Issue and Opposition: Even though the world’s richest country, the United States faces substantial socioeconomic and political challenges. While on paper only free and fair elections have constitutional validity, innumerable times the involvement of large amounts of money has decided electoral or legislative outcomes. Initiated in 2012 by Ben and Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen, Stamp Stampede is a nonprofit that aims at “legally stamping dollars to protest big money in politics and roadblocks to voting for minorities, students, disabled, and low-income people.” The target groups for this action are corrupt and discriminatory government offices, agencies, policies, regulations, systems, and processes in the United States.
Dilemma Action: Fashioned after a small-scale but similar action by “Occupy George,” this dilemma action of stamping currency notes with meaningful anti-corruption messages runs on simple mathematical logic. According to the estimates by Stamp Stampede, with 100 people stamping 10 bills a day for a year, 300 million Americans would be able to receive the messages stamped on dollar bills. This is an effective outreach number since it roughly covers the whole population. Stamp Stampede was so energized by its success with this dilemma action in 2012 that started a whole campaign based on it. Today the messages on stamped bills include issues such as voter suppression. The Stamp Stampede website reflects the correct ways to stamp bills. For example, the stampers should ensure clear visibility of the stamped message on the bill. Choosing the right space on the bill to stamps is important because the outreach is only successful when the receivers can read the messages. Second, the correct way to stamp is important so that the bill does not get rejected as soiled and unusable by currency scanners of the Federal Reserve Banks. Stamp Stampede has detailed guidelines on how to stop the bills. To track the numbers (of people reached), Stamp Stampede provides all stamps with a unique stamper ID. The recipients are requested by a note to report every time they receive a stamped currency so that the tracker can be updated. The updated trackers are published on the organization’s website. To increase engagement and outreach, Stamp Stampede organizes frequent public stamping activities and Stamp Mobile tours. The rubber stamps that are distributed cover a wide range of issues and messages such as “Money is not free speech,” “Not to be used for bribing politicians,” “Corporations are not people; amend the Constitution,” and “The system isn’t broken, it’s fixed.”
Outcome: The activists did not expect any immediate concession or policy changes as an aftermath of this dilemma action when it was performed for the first time in 2012 since corruption and bribery are age-old malice in the U.S. economic and political systems. However, the fact that the dilemma action has seen a large number of internal replications and that the participants have grown in numbers since 2012 says a lot about the action’s acceptability among the public.