About the campaign

The Freedom from Oil Campaign works to end America’s oil dependence, reduce oil related conflicts, and stop global climate change by convincing the auto industry to dramatically improve fuel efficiency and eliminate vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. We envision a world in which:

• everyone has access to mass transit;
• people can buy pollution-free, petroleum-free vehicles;
• we can all get around safely on bikes, skateboards and scooters.
  

Transportation alone accounts for more than 70 percent of our oil consumption, but the auto companies keep pumping out oversized, gas-guzzling cars, trucks and SUVs instead of investing in fuel-efficient technologies. In order to stay in business and protect good union jobs, the industry must break its oil addiction and offer customers transportation choices that don’t harm our health, heat our planet, and fuel overseas wars.

Taking action

Hold an Oil Addicts Anonymous (OAA) Meeting
OAA has one primary purpose: to help ourselves, our corporations, and our governments end oil addiction. Oil Addiction is a disease that strikes all of us because our society is set up to feed it. Breaking that addiction will require a system-wide change, and OAA provides a place to start. We aim to have OAA meetings in every community on the continent. Find out if there's an OAA chapter in your community. If not, create your own!

Visit www.freedomfromoil.com to download an OAA toolkit.

• Call your friends and family members and invite them to a meeting to talk about ways that you can kick the habit. Think of things you can do to reduce or eliminate your oil use.

• Support each other. It’s a support group, so continue to meet, carpool, ride buses, bike and skateboard together.

Adopt a Dealer
Dealers are a key point-of-sale link in the chain of oil addiction. A big part of our strategy at Freedom From Oil is focused on garnering the support of auto dealerships across the country as a way to follow the chain links of oil addiction. The Adopt-a-Dealer program is an easy way for anyone and everyone to get involved in the movement to break our oil addiction.

The easiest way to join the campaign for a sustainable, petroleum-free future is to find a dealer near you, ask for a meeting, and launch your own intervention to stop them from driving America’s oil addiction.

• Research plug-in hybrids and their potential to transition Americans away from their reliance on gasoline vehicles. Go to www.pluginpartners.org to learn more about the campaign to promote plug-in hybrids.
• Survey other students about what kind of automobiles they want. Do they prefer gas guzzling SUVs, plug-in hybrids, or no car at all? Or step it up and ask them to sign a clean transportation commitment.
• Send us the results of your survey so we can publish them online!
• Schedule a meeting with the owner of a dealership in your area.
  Talk with the owner about your survey and the kinds of vehicles that your community would like to see made available.

Feeling brave? You can keep going by...

• Asking them to commit to selling only cars and trucks that get at least 30 mpg.
• Asking the dealership to send a letter to company headquarters asking the it to increase its fleet-wide fuel efficiency and manufacture cleaner vehicles.
• Keeping the pressure on them by following-up and demanding action!
• Downloading the Adopt a Dealer toolkit at www.freedomfromoil.com for detailed steps you can take to enlist dealers in the effort to break our oil addiction.

If they don’t respond, you can step up the pressure and...

Organize a Demonstration at Your Local Dealership
Talk with local environmental groups, bike clubs, peace organizations and others about the demonstration. Find out which dates work best, and ask them to come out for it. Post the event on the RYSE events tool so that other groups can find out about your action.

Use banners and picket signs to let the dealership's customers know that the auto industry is fueling our oil addiction (we can supply eye-catching pre-stenciled banners).

Hand out flyers and postcards to customers and urge them to tell the dealer that they want cleaner, more fuel efficient cars. We can even send you some postcards to distribute.

Bring noisemakers and bullhorns to your event.

Ticket the Gas-Guzzlers
Put mock parking tickets on all the SUVs at the dealership. The tickets read, “Violation—Gas Guzzling Fuels Global Warming and War.” Tickets are available by writing to: suvtickets@globalexchange.org.

Get people to write or email the people in charge of the Big Six Automakers – Ford, GM, Daimler Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan – challenging each of them to reduce their vehicles' emissions and to make their company the industry leader in fuel economy.