930 articles
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded in Atlanta in 1957 and led by Martin Luther King Jr. until 1968, coordinated nonviolent civil rights campaigns including Birmingham and Selma, spurring the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Sovereign citizen movement
Sovereign citizen movement: anti-government extremists, also called freemen on the land, claiming immunity from US law via strawman and redemption theories and UCC filings; courts uniformly reject these pseudolegal arguments as frivolous.
Special needs
Special needs is a euphemism for disability, common in education and speech but rejected by UN guidance, APA and ASHA style guides, and many disabled people; a 530-person study found it reads more negatively than disability.
Sport Relief
Sport Relief is the sporting fundraising campaign of the UK charity Comic Relief (Charity Projects), created in 2002 with BBC Sport and alternating biennially with Red Nose Day; it has raised over £420 million and is relaunching in 2026 with Grey London.
Springfield pet-eating hoax
The Springfield pet-eating hoax was a false 2024 rumor claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio ate pets; debunked by police and officials but amplified by Vance and Trump, causing bomb threats and fear.
Sri Lankan sporting disappearances
Sri Lankan sporting disappearances: athletes and officials vanishing during international events abroad, most famously the 23-member fake 2004 handball team in Germany and ten missing athletes from the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, usually to escape civil war or economic crisis.
State funeral
State funeral: government-organized public funeral honoring heads of state, former leaders, or eminent citizens, with lying-in-state, processions, and military honours; Canadian entitlement rules, US Capitol traditions, and subnational variants.
Steal This Book
Steal This Book is a 1971 guide to living cheaply, protesting, and evading authority by American activist Abbie Hoffman, published by Pirate Editions and distributed by Grove Press.
Stereotypes of African Americans
Stereotypes of African Americans: demeaning beliefs and caricatures (Sambo, Mammy, Jezebel, Black Buck) rooted in slavery and blackface minstrelsy, spread through advertising and film, persisting in news and screen media per Pew and Common Sense Media data.
Stereotypes of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
Stereotypes of Hispanic and Latino Americans in U.S. media: the six classic Hollywood types (el bandido, harlot, buffoons, Latin lover, dark lady), criminality and immigration tropes in news and TV, and the underrepresentation data behind them.
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael, later Kwame Ture (1941–1998), Trinidadian-born American civil rights activist, SNCC chairman from 1966, popularizer of the slogan "Black Power," Lowndes County Freedom Organization organizer, later Pan-Africanist in Guinea.
Stop Killing Games
Stop Killing Games (Stop Destroying Videogames) is a consumer-rights campaign started by Ross Scott in 2024 to keep purchased video games playable after support ends.
Stormfront (website)
Stormfront.org is a white nationalist discussion forum founded in 1995 by former KKK leader Don Black, the first major hate site on the Internet, with hundreds of thousands of registered users and documented links to extremist violence.
Street children
Street children, also called street-connected children or children in street situations, are under-18s who depend on streets to live or work. Global numbers are unknown; the 100 million figure dates from 1989, and recent models suggest 10 to 15 million under strict definitions.
Structural violence
Structural violence, coined by Johan Galtung (1969), is harm embedded in social structures producing unequal power and life chances; spans peace studies, public health, and clinical medicine.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, "SNICK"), US civil rights organization founded April 1960 at Shaw University, Raleigh, by Ella Baker's sit-in leadership meeting; ran Freedom Rides, Mississippi Freedom Summer, Selma; turned to Black Power under Carmichael in 1966.
Subversion
Subversion is the covert, indirect effort to destroy or weaken an established system or government from within; from Latin subvertere, to overturn. Distinct from sabotage, espionage, and Apache Subversion, the version control software.
Suicide of Amanda Todd
The suicide of Amanda Todd (October 10, 2012), a 15-year-old from Port Coquitlam, BC, followed webcam sextortion and blackmail; Dutch extortionist Aydin Coban was convicted in Canada in 2022, sentenced to 13 years, later converted to six Dutch years.
Suicide of Jacintha Saldanha
Jacintha Saldanha, an Indian-born nurse at London's King Edward VII Hospital, died by suicide in December 2012 after transferring a 2Day FM royal prank call from DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian about the Duchess of Cambridge; the 2014 inquest ruled suicide and Australian regulation followed.
Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer
Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, also described as the death of Jamey Rodemeyer: the September 18, 2011 suicide of a 14-year-old Williamsville, New York freshman after anti-gay bullying, which prompted a criminal investigation, school suspensions, Lady Gaga's response, and his parents' anti-bullying advocacy.
Suicide of Megan Meier
Suicide of Megan Meier: October 2006 death of 13-year-old Megan Taylor Meier of O'Fallon, Missouri, after a MySpace hoax by neighbor Lori Drew posing as boy 'Josh Evans'; led to a failed CFAA prosecution and cyberbullying laws.
Suicide of Phoebe Prince
The suicide of Phoebe Prince was the January 2010 death of a 15-year-old Irish immigrant in South Hadley, Massachusetts, after months of bullying; nine classmates were charged.
Suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons
Rehtaeh Parsons, Nova Scotia teenager who died by suicide April 7, 2013 at 17 after an alleged 2011 sexual assault photo circulated; prompted Segal and Pepler reviews, Cyber-safety Act, later struck down.
Suicide of Renata Kambolina
Renata Kambolina (Rina Palenkova, Рената Камболина), Russian student from Ussuriysk who died by suicide on 23 November 2015 aged 16; her 'nya.bye' final VKontakte post became the origin myth of the Blue Whale challenge panic.
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a 1967 gathering drawing some 100,000 young people to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, featuring the Monterey International Pop Festival and Scott McKenzie's anthem.
Sun Myung Moon (문선명)
Sun Myung Moon (문선명, 1920–2012), Korean founder of the Unification Church (Holy Spirit Association, 1954), messianic claimant, mass-wedding officiant, Washington Times founder, and builder of a global business empire; died 2012, succeeded by his children.
Sunderlal Bahuguna (सुंदरलाल बहुगुणा)
Sunderlal Bahuguna (सुंदरलाल बहुगुणा, 1927–2021), Gandhian environmentalist of Uttarakhand, Chipko movement leader and anti-Tehri Dam campaigner; slogan "Ecology is permanent economy," 4,870 km Himalayan march, 15-year logging moratorium, Padma Vibhushan.
Supremacism
Supremacism is the ideology that one group of people is superior and entitled to rule or dominate others, whether by race, religion, gender, or culture.
Survivalism
Survivalism, also called prepping, is the practice of preparing for societal collapse or catastrophe through stockpiling food, skills, and retreats. Coined by Kurt Saxon in 1975/6, it is strongest in the United States and spans far-right, secular, and left-wing variants.
Sustainability
Sustainability means meeting present needs without compromising future generations, per the 1987 Brundtland definition. Covers its three dimensions, weak vs strong sustainability metrics, the SDGs, planetary boundaries, and greenwashing in sustainable finance.