002 letters of opposition or support
"Letters as a method of this class may take several forms. These include primarily private letters to a certain person or body, conveying a particular political viewpoint or declaration of intention. These letters may be from individuals or from groups; or similar or identical letters may be sent by many people. At times private letters may deliberately or otherwise become public knowledge. Or the letter may be published as an “open letter”—written to a particular person but intended equally or primarily to influence the general public which reads it."...
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High scoring campaigns using this method
Historical cases from the Nonviolent Action Database that used this method
Argentine women fight for access to abortions, 2005-2020
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 cam...
Egyptian workers strike and occupy textile factory for better pay, representation, and conditions, 2007
Misr Spinning and Weaving Company is the largest public sector Egyptian textile company, employing 27,000 workers in the mid-2000s. The company is located in the Nile Delta town Mahalla al-Kubra and had a history of workers protests, the most signifi...
Hampshire College students win divestment from apartheid South Africa, U.S., 1977
There are several noted origins of the South Africa divestment movement in the United States. Students and activists protested the 1948-implemented system of apartheid in South Africa throughout the 1960’s and early 70’s, but the movement failed to g...
Guatemalans overthrow a dictator, 1944
Beginning in 1931 Jorge Ubico ruled Guatemala with an iron fist with the help of the vicious secret police. He admired Hitler’s tactics. By the summer of 1944, a similarly brutal dictator, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, was overthrown in the face of...
Greensboro, NC, students sit-in for U.S. Civil Rights, 1960
In Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, Jim Crow laws were in widespread effect. Though the African-American Civil Rights Movement had led to some successful desegregation (notably within the school system thanks to Brown v. Board and Swann v. Charlot...
Greenpeace pressures Unilever, gains moratorium on destructive palm oil production in Indonesia, 2008
Palm oil is a versatile and inexpensive oil used in many products, from ice cream and cookies to soap and lipstick. Expansion of palm oil plantations is the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Indonesia. Unilever is the world’s largest consume...
Greenpeace campaigns against dumping the Brent Spar oil rig, 1995
The Brent Spar, a 450-foot-long floating rig used as a loading buoy and storage tank for oil from the North Sea for fifteen years, was decommissioned in 1991. When Greenpeace learned of plans to dump the Brent Spar by sinking the structure in the Nor...
Greenpeace calls on Timberland to stop supporting deforestation in the Amazon, 2009
On 1 June 2009, the global environmental advocacy organization Greenpeace released the findings of a 3-year undercover investigation of the Brazilian cattle industry. The report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” traced the convoluted supply chain of leathe...
The Green Belt Movement defends the Karura Forest in Nairobi, Kenya, 1998-1999
The Karura forest is an urban 2500 acre forest in Nairobi. The Kenyan government had a common practice of land grabbing or secretly selling public lands to private companies and political allies. Wangari Maathai, who later was awarded the Nobel Peace...
Germans reclaim Heligoland from the United Kingdom, 1951
Heligoland (also spelled Helgoland) is an archipelago 46 kilometers off the German coastline in the North Sea. The two small islands are less than 2 square kilometers in total, but the British, Danish and Germans have hotly contested the land over th...
Low scoring campaigns using this method
Historical cases from the Nonviolent Action Database that used this method
Yale University students protest sweatshop labor, 2000
On 1 March 2000, 400 Yale University students rallied to demand that their administration withdraw from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and join the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) instead. Both organizations focused on monitoring sweatshop labor an...
US Students Campaign to Stop Dow Chemical Company From Manufacturing Napalm (1967-1969)
The United States first used Napalm as an incendiary device in Japan during WWII. It melted flesh and produced horrific wounds. Napalm once again took on a functional role for the US in Vietnam, and the government requested bids from chemical manufac...
California inmates hunger strike to improve prison conditions, 2013
In 2011, over 12,000 prisoners of California’s corrections system participated in a hunger strike to protest their inhumane conditions of confinement. The protesters had five core demands: 1) Eliminate group punishments and administrative abuse, 2) A...
University of Oregon students demonstrate for fair labor practices, 2000-2001
The University of Oregon is a large state university with a student body population of approximately 23,000 students, located in Eugene, Oregon. The school has a strong athletic legacy and Phil Knight, the founder of Nike Inc., is an alumnus and sign...
Notre Dame University students fight for campus workers' rights, 2005-2008
Students at University of Notre Dame started a living wage campaign at their school in September 2005 after learning about similar campaigns happening at Harvard University and Georgetown University. A living wage was defined as a family of four bein...
MIT students campaign for divestment from apartheid South Africa, 1985-1991
In reaction to the continuing apartheid in South Africa, many colleges and universities in the United States divested from South Africa, meaning that they removed the holdings they had from companies which operated there. Apartheid separated blacks a...
Jamaican workers protest sale of Air Jamaica to Caribbean Airlines, 2010
In January 2010, it became clear that the Jamaican government sought to sell Air Jamaica to a foreign company. The government and the owners of Air Jamaica saw the company as losing a lot of money and, due to heavy subsidizing, the government had a g...
Swazi teachers strike for economic justice, 2012
In 2012, Swaziland was a small landlocked country in southern Africa ruled by King Mswati III. Sixty three percent of the country’s population lived below the poverty line. Government spending on education had continuously decreased since 2008. With ...
Students and staff at the College of William and Mary campaign for higher wages for housekeepers 2010-2011
Beginning in 1999 and lasting into 2001, students at William and Mary and members of the Tidewater Labor Support Committee (TSLC) carried out what they called a "Living Wage Campaign," during which they protested and petitioned the school’s administr...
Pakistan's Azadi March to Overthrow Prime Minister, 2014
The government of Pakistan under Nawaz Sharif was widely mistrusted by its people. Prior to the parliamentary election in May of 2013, Sharif had already declared himself Prime Minister of Pakistan before citizens had even voted. In 2014, former nati...