

The Susurluk scandal was born from the remains of a traffic accident in Susurluk, Turkey, on November 3, 1996. The identities of the passengers in one of the crashed vehicles revealed a connection between criminal organizations and Turkish politicians, police, and military officials and confirmed suspicions of what was known as the deep state in Turkey. The deep state is an alleged coalition of antidemocratic officials and organized criminals believed to be enmeshed within the Turkish state (a state within a state). The scandal led to the resignation of a major political figure, numerous arrests of police and government officials, several convictions, and increased tensions and distrust between Turkish citizens and the national government.

The Boston Women’s Health Collective was an organization of women founded explicitly to improve women’s understanding of their bodies and, through education, to provide them with more informed access to health care. It developed from an informal meeting about women’s health at a 1969 feminist conference. At the meeting, several participants expressed their dissatisfaction with the available medical services for women. Based on the number of stories that circulated at the conference, it became evident that there was a need for women to learn more about their bodies’ functions, specifically with regard to reproductive and sexual health. However, the challenge was to devise an effective method for implementing this education.

Under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, numerous types of Soviet dissenters existed; religious groups, professional groups, and national groups were among them. The Moscow Human Rights Committee came to play an important role in facilitating communication among the different activists and in publicizing incidents of Soviet repression to the West.

Summary: Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, has long been a source of resources, including petroleum, for industrialized European countries. In the twenty-first century, China joined in the race to make deals to extract mineral resources, including oil. As with the Europeans before them, the Chinese adjusted their political and diplomatic policies to align with these economic interests. In some cases, such as West African oil fields, China emerged as a prospective competitor with long-established Western oil firms. In other cases, China emerged as a new supplier of loans, labor, and materials to build transportation systems and infrastructure for mineral extraction. According to the Wall Street Journal: "China is now the continent's largest trading partner, edging out the U.S. Last year, its trade with Africa reached $114 billion, up from $10 billion in 2000 and $1 billion in 1980, according to China's State Council, or cabinet." By the 2020s, China became a dominant force on the African continent, developing political and commercial rivalries with the US. The Biden Administration addressed concerns about China’s continued dominance, stating the country had to be watched as it advanced its own commercial and geopolitical interests. By the 2020s, China increased its role in African infrastructure and resource extraction and became the continent's largest two-way trading partner.

According to oral tradition, a centralized kingdom spread over most of present-day Rwanda by the mid-eighteenth century. The Tutsi mwami (“king” in Kinyarwanda) was the pinnacle of ubuhake, a manorial system that subjugated the agrarian Hutu. Treated as semidivine beings, mwamis collected tribute from their subjects and controlled chiefs and subchiefs who did their bidding.

In the decades after World War II, nuclear weapons, their proliferation, testing, and deployment, had profound political and environmental effects. France, a nuclear power since 1960, had conducted thirty-one nuclear tests in the 1960’s, sixty-nine in the 1970’s, and ninety-two in the 1980’s, many of them in the Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago east of Tahiti. Protests against these tests occurred in the Pacific islands most directly affected by them as well in such Pacific Rim countries as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. So seriously did French officials take these protests that, when Greenpeace sent its boat the Rainbow Warrior to New Zealand prior to its travel into the test area, French secret service agents, acting under authorization of President François Mitterrand, destroyed the vessel with two bombs, killing one person aboard. Some scholars claim that the nuclear tests and the Rainbow Warrior incident led to a deterioration in French international relations, whereas others assert that, through apologies and financial assistance, French politicians were able to mitigate the region’s antinuclear sentiments.

Take Back the Night Foundation is a nonprofit organization that helps to create safe communities and respectful relationships to end sexual violence and domestic abuse. The foundation was created in 2001 under the leadership of Katie Koestner, an activist against sexual assault who, in 1990, spoke publicly after being allegedly raped on the College of William and Mary campus in Virginia. The Take Back the Night Foundation has chapters located on college and university campuses, as well as on military bases.

With a wingspan of 320 feet—longer than a football field—the Spruce Goose has the distinction of being the largest aircraft ever built. Planned and designed during World War II, when materials such as aluminum were in short supply and were reserved for the most urgent military projects, the Spruce Goose earned its name from its nearly all-wood construction. Only the flaps, or control surfaces, were made from fabric; the remainder of the plane was fashioned from layers of plywood especially constructed at the Hughes Aircraft Company plant in Culver City, California. Despite its nickname, the “Spruce Goose,” only about 5 to 10 percent of the craft is constructed of spruce; the remainder is birch plywood. The name stuck, however, because, in the words of one worker, “nobody could think of a word that rhymed with birch.”

Marie Curie, one of the world’s most famous scientists, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, physicist Pierre Curie, and scientist Henri Becquerel. Pierre’s sudden death in a carriage accident in 1906 left Marie bereft. She was supported during this time by one of her husband’s closest colleagues, Paul Langevin. Still relatively young at the age of thirty-eight, Curie became romantically involved with Langevin, even though he was married and the father of four children.

This article focuses on relative deprivation theory. It provides an analysis of the history, applications, and strengths and weaknesses of the theory. An overview of the origins and main contributors to relative deprivation theory is included, and the application of relative deprivation theory to social movement formation is discussed. The main criticisms of relative deprivation theory are also explored.

Individuals conducting First Amendment audits photograph or film in public places to test the right to do so. The audits often feature interactions with police and are posted on YouTube. Those filming believe the audits encourage ethical behavior and government transparency. Proponents of First Amendment audits argue that they are vital to protect Americans’ rights. Opponents contend that the audits create a confrontational environment and question whether the public should have access to the films.