Issue and Opponent: The Bank of America had been caught up in multiple scandals by 2012. One of the main concerns centered on the bank being one of the top bankrollers of coal.
Dilemma Action: The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) aimed to spread the truth about Bank of America’s misdeeds to its customers in San Francisco. The activists placed 85 nonadhesive sticks that looked exactly like Bank of America’s ATM screen on every ATM the company owned in the city. The stickers prompted the customers to select whether they wanted their money to be invested in one of the following: coal-fired power plants, foreclosures on homes, bankrolling climate change, or padding executive bonuses. At the bottom of the sticker, there was a button that asked the customer to stop doing business with Bank of America until they started behaving responsibly.
Outcomes: The action received many positive responses, and the design of the sticker was made available as a high-resolution pdf so that others access it and participate. The activists were able to temporarily convert the Bank of America’s ATMs into temporary political machines of activism. The action didn’t obtain any initial concessions, but after years of RAN’s continuous campaign, the Bank of America adopted groundbreaking global coal mining policies in 2015.