Projects with Clear Short-Term Goals

These projects all have short-term goals. Ideally each contributes to a campaign with a clear, well-defined path to a goal. Ideally, there are targets—people, institutions—that the project (and/or campaign) pressures and which, if pressured, can help achieve the goal.
Mass Protests to Online Activism: How Coronavirus is Changing the Ways Activists Fight
Practitioner:
Youth Activists, Fridays for Future strikers, Climate Strike Online
Date:
Mar 13 2020

Fridays for Future strikers around the world shared their demands for bold climate action online Friday as many youth activists heeded public health experts' recommendations in the face of the coronavirus pandemic by eschewing public protests in favor of digital demonstrations.

The online displays followed the call earlier this week from school strike for climate pioneer Greta Thunberg to #ClimateStrikeOnline.

Anti-Trump protesters lay ‘body bags’ outside one of his New Jersey golf clubs
Practitioner:
Refuse Fascism Philly
Date:
Apr 4 2020

Social distancing guidelines didn’t stop members of Refuse Fascism Philly from criticizing President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic on Saturday.

Rather than march as a crowd through Center City, a handful of protesters from the group, which has repeatedly called for Trump’s removal, drove their cars through Philadelphia before arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Pine Hill, N.J.

A small group forces PNC to stop financing mountaintop removal
Practitioner:
Earth Quaker Action Team
Date:
Mar 2 2015
This wonderful campaign of Earth Action Network against mountaintop removal coal mining focused not on the invulnerable mining companies, but on the banks that financed them - and especially PNC, which based its growth model on recruiting university students. It stopped both PNC and then, because of that, ALL banks from financing mountaintop removal coal mining.

Sneaking the Jews out of Denmark
Practitioner:
Denmark
Date:
Sep 15 1943

In September 1943, the Nazis prepared for the deportation of all Danish Jews to the concentration camps and death. But Georg Duckwitz, a German diplomat with a conscience, deliberately leaked the plans for the roundup, which was due to begin on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Armed with the information from Duckwitz, Danes swung into action.

Occupy Our Homes Forecloses on Wells Fargo
Practitioner:
Occupy Our Homes
Date:
Apr 29 2014

On the eve of Wells Fargo’s annual shareholders meeting in San Antonio, TX on Tuesday, home defenders, students, community groups, and activists in ten cities took peaceful action against the bank. Petitions signed by thousands of people were delivered to Wells Fargo branches and offices across the country calling on CEO John Stumpf to change the bank’s predatory practices.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Practitioner:
Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, NAACP
Date:
Dec 1 1955

In 1900, Montgomery, Alabama had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race, and conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal. The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites, and buses had "colored" sections for black people generally in the rear of the bus, although blacks composed more than 75% of the ridership.

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