Pressuring the Profiteers Media Toolkits:
Weeks of Action Generic Social Media
Graphics
Shareable Social Media Graphics: For full quality versions of any of these images please reach out to [email protected]
Please tag us on social media @nuclearban.us
Use the #PressureTheProfiteers
More tools from ICAN: https://www.icanw.org/week_of_action_tools
Planning Your Own Event?
1: Find Your Nearest Nuclear Weapons Profiteer ~~~ Find your Nearest Fossil Fuel Profiteer
2: Decide what type of Action best fits your needs.
There are all sorts of different actions you can take at Nuclear Weapons or Fossil Fuel Facility, withing your community to write letters to these profiteers, or at another institution asking them to Divest! Click through the Nuclear Weapons Week and Fossil Fuel Week pages above to learn more
3. Send your events to [email protected] so we can add it to our calendar!
4. Put it on social media and let us know so we can help share it! use the hashtag #PressuretheProfiteers
5: Let the press know what you are doing using the press samples and tools below.
THINK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL – We are part of a global movement, global actions targeting these companies and they money they are funneling into apocalypse. Use your role in the global campaign to get attention from small local papers who are more likely to publish our story. The more local attention we get the easier that will translate into bigger media outlets.
6: Don’t forget to take lots of pictures and share them on social media afterwards!
Third Act’s Letter to the Editor workshop
Letters to the editor are one of the most read parts of the newspaper, and are also followed closely by your elected officials. Anyone can write and send in a letter to the editor, this is your chance to share your views with your community and get attention to what is important to you. The more people send in letters about a topic, the more likely the newspaper is to publish them.
Many newspapers will have their own requirements for word count and what they look for in a letter to the editor. They are generally responsive to some story or event. They should be brief pieces focused on one point with something actionable for the community. Click the link below to view a slide deck from a Third Act workshop on writing a letter to the editor with samples and tips.
You can also submit op-eds which are longer more detailed pieces. Each paper will have different length guidelines for their op- eds. Tips and samples are also in the slide deck from Third Act.
Divestment Campaign Media Tips
Media attention is a great way to engage financial institutions and put enormous pressure on them to enact or strengthen policies around nuclear weapons. Financial institutions do not want bad press and they are extremely sensitive to media reports. Media attention also affords campaigners an opportunity to commend those financial institutions that are divesting from nuclear weapons producers and create a positive “race to the top”.
Read more from Don’t Bank on the Bomb on engaging with the media:
Press Kit
Download the full press kit here.
Crash Course in Contacting the Media:
- Media Advisories are for informing the press about an upcoming event. Use this to try to get reporters out to your action!
- Press releases give the media information about an event so they can report on it after it has happened. Send these out to local papers following your event!
- Letters to the Editor are short form editorial pieces generally in response or reaction to something. Use this in response to your outrage at these profiteering corporations!
- Op Eds are longer and more detailed editorial pieces, they are harder to get published but they can convey information very effectively!
Sample Media Advisory
Media Advisory: PLEASE SEND A REPORTER TO THIS EVENT
[HEADLINE IN ALL CAPS, LIKE: DRAMATIC EVENT WILL TARGET EXTINCTION PROFITEERS]
Contact: [YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION, ADDRESS, EMAIL, PHONE, WEBSITE]
[WHAT: NAME OF EVENT]
[WHO: ORGANIZERS, GROUPS, SPEAKERS, ETC.]
[WHEN: DATE AND TIME]
[WHERE: NAME OF VENUE, ADDRESS]
[DESCRIBE YOUR EVENT EXCITINGLY BUT FACTUALLY, AND “HOOK” IT TO LOCAL NEWS OR CURRENT EVENTS]
It’s part of “NO to Nuclear Weapons and NO to Fossil Fuels: Two Weeks to Pressure the Corporations Putting Profits Ahead of People and Planet.” These global events are coordinated in the US by the Warheads To Windmills Coalition (warheadstowindmills.org). The Nuclear Weapons Abolition Week of Action is September 16-22 and the Climate Week of Action is September 23-29.
“We’re joining people around the world demanding an end to both fossil fuels and nuclear weapons, the twin threats that endanger every one of us on Earth,” said [ORGANIZER / PARTICIPANT]. “When lobbying our legislators isn’t enough, we’re going after the profiteering corporations that bribe them with campaign contributions and lobbyists.”
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Sample Press Release
Press Release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: [YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION, ADDRESS, EMAIL, PHONE, WEBSITE]
[CATCHY HEADLINE ABOUT YOUR ACTION / EVENT, IN CAPS]
[OPTIONAL SUBHEADING IN ITALICS WITH A BIT MORE INFO]
[PHOTO WITH CAPTION AND CREDIT]
[CITY, DATE]: [DESCRIBE YOUR ACTION EXCITINGLY BUT FACTUALLY. INCLUDE YOUR ORGANIZATION, THE DATE AND LOCATION OF THE EVENT, AND YOUR COMPLAINTS ABOUT THAT SPECIFIC COMPANY – SEE PAGES ON SPECIFIC COMPANIES ON WARHEADSTOWINDMILLS.ORG]
“We’re joining people around the world demanding an end to both fossil fuels and nuclear weapons, the twin threats that endanger every one of us on Earth,” said [ORGANIZER / PARTICIPANT].
According to opensecrets.org, the top companies that profit from fossil fuels and nuclear weapons spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress, funding campaigns, sponsoring think tanks, and feeding misinformation to the media, and they enjoy as much as a 1000% return on investment in petroleum-friendly policies and taxpayer dollars for bomb factories.
This action was part of “NO to Nuclear Weapons and NO to Fossil Fuels: Two Weeks to Pressure the Corporations Putting Profits Ahead of People and Planet.” These global events are coordinated in the US by the Warheads To Windmills Coalition (warheadstowindmills.org).
During the first “week of action,” September 16-22, activists are targeting seven nuclear weapons contractors. The second week, September 23-29, they’re targeting seven oil companies.
Activists are boycotting companies, writing to their CEOs, demonstrating at corporate facilities, divesting their money, and demanding that these industries should use their huge influence over Congress to transition to a truly green economy. A similar strategy was effective in the 1980s, when General Electric, Morton, Ford, Westinghouse, and Dupont dropped out of the nuclear weapons business.
“This is a global emergency,” said [ORGANIZER / PARTICIPANT NAME]. “I’m personally experiencing alarming climate changes. I’m watching these wars and thinking about who has nukes. I’m going to do all I can.”
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Sample Letter to the Editor
Letter to the Editor: [CATCHY TITLE ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS/ACTIONS]
I [APPRECIATED / DIDN’T AGREE WITH] the article [“NAME OF ARTICLE,” DATE PUBLISHED], because [WHY].
…OR…
Why isn’t this paper publishing more stories about the twin existential threats of climate and nuclear weapons? This week, protesters are in force at [EVENT] because [REASON].
Why are we still burning fossil fuels like it’s not wrecking the climate and endangering our very lives? Why do we tolerate the existence of nuclear weapons that could wipe us all out in an afternoon?
Follow the money. The top companies that profit from fossil fuels and nuclear weapons spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress, funding campaigns, sponsoring climate-denying and nuclear “deterrence” think tanks, and feeding lies to the media. In return, one industry gets billions of dollars’ worth of profits from petroleum-friendly policies, and the other gets trillions of taxpayer dollars to build more and more dangerous bombs.
During the two “weeks of action” September 16-29, I’m using the warheadstowindmills.org website to pressure the profiteers. We can all divest, boycott, stigmatize, protest, and contact the companies directly. We can all demand that our legislators take much bolder action than ever before – which will be more effective if the profiteers who fund their campaigns are feeling the pressure too.
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Contact [YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION, EMAIL, ADDRESS, AND PHONE]
Sample Op Ed
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OpEd:
SAVING THE WORLD TWO WAYS
Going after the corporations that threaten our survival
[PHOTO WITH CAPTION AND CREDIT]
The corporations who sell oil and build nuclear bombs spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress, funding campaigns, sponsoring climate-denying and nuclear-friendly think tanks, and feeding false nuclear “deterrence theory” and climate “greenwashing “to the media. In return, the war profiteers get billions of taxpayer dollars (a return on investment reaching up to 1,000%) and the oil profiteers get petroleum-friendly government policies that guarantee soaring profits.
What to do If citizens’ voices are drowned out by corporate lobbyists? Here’s a strategy that worked In the 1980’s and can work today: activists pressured the companies directly with boycotts, divestment, protests and shaming. Soon General Electric, Morton, Ford, Westinghouse, Dupont and others got out of the nuclear weapons business altogether. To this day, GE’s website notes that it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons!
I’m joining people around the world this month who are targeting some of the biggest oil companies like Exxon/Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, Phillips 66, Koch Industries, Energy Transfer, and all the brands they own, and some of the biggest nuclear weapons companies, like Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Boeing, L3 Harris, RTX/Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Huntington Ingalls.
We demand that these profiteers use their enormous influence over Congress to end our dangerous addictions to fossil fuels and nuclear weapons. The future (and their jobs!) is in green technologies, not in militarily obsolete weapons of mass extinction.
They should also understand that they are under increasing international pressure from half the world’s countries (and counting) who have joined the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This treaty now puts nuclear weapons in the same prohibited category as chemical and biological weapons. A Fossil Fuel Treaty could give similar legal weight to banning the burning of fossil fuels.
In the US, pending federal bill H.R. 2775, the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Conversion Act, calls on the US to join the TPNW and redistribute money from weapons of mass extinction to climate solutions and other pressing human needs. But until we get electoral bribery under control, such a bill faces an uphill battle.
I worry that climate catastrophe could make Earth uninhabitable in just a few decades. As nuclear nations like the US, Russia, China and Israel grow more hostile to one another, I worry about nuclear war that could wipe us all out in an afternoon. I’m not fooled by corporate “greenwashing” and political “peacewashing.” Baby steps are not enough.
So I’m very excited that [ORGANIZATION] is [DID/WILL DO] [THIS ACTION] at [PLACE] on [DATE AND TIME].
It’s part of “NO to Nuclear Weapons and NO to Fossil Fuels: Two Weeks to Pressure the Corporations Putting Profits Ahead of People and Planet.” These global events are coordinated in the US by the Warheads To Windmills Coalition (warheadstowindmills.org). The Nuclear Weapons Abolition Week of Action is September 16-22 and the Climate Week of Action is September 23-29.
If you’re not willing to accept the status quo, in which voters are sidelined while those who profit from weapons and oil dictate the actions of our legislators, let’s pull out all the stops, and survive!
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Contact [YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION, EMAIL, ADDRESS, PHONE, WEBSITE]