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!
How To: Writing into the newspaper
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:
Engaging the media
Nuclear Week Press Samples:
Press Release about Direct Action on “No Money for Nuclear Weapons”
Press Release: [Catchy, timely title]
Contact [your email and phone]
[PHOTO with caption and credit]
[Date]: The [organization] is [doing/has done this action] in [place] on [time].
It’s part of a global movement to abolish nuclear weapons. “We’re doing this because [personal or global reason],” said organizer/participant name].
Nuclear weapons programs divert public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services. The nuclear-armed countries spend more than $173,000 per minute on their nuclear bombs, over $90 billion each year. Meanwhile, the companies producing these weapons of mass destruction and their investors make billions in profit each year. That is why, from September 16 to 22, 2024 people all around the world are coming together with one clear message: No Money for Nuclear Weapons!
“We’re [hoping/expecting/demanding] that [outcome],” said [another organizer/participant name].
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons now puts nuclear weapons in the same prohibited category as chemical and biological weapons. 122 nations agreed the Treaty at the United Nations, 94 have already signed it, and 70 have ratified it. (Updates at www.icanw.org/signature_and_ratification_status) But the nine nuclear-armed nations (USA, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) haven’t joined the treaty yet.
It’s never been legal to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against cities or civilian populations. But now it’s also illegal to develop, test, produce, manufacture, transfer, station, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons. Significantly, under this treaty, it’s also illegal to “assist, encourage, or induce” anyone else to do any of those things. That may include financing them, and many investors, pension funds, and financial institutions are already divesting from the industry.
The treaty represents an absolute rejection of “deterrence theory” by most of the world. It stigmatizes nuclear weapons as a grave danger to all humanity, whether they are used as designed or detonate by accident. And it lays out a pathway for the elimination of all nuclear weapons from all countries, in line with existing legal obligations to disarm, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that the US and other nuclear-armed nations have already committed themselves to.
Pending federal legislation called “H.R. 2775: Nuclear Weapons Abolition and (Climate) Conversion Act,” would shift federal funds from nuclear weapons to green technologies that address climate change and other pressing social needs.
Learn more at [your organization], WarheadstoWindmills.org, ICANW.org and DontBankOnTheBomb.com.
Op Ed: We Can Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Before They Eliminate US
OpEd: We Can Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Before They Eliminate US
By [your name]
Contact [your email and phone]
[Date]: The [organization] is [doing this action] in [place] on [time]. It’s part of the worldwide struggle to abolish all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth forever. We may yet eliminate these militarily obsolete weapons of mass extinction — before they eliminate us.
Nuclear weapons programs divert public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services. The nuclear-armed countries spend more than $173,000 per minute on their nuclear bombs, over $90 billion each year. Meanwhile, the companies producing these weapons of mass destruction and their investors make billions in profit each year. That is why, from September 16 to 22, 2024 people all around the world are coming together with one clear message: No Money for Nuclear Weapons!
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons now puts nuclear weapons in the same prohibited category as chemical and biological weapons. The world has spoken: 122 nations agreed the Treaty at the United Nations, 94 have already signed it, and 70 have ratified it. (Updates at www.icanw.org/signature_and_ratification_status) But the nine nuclear-armed nations (USA, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) haven’t joined the Treaty yet.
What’s a “rogue nation?” One that ignores international norms and puts everyone in danger. We’re doing all we can to get these nine rogue nations to sign the Treaty and set the wheels in motion for negotiations to figure out how to get the thousands of warheads off the missiles and safely dismantled, before it’s too late.
The profiteering corporations (and the politicians they finance) continually try to convince us that these mad machines keep us “safe.” But nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created that have the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth. It would take less than 0.1% of the explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal to bring about devastating agricultural collapse and widespread famine. Nuclear-armed states’ decision to divert public resources from health care and other urgent social needs to weapons of mass destruction is unconscionable. Nuclear weapons produce health consequences that span generations. No meaningful disaster relief is possible even to those who survive the immediate nuclear blast.
It’s never been legal to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against cities or civilian populations. But now it’s also illegal to develop, test, produce, manufacture, transfer, station, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons. Significantly, under this treaty, it’s also illegal to “assist, encourage, or induce” anyone else to do any of those things. That may include financing them, and many investors, pension funds, and financial institutions are already divesting from the industry.
One year of global nuclear weapons spending could convert more than 16.5 million homes to solar power, secure clean water and sanitation for 1.2 billion people, or pay for a third of the costs of climate change adaptation in developing countries.
If the profiteers are smart, they’ll convert their scientists and facilities to green technologies that address climate change and other pressing social needs. There’s federal legislation pending that would do just that: H.R. 2775, the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act.
Learn more at [your organization] WarheadstoWindmills.org, ICANW.org and DontBankOnTheBomb.com.
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor
From: [your name and city]
Contact: [your address, email and phone]
[snappy, timely title, like Acting Locally to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Globally]
[City]: Did you know that [parts?] for nuclear weapons are made right here in [city]? [Company] makes [product].
Many of my neighbors have good-paying jobs in this industry. Some of them take pride in defending our country, and others are ashamed to be making a living making nuclear weapons that don’t keep us “safe” at all, but rather put the whole world in unthinkable danger.
The world agrees with the latter group. As of 2021, all nuclear weapons-related activities are illegal in the 70 countries that have ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The companies that make nuclear weapons are already facing divestment, stigma, and the risk of legal action.
The US and the other eight nuclear-armed nations have not joined the treaty yet. In fact, they still spent nearly $3,000 per second on their nuclear arsenals in 2023. But the US is actually obliged to sign it under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Signing it would not trigger sudden unilateral disarmament, but it would be a step toward working multilaterally for global disarmament. And imagine what we could do with that money saved.
We were taught that nuclear weapons ended World War II, thereby saving many lives by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Historians now disagree. We were taught that having nuclear weapons has a “deterrent” effect on other countries using them against us. This is now regarded as a dangerous myth by most of the world, a gigantic game of “chicken” with an accident-prone technology.
Dear neighbors, what if your good-paying jobs preparing for mass annihilation could be shifted to, say, making green products that address climate change, or other pressing human needs? Would you feel better about going to work? Would your children be happier?
[Suggest actions: joining event, writing letters to the company, supporting legislation like H.R. 2775, etc.] Learn more at: [your organization], WarheadstoWindmills.org, ICANW.org, DontBankOnTheBomb.com.